Pueblo • Lucille Stollsteimer’s collection of Nativity sets started as a purchase from Sears more than four decades ago.

“The first one I picked up was in 1980,” she said. “I really wasn’t serious about collecting them. But, about five years after I got the first one, I started finding them everywhere, and I started buying them. And then my kids, my friends saw that I was building up a collection, and I think they have contributed more than what I have bought.”

Now, as Christmas nears, the Stollsteimers’ home overflows with Nativity scenes. Over the course of four decades, Lucille Stollsteimer has accumulated more than 300 Nativity scenes, including at least 100 ornaments on her Christmas tree alone.

“Christmas has always been my favorite holiday, and once I start putting them up I know it’s right around the corner,” she said. “I do enjoy putting them up. It is a whole lot of a lot of work. But it’s worth it.”

Stollsteimer’s collection includes several mediums, from wood and porcelain to quilts and cross stitch. Stollsteimer has acquired sets from all over the world, especially as gifts from friends who find them when traveling. She has scenes from Alaska, with bears depicting the Nativity, as well as from Japan, Peru, France — and a whole cabinet of sets from the Holy Land.

The only requirement Stollsteimer has for a set: no duplicates.

“It’s still growing,” Stollsteimer said. “I have almost run out of places to put them. We used to display them all just in the living room, and now we’ve moved into the family room and we moved into the kitchen.”

As far as putting up the sets, that usually takes a couple of days for Lucille and her husband, Tony. But this year, they had some help from friends, who are hosting a $5 walk-through tour of the collection Thursday to benefit their senior club.

“Usually, it’s Tony and I that said them up, and it’s a job, because we take everything down after Christmas,” she said.

“We have to bring it all in and unbox it and set it up. So we had a couple of friends that volunteered to come over and help us this year, and it was a lot easier putting them up this year than it’s ever been.”

Why is Stollsteimer so drawn to the Nativity? To celebrate her faith, and remember what Christmas is about.

“I’m a pretty good Catholic, at least I like to think I am, and Christmas time, that’s important,” she said. “This is the reason for the season.”