L. A. Wilson

L.A. Wilson has worked as an editor and researcher, and has a degree in historic archaeology. She has fond memories of the Nativity scene, which led her to write "Once Upon a Nashville Night," her first non-fiction book. Wilson enjoys tai chi and local history and lives in Nashville.

(2025) Once Upon a Nashville Night | From 1953-1967 many Americans celebrated Christmas by trimming trees, attending holiday concerts, and watching Christmas parades, but Nashvillians received a gift that made everything different—a larger than life-sized Nativity scene, set up in Centennial Park beside the Parthenon. The Nativity scene was the result of the colossal dreams of three men: Fred Harvey, Sr., the “Ringling Brothers of retail,” who commissioned and donated it; George Silvestri, Jr., the entrepreneur with an enormous imagination who developed the company where it was made; and Guido Rebechini, the talented sculptor who created the figures. Silvestri was a first-generation American, and Harvey and Rebechini were immigrants. Their intertwined stories, set against the backdrop of cultural changes from the early to mid-twentieth century, resulted in an unforgettable diorama that enriched the Christmas season for over a million people. This display was said to have been the largest in the world at the time. Once Upon a Nashville Night is the story of how the scene came to exist and the profound impacts it had on those who saw it.