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GREENSBORO — It's not even Halloween yet, but Christmas decorations already have crept into some stores.

Too early, you say?

Try trading places with John Saari, a theater arts professor at Greensboro College.

For Saari and a dedicated group of students rebuilding a life-size nativity set, every day is Christmas.

And it's been that way ever since ...

"Oh, I don't know. February? March, maybe?" Saari says, pausing to look around the workshop through the dust-covered lenses of his eyeglasses. "Really, it's been since the day after the incident."

The incident

It was 41 degrees under clear skies in the wee hours of the morning Dec. 8. Sunrise was more than two hours away when a vandal destroyed a piece of Greensboro's history.

When the sun rose and the darkness fell away, the light from the east revealed the front lawn of Greensboro College's main building off Market Street. The grass was littered with the busted up remains of a 71-year-old nativity set.

There wasn't much left of the figures that first stood in front of Pilot Life Insurance Co.'s Sedgefield office in 1936.

Just broken bits of original wood and plaster, and shards of fiberglass touch-up work done over the 17 years since the set moved downtown to the college.

"Actually, because it's so old and it's become public artwork, it's probably priceless," Saari says. "It's hard to put a number on it, but the old set would probably appraise for around $140,000."

Now it was junk strewn on the cold ground.

An arrest was made the next week, but that did little to salve an open wound.

Viewing the old sculptures had become a holiday tradition in the city. Each year, the right lane of Market Street was marked off to allow cars to stop so people could pause and look at the scene.

Lessons from a donkey

Craven Williams, Greensboro College's president, promised the set would return. He asked Saari to make it happen.

A full-time professor since 1991, Saari's resume includes lighting, scene and set designs for stage, film and TV.

An inventor, Saari has also created his own line of primers, sealers, coatings and paints.

Saari also knows this nativity set well.

"The donkey got stolen in 1992, and for '93 I was asked to create a new donkey," Saari says. "... That year, I didn't have anything to go by except for an old photo. So I sculpted it out of foam, finished it, and it was on display for one day before it got stolen again."

For 1994's donkey, Saari decided to dig deeper. His investigation turned up the original molds from the 1930s.

"Some had small cracks, some had water damage," Saari says, "... but they were the original molds made by the original sculptor, a man named Wells, who made the figures in Georgia for funeral homes and for Pilot Life.

"The bad news was, there was no donkey mold."

So Saari stored the molds, and he rebuilt the donkey with his modern materials, this time adding a heavy metal ring to stake him into the ground.

The donkey was the lone survivor last December.

"The vandal had hit him repeatedly with something — a piece of metal pipe or maybe a metal bat — and all it did was lightly scuff the top seal coat," Saari says. "The result is, for the donkey, all he needs is a little touch-up work."

The gift of Christmas

With lessons learned from a donkey, Saari and his team set to work.

They looked at old photographs for color schemes. They fixed the old molds. They replaced horsehair plaster with foam urethane, painstakingly rebuilding antique figures with modern technology.

They plan on more elaborate sets and theatrical lighting. The work will continue right up until the new set's scheduled debut Dec. 7 — one day short of one year since the old set was destroyed.

"The students understand," Saari says. "They know this is bigger than doing the next prop for the next stage show. There's a lot more care going into this effort."

The professor pauses for a moment, looking around the workshop at the still and silent sculptures.

"You don't get an opportunity to do this very often, except for the occasional donkey," Saari says.

"But really, this is a part of Greensboro's history. People have come out of the woodwork to donate their dollars to make this happen, and I can't tell you how gratifying that is. It's been a part of Greensboro's identity, not just the college's identity, but the whole city's identity."

And it's been a part of Saari's identity this year, when every day was Christmas.

Contact Jeff Mills at 373-7024 or jeff.mills@news-record.com