Gretchen Cararie of Valencia with her doll dressed in the habit of a Franciscan nun. The doll never had a specific name, but Cararie calls it her “sister doll.”

Gretchen Cararie, 65, of Valencia has always loved dolls.

When she was a child, her mother strived to give her something unique each Christmas.

Cararie received her most outstanding doll in the early 1950s, when she was in second or third grade.

Her family lived in Butler near St. Peter Roman Catholic Church, and the children attended the parish school.

Her mother was friendly with the sisters at St. Peter, who outfitted a doll with an authentic Franciscan nun's habit, complete with a black woolen robe, cross pendant and starched white headpiece.

“Who would think that the nuns would go to the trouble to dress the doll?” Cararie said. “I guess that's why I remember that so much.”

The sisters used the same methods and materials for the doll's outfit as they did for their own clothing, said Cararie.

“They made it how they made their own, only miniature,” she said.

Though the doll never had a specific name, it was one of Cararie's most treasured toys.

“I always called it my ‘sister doll,'” she said. “I have two younger sisters, so most of my childhood things were passed on to them and didn't survive, but I always protected this one.”

The doll spent many years in the attic and was badly deteriorated when Cararie brought it out again for her daughter, Cathy, more than 20 years later.

Still, the handmade outfit was in fine shape so she selected a similar-looking replacement doll from a catalog and dressed it in the nun's habit.

Cararie displays her ‘sister doll' atop a bookcase in her home with other religious collectibles and often thinks of her mother and the sisters at St. Paul.

“She did tell me that the nuns dressed it, she didn't say it was from Santa Claus,” she said. “I knew it was a gift from my mother and the sisters who lived up the street; that's what made it special to me.”