162. Nora’s Christmas Village

Nora loves the holidays, and her favorite way to make the season special is by pulling out her Dickens Christmas village.

Transcripts may not appear in their final version and are subject to change.

INTRO MUSIC

JINGLE BELLS

It’s the day after Thanksgiving, and a new world is opening up. The animals are grazing at Buttertub Barn. The White Horse Bakery is buzzing. Fezziwig’s Warehouse is entering their busiest season.

What is going on here? Where are you, exactly?

You’re in a Department 56 Dickens Christmas Village, a miniature winter wonderland that lives on every surface in our home from November – January. 

We’ve waited all year for this moment: when my kids and I take out these ancient styrofoam boxes, remove the ceramic buildings inside, and try to find a way to plug in the very hot, small single lightbulbs that light each building without shorting our electricity. Every year, we have to negotiate who gets to set up the tiny animals. Who gets to decide where the train station goes. Every year, I say, let’s put some on the window sill and every year…I realize they are too wide, they will fall off. And I delete that knowledge from my mind.

Some of these pieces – the best ones – were gifts from my mother in law, but a lot of them are treasures we have hunted for. We pick through antique malls in July. We browse on ebay in October. 

We sometimes forget which ones we’ve bid on and win two of the same building because I don’t know how ebay works. We found a group of 5 of them at a neighbor’s estate sale for $75 which sounds like a lot of money for Christmas decorations but these are…COLLECTOR’S ITEMS which means the rules do not apply. And some of them have the original price tags on them and were $40 in 1992!

There is nothing about these little Christmas villages that goes with the rest of my home decor. Nothing. And that’s what I love so much about them. They’re not COOL. THey’re not TRENDY. They’re nothing you would see in a magazine unless, of course, that magazine was from 1991. 

These things look like my childhood, even though we didn’t have them when I was a child. My friend Erin’s mother, Jan, would put hers out on top of the piano at Christmas, and I wanted to live inside of those little houses.

(I still kind of do).

In 30 years, I’ll give these to my kids. 

They’ll set them up in their own houses, and make their own Christmas magic.

OUTRO MUSIC

CREDITS