Holiday Traditions: The Winter Village

Last year I wrote extensively (perhaps excessively?) about our Winter Village (here and here), but it's one of my favorite traditions of the season, so here I go again. My mom had this wonderful little village of tiny wooden houses, trees, people, fences and even a train. One of my favorite things to do at Christmas time when I was young was to set up, arrange and rearrange the village (I've always been a sucker for tiny things). A few years back, C's grandmother gave me some houses and people of the exact same type as my mother's village (it's possible she gave them to M when he was very small and they would have constituted a choking hazard, so I appropriated them). I began setting up my own little village--which is much less extensive than my mom's--for Christmas. Last year I hinted that I'd like her to give me hers, and this year I asked flat out. She decided, however, that it would be easier for my dad to make me a whole new village than for her to find hers in storage (they are now currently living in a scaled-down home, with a Norfolk Island pine for a Christmas tree).

So they sent me these:

I had already ordered little wooden trees and snowmen for E and Z to put into the goodie bags at their school, and I had six extra of each, so poof, instant village. I loved the way they looked all white and clean bare wood, and was loathe to paint them. I probably should have kept them white, because, despite what I thought was a genius plan for making windows and doors (I made a rubber stamp with a block of wood and tiny rectangles of craft foam), they didn't turn out well.

The boys of course want to bomb the village (that would be M) or attack it with a giant papier mache reindeer (E and Z)...but it's all made from wood and pretty bomb/reindeer proof.

I don't have a lot of fancy or delicate Christmas decorations (the "breakable" ornaments have stayed in a box ever since M pulled the tree over when he was one), but I love that the ones we do have are also playthings that spark the imagination of my children. Yesterday, E and Z played with this set-up involving two paper houses C's mom made, a paper tree that chocolates came in, three little gnomes we made last year and the pipe cleaner Grinch and troll I made for at least half an hour while I worked on the computer.