Every family has Christmas traditions. For our family, the Christmas tradition that means the most to me is the Christmas village that we put up at my grandparents’ house. (Pictures are at the bottom of this post!) I’ll start with a little history about it. (And I’ll try not to make this post too long!) The first Christmas village that got put under the Christmas tree started with my great great grandparents. It could have possibly started even earlier than that. My grandma’s first memory is of her grandparents putting it up when she was little. So my great great grandparents started their village using O scale buildings and putting them under the tree on a white sheet. O scale buildings are typically used when people build model train sets and towns. It’s not something you would typically think of with being used for a Christmas village. They are plastic snap-together buildings.
Then, over the years and as the tradition got passed down, it slowly evolved. My great grandma also used O scale buildings and a white sheet under her tree. But she started to add roads to her village using coffee grounds. Back then she would actually dry out used coffee grounds. Now-a-days we just buy like Maxwell House coffee and call it a day. The coffee grounds would stain the sheet! Eventually she stopped using a sheet and started using a plywood board and painted it white.
Now, when my grandparents got married and started their own Christmas village, they lived out here in Arizona, as where my great grandparents and great great grandparents lived in Ohio. For some reason, my grandparents weren’t able to find O scale buildings out here in AZ, so they got HO scale, which are a lot smaller than O scale. They also used a plywood board painted white. Honestly, this makes so much more sense than a sheet. I’m not sure how my great grandma managed to put coffee ground roads on a sheet. Anyways. With the HO scale buildings being smaller, we are able to put a lot more of them in the village, so it just kind of continued to grow over the years. Most of the HO scale buildings we use are Plasticville U.S.A. by Bachmann Trains. You can check out their website here.
Ok, so let me tell you a little about the coffee ground roads. They are verrrrry time consuming to do. You literally sit there on the floor with a bowl of coffee grounds and a spoon and make the roads. But the result is soooo worth it! For me growing up, one of my favorite things was walking into my grandparents house at Christmas because it smelled like coffee. That was what Christmas always smelled like for me, not like a Christmas tree or cookies.
So I started putting up the Christmas village when I was in 5th grade. I remember this so clearly because it was the last Christmas with my great grandma. She sat up until like 2am with me until I finished it. Now it takes me about 6 hours to complete it. There have been a few years that the Christmas village hasn’t been put up, but every year that it does get put up, I always get to do it. And it’s one of the absolute most special things to me. The Christmas village will get passed down to me, and I hope will continue to get passed down long after I’m gone.
Alright so here is kind of a break down of actually putting the village together. The Christmas tree gets put on the board a little off center to the left, because on the left side is the rural area and the right side is the town and we need more space for the town. So I start at the back which is like the forest area with just a road, and we usually put like a semi truck type car in the back. We use a lot of my uncle’s old hot wheels cars. Then I do the rural side. There are certain buildings that I always put in the same general spot: the ranch house and the barn, the motel, the schoolhouse and the church, the gas station, the firehouse and the police station. But there is always variation in the village every year, and I like to try and think of new things to do with it. Like this year a did a ‘strip mall’ just by putting two buildings close together and having them share a parking lot.
So I do the rural side, come across the front and then go over to the town side. In the town, we always have a town square. Usually it’s more in the middle, but somehow I didn’t give myself enough room to put it in the middle, so it’s at the front this year. We also have tiny little people that we put around the town. My grandpa actually painted them with a toothpick because they are so small! And we have to have lots of trees. The more trees the better! And then to finish it all off – snow! We use several different types of snow, and it makes all the difference.
And I almost forgot! We also have to put Santa skiing down the Christmas tree skirt. He’s coming to town to deliver the presents! This plastic Santa is at least 65 years old and one of his skis is broken, but we will continue to put him there until he’s too broken to do so.
I hope you enjoy this glimpse into my favorite Christmas tradition. I’m sure it’s probably like nothing you’ve ever seen before!
The Manoff House 