Heartwarming Christmas Magic Found within Whimsical Tyler, TX Snow Village

Do you have a family tradition that you enjoy, but sometimes avoid because it can be a major undertaking? We have one, and it’s a Christmas Village.

My husband and his mom have wonderful memories of setting up their own Christmas Village decades ago, and when we began dating he decided we would carry on this tradition.

His family had a few houses, but he wanted more to round at a nice village and one day while shopping on Ebay he discovered a family that was offloading a village with a few dozen houses and loads of accessories. He decided this was a smart investment, and we drove west of Fort Worth on I-20 to meet a nice lady and we adopted her family’s Christmas Village.

If you’re a Christmas Village aficionado, you’ll know that there are multiple kinds of villages. Some are collector’s items and some are simply ceramic houses with a hole for a light bulb. My husband was after the real deal, Department 56 Snow Village houses. Most of this family’s collection was in fact this particular kind of village.

There are many ways to create your village and decorate for the Christmas season. My husband’s family lined their houses up along the fireplace hearth when he was a child, and I’ve seen a variety of options on Pinterest including custom designed shelves in the shape of a Christmas tree created to display them.

We opted for a simple option. We purchased a couple of folding white banquet tables and lined them up along with the small game table we had and utilized white styrofoam, some white shelves and snow blankets to create our landscape.

The photos below are from our village display in 2013. We haven’t been dedicated enough in recent years to recreate it. It’s quite an undertaking, and while it’s fun and a beautiful creative project, we have two new kitties since the village in 2013, and these little youngsters like to jump onto tables and one really loves to eat things she shouldn’t.

We moved last Summer, and are considering recreating the village in our new home for this holiday season. I’m planning for our Christmas tree to go up this weekend, so I can then focus on our village, if we are brave enough to embark on this adventure.

What do you think, should we go for it, or keep it in the attic another year?