Local residents display their passion for Christmas villages

By Tina Comeau

THE VANGUARD

NovaNewsNow.com

Lorraine Hamilton’s love for Christmas began when she was a little girl.

Her family had moved from Yarmouth to Pugwash and her mother hadn’t gone to the store yet to buy any presents. It was a stormy night and Hamilton saw a face in the window. It startled her.

Someone went outside to investigate and under the window were presents but she says there weren’t any footprints in the snow. Just six or seven years old, what else could she presume at the time? “Santa Claus could have been the only person who did it,” she says.

And so her love affair with Christmas began. It’s one that sees her purchasing presents throughout the year, and the reason why she never decorates her Christmas tree the same way two years in a row.

But if you were to step inside her Hueston Street home in Yarmouth, where she and her husband Harvey live, it’s not the presents or the tree that would grab your attention, its the Christmas village.

With more than 100 buildings on display – and all of the accessories that go with them – the village has completely taken over their living room. Where once furniture stood there are now tables displaying the village. On top of the tables are shelves to handle the overflow. The village is a combination of collectors’ pieces, some of which run in the hundreds of dollars, and others bought in local stores.

Some were gifts purchased for Hamilton. Others are gifts she’s purchased for herself.

Among her favourites are some of her Department 56 collectors’ pieces. “They only make a couple dozen of them and then they break the mould,” she says.

Hamilton’s passion for Christmas villages began years ago through her sister-in-law Dianna Crosby, who lives on Dearman Drive. “She always had a village. I saw it and it was beautiful,” says Hamilton who knew she wanted a village too. Her sister-in-law told her all she needed to get started with was a piece here and a piece there. “One Christmas she gave me a set of three houses and some little trees and some people. She started me off.”

And it grew from there.

For her part, Dianna Crosby has been collecting pieces for her village for about 23 years. She starts laying hers out in November but her village differs from Hamilton’s layout. “Mine is longer, mine is the whole length of the living room,” Crosby says.

Hamilton’s village, on the other hand, is her living room, although that will change. The Hamiltons are building an addition to their house and the plan is for a room in the new space to be devoted solely to the village.

Hamilton starts laying out her village at the end of September and dismantles it at the end of December. To light the village she pulls out a stuffed Santa Claus and squeezes its hand. Inside is a gadget connected to a remote control under the table that turns the village on and off.

Meanwhile, as some people were still figuring out how they’ll be decorating their homes this season, Hamilton is already planning how she’ll lay out her village next year. “It’s a lot of work but I enjoy it, I really enjoy it,” Hamilton says. “I just love Christmas.”