CENTERBURG — It’s all about tradition and it goes back a long way. Joyce Smith of Perry Road, Centerburg, has been putting up a Christmas village under her Christmas tree for 20 years.
“My mother always had a village under the tree,” Smith explained. “There were seven kids in the family, and we always looked forward to putting up the Christmas tree and putting the village up.”
Smith’s mother’s village was built around a Lionel train set, and used little plastic houses that snapped together.
“We all got to participate in that,” Smith said. “It was fun.”
Now, many years later, Smith has built up a collection so big she doesn’t have room to display everything. That, she said, is one of the joys of the village. It can be different every year. But the biggest joy she gets out of it is that it continues her mother’s tradition and pays honor to her memory.
Although Smith talks about her mother’s tradition, it goes back farther than that, back several generations to Germany.
“It was a family tradition,” she explained. “My great-grandparents were from Germany. My parents were from Pennsylvania, and the Pennsylvania Dutch brought this tradition of putting a village under the Christmas tree with them from Germany. They refer to it as ‘putz’ from the German word for ‘decorate’ or ‘clean.’”
Twenty years ago, Smith was a young mother and felt like she wanted to do something to continue her family tradition.
“My son was 2 years old and my parents had passed [away],” she explained. “I wanted to bring back a little tradition. It started with a small tree and a small village and it grew to this.”
The 2008 version of Smith’s village takes up about half of her living room. It has a central carnival theme, with two Lionel trains running around the perimeter. The village itself is on two tiers, with the carnival on the lower level. Most of the carnival pieces are animated and include a merry-go-round, skaters and a Ferris wheel, among others. The tree sits up on a decorative table so that the village is actually under the tree. The upper level of the village features many period model homes from about the 1890s and has a series with very unique features.
“I have some from Department 56,” Smith said. “These with the big picture windows are Saturday Evening Post. If you look in the picture windows you see depictions of Norman Rockwell paintings. Each one had a theme. I just fell in love with those. But this year I didn’t see any in the stores.”
As impressive as this year’s village is, Smith plans something new and different for 2009.
“Every year when I put it up it’s different,” she said. “It will be again next year, because I’ve already bought three new pieces for it. And I’ve got to get more track.”
