My Snow Village Addiction

My addiction started off like most all addictions do.  "I'll just have one or maybe two.  Maybe just one more!"  "PLEASE JUST ONE MORE AND I SWEAR THAT'S IT!!"  


I remember the first Snow Village collection I saw that was in someone's home was not long after Terry & I got married.  One of our church members was a school principal, and for years her staff had given her a new piece each year.  During the Christmas season, she and her husband would set up a large table, cover it in snow blankets, set up all the pieces & then circle the whole thing with an electric train.  I thought it was so wonderful!  It didn't matter that they had to block one of the doors to their home during the season.  It was a fire hazard, I'm certain.  But, no matter!  They had this charming, magical, wonderful display in their house!  


It was then I decided that I would love to have a Snow Village collection.  But I wouldn't over-do it.  As a minister's new wife, I thought that collecting just some of the churches in the village would be very nice & not take up too much room.  The first piece that Terry bought me was the All Saints church.  The bottom is dated 1986, though we probably acquired it in 1991 or so.


Below, the All Saints church sits to the right of two other churches.  For a few years, Terry and I referred to the collection as "my churches", as in "Martha, don't you think you have enough churches?"   

It was only a matter of time until someone (I think maybe my sister) gave me a Snow Village piece that was not a church.  Uh-oh!  In my smallish village of maybe 5 churches, I now had one home.  That one family would have to attend a lot of worship to justify that!  This sweet green home "Hartford House" is dated 1992.  This was probably my first non-church piece.

Here's another early acquisition that's special.  The Holly Brother's garage & Terry's Towing Tow Truck.  It's in honor of my husband's days as a young man owning a tire store.  

While living in Monroe, I didn't try to hold back too much on getting new pieces.  When you have a collection of something, it's so easy for people to get you a gift.  Terry would usually buy me a new building for my birthday in October, so that each year when I was ready to get out "the churches" a few weeks later, I would have a new addition.  And because we lived in a parsonage that had a 2-story den, I had the greatest place to put the display.  The second floor hallway overlooked the den, and had a ledge that was just wider than a Snow Village house on the outside of the railing.  It was just made for a large SV collection!

Here's a picture of my sister & me overlooking the railing on the last Christmas we spent there.  Only a few pieces show in the picture, but it stretched for several feet on either side of us.

The village looked so pretty there!  And it wasn't in anyone's way.  With the possible exception of an ENORMOUS amount of electrical wiring tucked under the snow blanket, it wasn't even a fire hazard!  

When it was time to move that spring, I designated my car as the vehicle for moving the Snow Village.  No way, no how was a single piece going into a moving van!  

Of course, not that many parsonages (or for that matter, houses) are equipped with a Snow Village-ready upstairs landing.  Our first year back in Shreveport, I tried using a baker's rack for the village.  But without any kind of back on it, the wires from one shelf strung down the back of the next shelves.  It did not look good.  Also, at this point, I had pretty much weaned myself from desiring new pieces.  I knew that I had reached the point where both storing & displaying my Snow Village was difficult.  But I had the thought of buying a bookshelf for our den that would be white & would hold all of the pieces.  It could have holes drilled in the back for all the cords to go through & down to the outlets.  Terry got on board and designed it for me by measuring the tallest & smallest pieces so there would be some tall & some shorter shelves.  He chose moulding for the top that resembles the moulding in the den built-in shelves.  Then he had a carpenter build it.  The result looks like this:

The shelf holds 24 1/2 buildings (I say 1/2 because The Good Shepherd Chapel has  a small church school attached to it).  There are also several cars and people, a horse & carriage and the Snow Village Express train.  The train doesn't run anywhere, but it does sing, "There's No Place Like Home for the Holidays", and then makes the noise of a locomotive pulling out of the station & sounding it's whistle.

There are so many pieces that I have and that I love.  And with my addiction to photography, as well as collecting Snow Village pieces, I could show you close up shots of all the adorable little buildings & tell you why they're special to me.  But I'll just show one last picture.  And this one is the reason for my whole little story today.

You might notice that that is not a photo that I took.  I went in the Hallmark store this morning, looking for something else entirely.  But like any addict, I couldn't quite keep myself from going over to the Snow Village display.  "Just to look", I told myself.  "You know you don't want any other pieces!!  The guest closet cannot handle one more box stored there!!"  But I saw this.  It's the Our Lady of Guadalupe church.  It's almost an exact replica of the San Felipe de Niri church in Albuquerque.  I've compared it with photos I've take of that beautiful church, & all the details are amazing in their similarity.  I looked on the Dept 56 website to find out about this piece.  It was introduced in January of this year & retires this month.  

I love New Mexico.  I love Southwest architecture.  I don't have any Southwest pieces in my collection. Look back at my picture of my Village display.  If you take a close look at the second shelf from the top, there's a distinct gap in between the CPA/Law office & the Gentle Dental Clinic.  Just one more, please!

...and it's a church!