My father doesn’t put out the Christmas village anymore. Too many boxes, he says. Too much styrofoam, too many bits of artificial snow falling across the hardwood getting stuck in the crevices no matter how many times you try to vacuum the damn stuff up. Every year I ask him why he bothered collecting all the Christmas village sets in the first place if he only ever intended to let them collect dust, to be another tower of junk stuffed away in the closet, a pile of unused paperweights I’ll have to throw out someday after he’s dead. He never gives much of an answer. Too many boxes, he repeats, chewing on his moustache.
Eventually it gets to be too much. I see remnants of the Christmas village in garbled home videos, peeking out from the corners of the juddering frames, assembled how I remember it—the soft yellow lights glowing in the shop windows and strips of rubber roads linking city blocks into a cohesive town square. I decide enough is enough. Before my father has the chance to refuse, I haul thirty or so yellowing paper and foam boxes into the back of my station wagon so I can lug them across town to my house. As I flop the backseat down to create a little extra space, I tell him I don’t care that it’s too many boxes, and I suffer through ten or so trips back and forth from garage to basement to prove to him it’s worth the effort.
My wife and I clear off her drafting desk in our living room. We spend an hour or so unpacking the boxes, inserting the lights, and deciding if the coffee shop should sit next to the bank or the railroad station. She adores the Chinese restaurant with the detachable fire escape, which she keeps attached so that its inhabitants remain safe. I love the school house with the pennant flag sailing above the turret, which she says speaks to my insufferable teacher’s pet nature. We place them next to one another, their glazed edges gently touching, and she lays her head on my shoulder while saying they resemble us if we were buildings.
We dig into the boxes of figurines and place the porter in front of the Ritz hotel, the Santa Claus clanging a charity bell in front of the department store, and an aluminum pine tree at the center of the town square surrounded by a grouping of schoolchildren who look up at it in awe. A thick rain patters against the window while I sprinkle thousands of grains of artificial snow over the village, attempting to pile snow drifts onto the shoulders of a shoeshine’s parka. My wife slides the window shut and I recall that it’s been a few years since I’ve worn my parka. That I can’t recall with any clarity the last time I saw measurable snow. I look at the figurines’ faces and see little but uncapped joy as I send seasonal flurries piling into their hometown—they’ll never have to shovel it, never have to endure it turning to slush. As I let out a sigh, wisps of the snow glide across the layers of rubber brick pathways, and I try to remember if it ever used to snow here in December or if memory is as deceiving and artificial as the porcelain row houses that say “Chocolate Shoppe” and “Clock Makers” in hand-painted lettering. I begin to wish the train conductor would invite me into his station so I might live where one can buy ten cent hot dogs from the man with the newsie cap outside of the art museum and read a newspaper on the corner without the expectation of spending money. Where snowdrifts pile onto the shoulders of everyone’s parkas. Places to shop. Places to eat. Friends to see. Where one has time to idle. To stand in place and analyze every bristle on the Christmas tree.
Suddenly it makes sense. Suddenly I see myself, some day, not too far into the future. I’m seventy years old, and I’m reclined in my chair in front of the television, and I’m reading the paper. My daughter asks why we never put out the Christmas village. Asks why I’ve bothered hoarding it at all, why I’ve stuffed away stacks of paperweights she’ll have to throw out someday after I’m dead.
Too many boxes, I’ll say, chewing on my moustache.