Truth: Christmas Village Casualties

I know they’re tacky.  But come on, admit it.  You love them, too.  Christmas Villages are so much fun.

For the first time since my son was a tiny baby, I set up the Christmas Village this year.  I began collecting the pieces just after law school, and my husband brought a fire station to the table when we got married.  We haven’t brought the village out for several years now, for fear that my son would play with it and demolish it.  This year, we decided he was old enough to restrain himself.

For the most part, we were right.  But every now and then, the five-year-old hurricane would sweep through the village when we weren’t looking.  He knew better than to pick up the heavy porcelain houses.  The freestanding, battery-operated fishing trawler wasn’t so lucky, though.  It lost a flag on the first day.  Not long after, the anchor was broken in two.  A lamppost lost its festive red bow, and a member of the string quartet in the town square mysteriously vanished, leaving only his feet behind.  The violinist now plays imaginary strings in the air, with an imaginary bow.

When I would notice my son playing with the village, or standing wide-eyed in front of it, I would often look the other way.  If you’re five, what fun is it to have a Christmas Village in your house if you can’t touch it?  While I drew the line sometimes (“No, you can’t sit on the table!”), I mostly just told him to be careful and let him move the people around.

One afternoon, I noticed my son was crouching underneath the table and looking really hard for something.  “What are you looking for?” I asked.

“Nothing,” he said quickly as he stood up straight.  Yeah, right.

The next day, I noticed the clapping lady who watches her husband and daughter ice skating was no longer clapping . . . but was now missing her hands.  That would be something fairly easy to glue back on, assuming we had the hands.

"Oh no!” I exclaimed.  “The clapping lady lost her hands!”  I started looking around the table, in the gazebo, behind trees, under the brick sidewalk.  “I wonder where the hands went?”

My son pointed under the table.  “Well, they’re definitely not under there,” he said with certainty.

“Mm, thanks for your help,” I responded.

I put the village away yesterday.  The hands were never found.  Oh, well.  That’s okay.  Will I put the village up again next year and let him play with it again?  Of course.