Just a few days ago I was dragging my feet about Christmas decorating and not feeling the least bit excited about it. But I forced myself to take down the Halloween stuff from the foyer dresser, and that helped a little. Then I thought, “maybe something…woodlandy?” to myself, and I started to get a wee bit excited. And then I went to Target and the holiday cheer floodgates opened. I bought every Christmas tree Target had in the Bulleye’s Playground section, and they had a lot. (I didn’t really buy them all. But probably too many. Once I put them in the cart, Abe wouldn’t let me put any back).

I’m counting up the trees for the first time right now: looks like there are thirteen trees! I had that biggest one already, but the other twelve I bought the other day, with Abe’s encouragement. Did you notice that some of them even light up?! So magical.

And then they also had those little miniature wooden houses with numbers on them, for counting down to Christmas purposes. And what’s a magical Christmas forest without a charming Christmas village? And, also, for good measure, gnomes and elves and some books of fairy tales? It’s getting all whimsical up in here!

The elves are a longtime Christmas decorating fixture around here; I found them at an antique store several years ago.

The gnomes are their new friends and also came from Target.

All of the trees are in Bullseye’s Playground and are between $1 and $5. They had some pretty GOLD trees, too, which I had a hard time resisting, but this year’s woodlandy vision only involved white, shades of green, and wood tones. Bling again next year I suspect.

I tried and tried and tried to find a link to the little houses for you, but they’re just not on Target’s website. Then I thought maybe I could find something similar on Amazon or wherever, but no such luck. So, anyway, they’re in the Bullseye’s Playground section at Target, and they’re $5 for the box of 25. They’d be a fairly easy DIY project (out of wood or paper), but, then again, they’re only $5.

There are a few different options in the same section for displaying the little countdown houses. There’s an actual house-shaped shelf, for example, but that seemed a little on the nose to me. So I rounded the corner and discovered a two pack of those wooden circle shelf things for $5 and grabbed them. Then I added the (also from Target) green cake stand when I got home, and now the village has a multi-tiered display to live on:

There was a bit of drama involved in bringing you this post in time for Advent. Abe felt very strongly that the pack of houses should not even be opened before December 1, much less set up so that I could take pictures. I, however, held the opposite position just as strongly. I furthermore felt that I was the one with rationality on my side, since he didn’t even need to be present while the houses were out of the box and could pretend it never happened. Anyway, I won because I’m bigger and I paid for the houses. Now we’ll see if Abe will even have any fun at all putting out a numbered house every day or if I ruined Christmas.

But if he does do it, here are some pictures to illustrate the mounting excitement as the fairy people rush to construct a village before Christmas/the arrival of murderous cold of winter:

Incidentally, why does “village” equal “Christmas”? It doesn’t make much sense, does it? Perhaps we need a deep dive into the history of displaying Christmas villages now. Hold on–let me go check and see if this is easy to research….

…I’m back! Wikipedia has come through for me:

A Christmas village (or putz) is a decorative, miniature-scale village often set up during the Christmas season. These villages are rooted in the elaborate Christmas traditions of the Moravian church, a Protestant denomination. Mass-produced cardboard Christmas villages became popular in the United States during the early and mid-20th century, while porcelain versions became popular in the later part of the century.

Then there’s more. I’ll go read the whole article later, but that’s enough to keep me happy for now. In the meantime, I’m going to start calling this village a putz. Those Moravians–they think of everything! We’ve actually been to a Moravian living history place in Winston-Salem, NC. It was really cool. Highly recommend!

(I just read more. I want to be Moravian now:

These grew to encompass much more than a nativity scene, with animations such as working flour mills, jumping dogs, running water with waterfalls and electric trains, and could fill an entire room. Families would organize “putz parties” and compete for the best show.)

Also, I think it’s amazing to be alive in a time when anything can be an advent calendar. This one’s actually somewhat appropriate, thanks to the Moravians, but I have, in the past couple of weeks, considered buying “advent calendars” that are just like, “a magic trick a day!” with no Christmas theming whatsoever.

Here are a few other countdowns we’ve done over the years (the books come back every year. Abe told me they’re one of his favorite things about Christmas):

Book a Day Countdown:

Advent dinosaurs! (what was I saying about villages having a tangential at best relationship to Christmas?)

Christmas crackers:

And cone trees:

So there it is! My first Christmas post and first Christmas decorating of the season! I have a few other ideas for my woodlandy theming this year, but we’ll see what happens.

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