Dickens Village Is A Winter Wonderland

By Nancy K. Crevier

Tom and Toni Catalina can imagine walking down a snowy street while Victorian London swirls all around them. A tinker sells his pots and pans, a farrier shoes a horse, a vendor trundles past with nutcrackers and hazelnuts piled high in the cart, villagers pause on stone benches to admire the Christmas tree in the center of town, and the Queen’s stage coach thunders past. Thatch roof cottages nestle behind rows of holly bushes, mansions stand tall next to leafless birch trees and snow-tipped evergreens, a lamplighter prepares to light the gas lights along each walkway, and residents hurry from business to business, some on foot, some by sleigh.

The Catalinas can visualize the scene thanks to the efforts of Tom Catalina, who for more than 20 years has indulged his passion for the Department 56 hand cast and hand painted porcelain and ceramic buildings, characters, and accessories that make up the Dickens Village that sprawls across three levels of a 12- by 6-foot platform erected in the corner of his Butterfield Road home. He has been growing his village practically as long as the Lenox Group Inc of Eden Prairie, Minn., has manufactured the Dickens Village.

It all started when his sister gave their mother the Old Curiosity Shop building for Christmas one year. Mr Catalina ran right out and added two houses “to round it out,” and the following year, added 17 more pieces to his mother’s Christmas scene. He became the curator of the Dickens Village at his mother’s Bethel home for the next ten years, until the ever-expanding city moved to his Newtown home, where there was more room.

“Every year, I have added a piece, plus trees and other accessories,” said Mr Catalina, who takes three days to set up the various neighborhoods, beginning just after Thanksgiving. Many of the buildings and the street lights are electrified, and Mr Catalina has discovered over the years that by creating a tiered village with cotton batting for snowy streets and yards, that the thousands of tiny wires can be fed via a wire coat hanger beneath the batting and hidden from view. “It just makes for a nicer scene when the wires don’t show,” he said.

Behind the festive green skirting made by his wife that encircles the platform, the mass of wiring is plugged into two large power strips, allowing the village to cast a soft glow as friends and family wonder at the sights. It is a scene that the Catalinas will share with visitors through the winter. “It is so much work to put it up, we like to leave it for awhile,” said Ms Catalina. “It’s here for friends and family to enjoy, probably until February or March.”

Plus, with Christmas behind them, the winter gives them a chance to relax and enjoy the fruits of their labor and really take a look at the village scene. “Every time you look at the village, you see something that you haven’t noticed before,” Mr Catalina said, even though he has placed each of the 42 buildings and hundreds of accessories himself. “It takes so long to place everything, I almost forget what I have put where,” he laughed.

The village is divided into neighborhoods. An original Victoria Station building, since retired by Department 56, marks the center of town on the second level of the platform, framed by one of the town’s two cathedrals and the City Hall, with a clock tower to rival that of Edmond Town Hall. Miniature monuments are carefully placed, just as they might be in a true town center. A horse-drawn stagecoach pulls aside for the Queen’s carriage, and vendors ply their wares along streets lit by tiny globed gas lights. At the end of the main street, the town Christmas tree attracts visitors.

The lower level of the village is where Bob Cratchit’s home, he of Dickensonian fame, is found. A peek inside reveals Mrs Cratchit and her daughter setting the humble table, while outside, Mr Cratchit carries Tiny Tim upon his shoulder. Creating scenes inside of buildings is a new angle to the Department 56 villages, said Mr Catalina, starting just two years ago.

The theme of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is carried out further in the figurine of Mr Dickens himself reading aloud to a crowd gathered about. Along the lower main street, a fish monger and fruit vendor are among the other tradesmen populating the street.

Beyond the center of town lie the “rural” and “upscale” neighborhoods, where yet more intricately fashioned businesses and residences are peopled by ceramic residents going about the work and play of the Victorian era. The neighborhoods are set apart by stonewalls constructed of actual stones tightly glued together, privet hedges, decorative fencing, or rugged fieldstone fences, each one painstakingly laid out by Mr Catalina to best set off the particular area of town.

“The downtown buildings — the center of town, that is — stay the same each year, and the schoolhouse where Scrooge attended always anchors one corner,” said Mr Catalina, “but the rest of it is slight different every year. I set it up mostly by memory, but with new pieces, I have to make room and move things around a bit.” Occasionally, a piece does not fit into the scene and is not set up, such as the London Bridge this year. “It just didn’t go with any of the scenes,” he said.

This year he extended the platform to make room for the bell casting building, the gristmill, and the lantern shop that make up part of the rural scene beneath the mountain. “As it gets better, it gets more exciting,” Mr Catalina said. “It gets a little harder to find space, but I could always start placing the buildings closer together, more London-style.”

Finding new pieces can be a challenge, said Mr Catalina. Most of the stores that sell Department 56 locally do not have a huge inventory, so pieces sell out very quickly. Even online, buyers must be quick or the stock is gone, he said. One year, he got lucky, however, when visiting South Carolina. “In Calabash, S.C., there is a general store that I think has every piece in stock. They have thousands of boxes of the items,” he said, his voice exuding the excitement of a child in a candy shop. That is where he was able to get the mountain ridge and other pieces he has never seen available in this area.

 “We really enjoy relaxing in front of the fireplace now that the holidays are over, and having time to admire the village,” said Mr Catalina. “It’s like a novel that you can get lost in.”