Olszewski’s village. (Staff photo by Samantha Sciarrotta.)
Hamilton resident Janice Olszewski sets up some figures in her Department 56 “Christmas in the City” village. Olszewski collected from 1988 until 1992, and wound up with pieces like a firehouse, carolers and Italian and Chinese restaurants. (Staff photo by Samantha Sciarrotta.)
Donna Higgins, Barry Higgins and Sharon Howe show off some of the Department 56 holiday village pieces at Hamilton-based Tomorrow’s Treasures. (Staff photo by Samantha Sciarrotta.)
Hamilton residents collect Department 56’s Christmas Village pieces
Every collection starts with one piece. It grows and grows until eventually you need to, you know, build an addition onto your house to accommodate the whole thing.
OK, maybe that isn’t always the case, but Barry Higgins, Donna Higgins and Sharon Howe are certainly familiar with that level of fanaticism. The trio owns Tomorrow’s Treasures, the Hamilton storefront-turned-warehouse specializing in Department 56’s Christmas Villages line. The first village was released in 1975, and collectors who have been buying a piece or two a year since then are not uncommon. Naturally, many sets are quite large, and the whole “adding a room to the house” thing was no exaggeration.
“There are people that have been with us for years that continue to grow villages,” Barry Higgins said. “When we had our brick and mortar stores, people used to bring in pictures of their displays, and some of them were phenomenal. They would cover rooms of just villages. Some of them leave it up all year long.”
Many of the first sets of villages were made up of traditional snow-covered homes, trees and other landscapes. The original Snow Village, New England and Dickens villages are among the most popular, though pop-culture-themed arrangements like Disney, “A Christmas Story,” “The Simpsons” and “Christmas Vacation” are becoming more prevalent.
“You still go back to Dickens,” Barry Higgins said. “It’s probably the number one draw for Christmas because everybody is familiar with ‘A Christmas Carol’ and they recognize that.”
Hamilton resident Janice Olszewski started her collection in 1988. She stopped purchasing and receiving new pieces in 1992, but she built a sizeable village in the process, setting it up in her home each year. Four years ago, though, her father fell ill and Olszewski’s attention naturally turned elsewhere. Being her father’s caretaker became her primary concern.
After he passed away in October, though, she decided she needed a distraction.
“The upstairs is filled with everybody’s stuff,” she said. “I went up there and started pulling them out. I didn’t realize how many boxes I had. I need to do something a little bit different so that I’m not so sad about Dad not being here.”
Many of Olszewski’s pieces are from the Christmas in the City collection. It includes a firehouse complete with a dalmatian, Chinese and Italian restaurants, a grocery store, townhomes and a wide array of character figurines. There are traffic lights, a tiny lake and a subway station, a snowman, parking meters and benches.
“When you look at all this detail, you make up the story,” she said. “Even though I’ve had it out so many times, I just like to see how many things I’ve never even noticed before.”
She bought a few of the pieces, like the firehouse and the Italian restaurant, because they reminded her of family on Nantucket Island.
“A lot of it is old like this,” she said. “I like all of these old houses. I’m the type of person to ride through a neighborhood at night during Christmas time so I can see what they have with the lights. It would not be unlike me to just sit here and imagine what’s going on.”
Howe bought her first piece seven years ago. She also collects pieces that carry a specific meaning to her and her family. She has a second home in New York, which inspired several of her purchases. The pieces cost, in the late 1980s, as much as $50 each.
“I leave mine up all year long,” she said. “It’s all pieces that mean something to me. There’s a gristmill up there, so I bought a gristmill that looks like that one. Different names of the buildings are different towns up where my house is. They mean something, which a lot of people relate to. When they came out with the automat for the Snow Village, a lot of people came in and said, ‘Oh gosh, I remember the automats.’ They mean something to people.”
Barry and Donna Higgins started collecting in 1985. They attended a trade show in search of products to sell at their store, but after they saw the Department 56 vendor, they were “hooked.” Their first buildings are particularly special to them.
“I have the first seven pieces of the Dickens village,” Donna Higgins said. “They’re like treasures to me. The new pieces have a lot of detail to them, where the other pieces, the very first pieces, they have detail, but it’s not like they do now. To say you have the first seven pieces from the year they first started is pretty exciting.”
She said village collecting may have “hit its peak” a few years ago, but more and more people from younger generations are getting in on it.
“People have collected for 25 years and longer,” she said. “I think the fact that they’ve been around so long, people have collected so long, you hit a peak. But, a lot of people will come in and say, ‘I inherited this from my parents’ or ‘My parents don’t want to do this anymore’ and they’ll come in and add a few more pieces. They’re looking back and remembering. It’s a tradition now. It’s a part of Christmas.”
Olszewski agreed, saying the villages represent exactly what Christmas means to her.
“Christmas time, people are so much nicer,” she said. “People are kinder, and they have more faith, regardless of what your denomination is. I liked to imagine and just sit and think about what it was like in these simpler times, and that’s what you see when you look at these.”
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