Village is Lit -- A Final Look

Thanksgiving is over.  Ever since I can remember, and that's a lot of years ago, my family celebrated its Christmas Season all the way from what we now call Black Friday through Christmas Day.  Gator Wife tells me her family also began shortly after Thanksgiving.  It is a tradition that she and I have carried on since we were married 50 years ago. 

When our kids were little, we would "park" them at Grandma's House early on the Friday after Thanksgiving and head out for our Christmas shopping.  I honestly don't recall it being called "Black Friday" way back then, but it still was one of the busiest shopping days of the year.  And like today there were bargains galore.  When we had done our job of helping Santa by getting all we could for the year, we headed home and wrapped and hid the presents.  Then, like our folks before us, we headed to Grandma's for supper and brought the kids home.

We haven't done the Black Friday thing for many years, but last year we did go out Monday to help Santa with our daughter's (she's now in her forties) list and was pleasantly surprised at how much money we saved on the technical items she needed.  We just may go out again this coming Monday.

But the real purpose of this post is to tell you that on schedule we completed and lit our Christmas Village on Thanksgiving Day.  It is a project we begin each year on Veterans' Day with the goal of lighting it on Thanksgiving.  It is a two week project.  Our Village is a combination of the Victorian and Dickens collections of Department 56. We've been giving you some progress reports throughout the construction phase.  Now here is a final look at our Christmas Celebration Village.

This is the first table one sees upon entering our living room from our dining area.  It is a table that runs behind our sofa.  As you can see, we have a skirt around the table, which, incidentally, we also constructed, which hides all the wiring and stuff under the actual display.

At the end of this section of the sectional sofa is Kensington Palace, the future home of Prince William and Princess Katherine of England.  It was also the home in which the future king grew up with his mother Princess Diana.  It is the center piece (or corner piece if you prefer) of this year's Village.

The sun was shining in the window and made taking a good picture difficult, but this is a sample of our Window section which is on the window base behind the second section of the sofa.  Every piece in this section depicts something from Charles Dickens' immortal story of Ebenezer Scrooge and Tiny Tim, A Christmas Carol.

We call this our Main Village and it has lots of scenes going in it.  In the rear corner is a mountain; a skating pond is in the middle; a farm dots the far center left, and a river connects this section to the window section running from a waterfall.

And this is our main section leading back to the window section.

One would have to see this village "in person" to really get the feel of its size and depth.  Nevertheless, we are very happy with our celebration of the Christmas Season.  The whole congregation of Gator in Maine offers you this early wish for a Very Merry Christmas.  By the way, if you click on any picture, you can see it enlarged, but, and this is important, it doesn't open in a new window, you'll have to use the back arrow or button to return to the blog. 

We'll return Monday with some regular GiM thoughts including one of the dirtiest plays I've ever seen in the NFL.

As always, we hope you have a super weekend.

Gator