Every year on the day after Thanksgiving, my mother turned her dining room buffet into a little snowy town.
She spread out cotton for snow and set a small mirror in the middle for a skating pond. Then she lined up fourteen lighted houses, a church with a tall steeple and a row of bottle-brush trees.
When she plugged it in, the windows glowed. I was a grown woman with kids of my own, and I still stood there like I was seven.
After Mom passed, those fourteen houses came home with me in five big boxes. They sat on the shelf in our basement for three Christmases. I couldn’t bring myself to set them up, and I couldn’t bring myself to give them away.
This fall, I finally opened the boxes. I also sorted our nativity sets, and I helped a friend from church with her Santa collection.
Maybe you’re wondering what to do with a Christmas village collection, a nativity set or a shelf full of Santas. I’ll share what we kept, what we let go, and who was glad to have the rest.