The Village Comes Down

It is with a tinge of sadness that I pack away our little snow village today.

Miguel and I constructed each of these little houses by hand out of balsa wood, painted them, glittered them, and then found a special spot for each on the mantle. We placed the smaller houses on the “hills” as we thought that added to the effect of making them feel farther away. As we crafted and constructed to our hearts content, the first snow of the season blanketed the ground outside. It was December 5^th. A Saturday. In the evenings following that day, we’d gaze at it from the couch in our living room and ask each other, “Which house should we stay in tonight?”

When I packed away all the other Christmas decorations on the first of January, I just didn’t yet have the heart to take it down. Truthfully, our little village has started to lose a bit of its initial luster. We don’t notice it as much. We hardly ever light it up any more. At the same time, there’s a childish little voice inside my head that thinks if I take the snow village down it might not snow anymore. Go figure. Nevertheless, I think it’s time to take it down. Until next year. . .