The Christmas Village

I wrote this piece as part of a monthly prompt challenge from the Author Avengers group I'm in on Ko-fi and Discord. You can see a list of all the pieces written for the December 2023 prompt here.

This prompt for December was: In the dark of night, you hear a voice: the voice you most want to hear in the world, and the one you know is impossible to be hearing again.

When I was a child, a visit to my grandparents' house around Christmas time was highlighted by one specific feature of their holiday decor: my grandmother’s Victorian Christmas Village. The old hutch in her kitchen would be transformed from a plain old storage space to a winter wonderland of porcelain houses, shops, and people—apparently stuck in a snapshot of an old-fashioned Christmas out of a movie or a book. The Christmas Village completely enthralled me the first year she put it up. I’d spend hours kneeling on a chair in front of it, staring at the little figures and their environment, and trying to imagine what their lives were like. What were they doing? What were their relationships with each other? What were their plans for Christmas? Eventually, I started pulling out my grandparents’ old electric typewriter and taking it to the table with me, interspersing my imaginative reverie to turn to the keys and type out the scenes playing in my head. My grandparents started to find these loose pages of holiday stories littered about their house, and my grandfather especially always had a lot of compliments and encouragement to offer towards my burgeoning writing skills. He was, for many years, one of my biggest cheerleaders.

Unfortunately, my grandfather passed away after a long battle with colon cancer when I was fifteen. In the wake of his death, my grandparents’ house had to be sold, and my grandmother had to move to a much smaller place. Everything would have to be sorted through, and so many things were going to have to be parted with. The old typewriter was sadly among the things we got rid of, not having anywhere to put it or any ink to refill it when it ran out. Years later, I still regret not saving it. So much of my early writing was done on that typewriter, and while it may not be as practical as my laptop, there was a feeling I got writing at it that I have never quite recaptured with any other writing tool. Thankfully, the Christmas Village did not join it in the junk pile. Both the hutch and the village set returned with my family to my childhood home, where setting them up every year became one of my favourite parts of decorating. While my trusty typewriter may have been gone, my habit of writing while sitting next to the village never really died. Even now, whenever I go home for the holidays, I will curl up on the couch nearest the hutch—notebook and pen in hand—and return to the world of some of my earliest stories. Despite how many years it has been, that village and its porcelain inhabitants have not run out of ways to inspire me.

Sometimes, if a sudden bout of writer's block hits me, I’ll let the notebook rest in my lap and tilt my head to just stare at the village once again. All these years later, I can still so easily find myself getting lost in it, the little figurines seeming to come to life before my eyes. If I let my mind drift far enough, I can almost hear the sounds of my grandparents’ house: Nanny cooking in the kitchen nearby, the TV playing in the next room as my brothers play, the keys of the old typewriter clicking as I work away at my newest story, and Grampy chuckling to himself as he reads the last piece of paper I pulled from the machine. The sounds of a house that never changes in my dreams, of a childhood long since left behind, and of my biggest fan, whom I miss so dearly.

🎄🏡🎄🏡🎄🏡🎄🏡🎄🏡🎄🏡🎄🏡🎄🏡🎄🏡🎄🏡🎄🏡🎄🏡

Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this poem, consider letting me know with likes/comments/insights/subs/shares. 💜

If you would like to read more, here's another of my Author Avengers pieces you might like: