Lego sets bring a multigenerational flavour to Christmas village displays
CBC Radio Specials5:44Lego sets bring a multigenerational flavour to Christmas village displays
When Eileen Nurse was a kid, her family would decorate the mantle above the fireplace with miniature houses and fake trees every December, creating a little winter scene. So when Nurse, now 61, bought her first Christmas-themed Lego set in 2010, a new tradition was born.
“This is kind of my homage to my growing up and my mom and dad, in particular my dad, who loved doing that,” said Nurse, who lives in Chilliwack, B.C.
Since Nurse bought her first set, her Christmas setup has snowballed. She says she’s bought all the holiday-themed sets.
Each year she builds the set starting shortly after Remembrance Day, and disassembles it after the holidays so she can start from scratch the next year.
She spreads her build across a couple of foldable tables with a white tablecloth. Her village has sections such as a commercial area, then a section for Santa and the North Pole, assuming her cats don’t destroy it.
“Somewhere in it I try to fit the Home Alone house but that is really big. So sometimes it’s a little hard and the scale is a little off on that one,” said Nurse.
And she’s far from the only one. Many people across Canada and beyond are building and sharing their Lego creations online, which include sophisticated landscaping, human-sized mountain slopes, and functioning holiday trams.
Graeme Dymond uses Duplo, the larger version of Lego made for toddlers, to make a Christmas display every year in his front yard, along with his own winter village.
“Just about every Lego convention that I go to around the world [there] are people who have Christmas villages or holiday-themed builds on display,” said Dymond, a Lego-certified professional and the organizer of the Lego fan convention, Bricks in the Six in Mississauga, Ont.
The Lego Company has capitalized on this trend, designing sets specifically to fit into Christmas village displays, such as an alpine ski lodge, a toy shop, and even the house from the holiday movie Home Alone.
Each year the company comes up with a new holiday-themed set — but many of them are only in production for a limited time before being discontinued, and those sets have ballooned in price, due to their rarity.
“A good holiday set captures the essence of the season,” said Chris McVeigh, a Canadian Lego designer currently living in Denmark, who has designed two of the Lego Company’s holiday sets.
“It should give a sense of nostalgia, wonder and feel like home.”
McVeigh has added some of that nostalgia right from his own childhood. In the Santa’s Visit Lego set from 2021, he added holiday cookies that looked just like the ones his mother makes at Christmas.
How it evolved
In the 1970s, people started creating Christmas villages with miniature buildings made out of ceramic and porcelain.
Department 56, a U.S. company that manufactured holiday collectibles and ornaments, was one of the first companies to sell little buildings that would make up a winter village. People would place these sets under the tree, or on a table for display, in time for the holidays.
Up until just a year ago, that’s how Erin Robinson decorated. But with two young children, it was getting hard to keep them from playing with, and inevitably breaking, the ceramic houses.
“The last couple of years we haven’t put it up, but I missed having a village. So I decided this year that I was going to make one out of Lego,” said Robinson of Georgetown, Ont.
“I’ve had a long year with a bunch of personal related things, but I kind of just needed a venue to do something with my hands and take a break and take my mind off things.”
It’s becoming an annual tradition at the Museum of Natural History, with nearly every Christmas Lego set ever released. The holiday village alone is 20 metres long, and there are a number of local builds too — including Citadel Hill and Woody the Christmas Tree.
With Lego, she can build the sets and let her kids play with them without worry — after all, if it breaks, she can always just rebuild it.
Her village has Santa’s house, an elf clubhouse, a hot chocolate stand, and some shops.
“My three-year-old, we bought the little tain set and he just drives the train back and forth across the table with the Lego. And [my six-year-old] … she’ll play like, hide and seek with all the little characters.”
She hopes that as the tradition continues, they can get more elaborate with their village, like the posts she sees on social media.
“To be honest, I only started with the thought of buying a couple sets and it kind of expanded to a lot more very quickly,” said Robinson.
A multigenerational tradition
It’s no surprise to Dymond that these winter themes are so popular in Canada, and other places with snowy, chilly winter seasons.
“In Denmark, they have this term in Danish [which is] hygge, this kind of like cozy time…. And Denmark being the home of Lego, it’s very apropos to lean into this idea,” said Dymond.
“It very much lends itself to all these different activities that are indoors, staying warm and cozy, and leaning into those hands-on experiences that we as human beings just crave.”
For McVeigh, who has designed holiday sets but also smaller products such as Lego Christmas tree ornaments, it’s an honour to see people incorporating his designs into their holiday traditions.
“Seeing my holiday sets become part of people’s traditions is incredibly rewarding. It’s like contributing a piece of joy and creativity to households,” he said.
For Nurse, it’s about more than decorating for Christmas — it’s created meaningful family time.
Her 6-year-old grandson is eager to help his grandmother build the village, and play in the scene she’s created.
“It’s fun to have something that is multigenerational as part of your Christmas preparation,” said Nurse.
“Now to be able to share it with the grandkids, it’s a great way to get into the spirit and prepare for the wonderful season of Christmas.”
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