It began slowly. In the first year, my father only put out a couple of Christmas houses. He already had some and then found a few more at post-Christmas sales among deflated Rudolphs and half-melted mistletoe candles. The ceramic houses were displayed on the dining room sideboard, not a Christmas Street, not yet a Christmas Village. It was simple and lovely.
At first, these decorative houses, equally sturdy and fragile, were just an extension of my family’s Christmas war chest. Some families have old cars, summer houses, or diamond pendants to pass down from generation to generation; the Mouradians pass down holiday decor. Well, holiday decor and diabetes. Great legs, though.
It only took three years for things to spiral out of control. My dad began in a committed relationship with Department 56, one of the many companies that make these decorative houses. He’d come home from Fortunoff’s in the spring with houses tucked under his arms, beaming from the rush of off-season discounts. The collection grew rapidly, yet subtly, in the post-holiday months. We didn’t realize it was a village until I turned around one day, and there was a vote for water district supervisor.
It took days for my dad to put The Village together, now encompassing the entire dining room. I was 22 and oblivious to this process. To me, it was as if one day I asked someone to pass the salad, and the next we were the overlords of a small town I was mildly convinced had become sentient. There’s a version of this story where I am the servant to a 3-inch ceramic figurine named Todd, with a permanent painted smile and dead black eyes.
From November until January, there was no dining room. Relatives and friends from exotic locations such as New Jersey and Suffolk County visited us to pay homage to The Village. And you know what? They loved it! It was wild, impressive, truly something to behold. By the time it was at its peak in years four and five, there were so many houses they had to be layered on platforms of Styrofoam. The Village had multiple altitudes.
After a while, my dad stopped caring about the brand of house or the specific collections that went together. The Great Gatsby collection of swanky porcelain houses, right next to a garishly bright neon circus playing “The Entertainer,” right next to the Batcave. The Village was better the less sense it made. It was my dad’s version of improv; he “yes and’ed’’ it until Mayor’s Mansion, Hogwarts, Blacksmith’s Shoppe and a Kodak 1-hour photo center were all cohabitating together. My dad loved to host people, to entertain; now he was doing it for The Village — with a suspected population north of 5,000. He loved it deeply, so while it was easy to tease him, it was also impossible not to love it alongside him.
The Village stopped being displayed long before my dad died. After a few years, the rapid growth of The Village overwhelmed my father; there were simply too many houses to display. The paperwork was filed with the Town Hall, notarized by ‘Ye Old Notary Shoppe, and The Village was shuttered. My sister’s old bedroom became a Christmas storage unit. It was ivy wildly growing, enveloping everything — except it wasn’t ivy; it was surge protectors, mini light bulbs and fake pine cones. Lovable, capable and caring as my father was, he was in over his head as mayor of a town that needed multiple power sources.
“There are just so many of them,” he once said to me, defeated, almost childlike, when I asked him why he didn’t put up The Village anymore. He said this as though someone had done this to him, created this problem of excess for him. He really was the very best.
In January 2016, my dad died somewhat suddenly during a simple procedure related to his ongoing heart disease. In preparation to sell the house (the one we lived in, not the ones we were now bequeathed) a bunch of my friends came by to help clean out the attic and sheds and complete myriad other projects. Two of them, Tara and Amanda, had the unenviable task of “go do something with the Christmas houses” — a job that was revoked when they foolishly tried to throw out a piece of Styrofoam that was a homemade mountain range for the ski chalet.
In retrospect, my mom, sister and I weren’t ready; those houses were the most tangible thing we had left of him. They only looked like Barrister’s Chambers and the Coca-Cola Factory with a working soda fountain. They were really a thousand ceramic pieces of him. “I think there are three of this exact house,” Tara implored. All three remained.
A few months later, my sister, Lola, and I tried again. Lola made a valiant attempt to catalog each house, company, collection and accessory by bringing them all down the dining room. It was a good attempt, but you could sooner count every star in the sky. The more we tried to wrangle them, the harder they were to get straight. It may have been the grief talking, but they seemed to be replicating.
It was then, seeing them all out in the dining room for the first time in years, we decided that we would scatter his houses as if they were his ashes. We had my entire family pick houses they wanted for their own Christmas decorations. My sister took a couple for her friends; we shipped some to my aunt and cousins who weren’t local; and I had my friends over for a barbecue to get the others placed. Friends’ mothers’ got a few; the guy who painted the house before putting it on the market got a few more. I found myself starting sentences saying, “I know this might sound weird, but …” before offering Christmas houses to my favorite barista or the mailman. An exaggeration, but only a slight one. All in all, we found these houses good homes.
Every year, texts and social media posts stream in from friends and family with their pieces of The Village. My best friend, Carla, has a little sign that says “Mr. M’s Christmas Village”; my other friend Kristin puts hers up every year, making sure to talk to her kids about why it’s important to her and Uncle Eddie. My mom wrapped one up and gave it to my husband in an act of symbolism that is funny, meaningful and hyper-specific to my immediate family. After someone you love dies, you are forced to make a thousand decisions for them, questioning yourself with each one. Giving away these dumb little Christmas houses to the people he loved was the best thing we did and the only one we didn’t second-guess.
After someone you love dies, you are forced to make a thousand decisions for them, questioning yourself with each one. Giving away these dumb little Christmas houses to the people he loved was the best thing we did and the only one we didn’t second-guess.
Every year, I make the same trip up and down the stairs, like when I was a kid, to bring down my own Christmas decorations. I do this in my home, with my husband, Fabian, and my unhelpful but very sweet dog, Hudson. My father didn’t get a chance to see any of this for me. He died long before I came out, found love, became a homeowner and overcame my allergy to dogs. He would have loved to see my life now. I miss my dad most at the beach, in front of a platter of shrimp, and at Christmas.