December 25, 2021 | By Lisa Scagliotti with photos by Gordon Miller

***The busy Christmas village display that Elizabeth Emmons puts out each year invites you in to look at the details. Photo by Gordon Miller***

The holidays are a time for traditions. Especially when everyday life may seem unfamiliar, disrupted, or new for a myriad of reasons, keeping traditions can bring comfort and joy.

Elizabeth Emmons of Waterbury knows this firsthand. She’s celebrating Christmas this year keeping a holiday decorating tradition she’s done for years. It was one her husband Wayne of 47 years enjoyed for many years before his death in June 2020 at the age of 81.

She said her husband was ill for many years and enjoyed Christmas lights. Creating a Christmas display inside their home was a way to bring the light and holiday atmosphere indoors, she explained.

She would take out and assemble her Christmas village with dozens of miniature figures and buildings. Wayne, she said, “would kinda watch” as she put it all together.

Emmons, 71, recalls exactly when her collection began. “It was 1992,” she said, “when my cousin gave me a church.”

From then on, she added various pieces over the years, first from Ben Franklin in Burlington and later at Walmart and the Christmas Tree Shop.

***Elizabeth Emmons keeps the display up for about two months through the holidays from November into January. Photo by Gordon Miller***

Putting the display together takes time and Emmons said she began this year like she has in the past, around the second week of November, working on it day by day so it’s ready to be turned on by Thanksgiving night. “Once I get going, it takes about four hours a day for four days,” she said.

She does it herself, setting up the pieces and arranging the cords to light it all up. When it’s ready, friends and family like to come by for a visit to take in the display. “Everybody comes to look at it,” Emmons said, adding that she plans to keep it up for a couple of weeks after New Year’s to give them all a chance to see it.

Putting it away for next year happens “very strategically,” Emmons said, explaining how she has original boxes for most of the pieces. She packs them in bins that store in various closets and on shelves in her apartment. Everything fits as long as she doesn’t keep acquiring more. “I’m going to have to quit” buying more, she said, given that her apartment on Butler Street has only so much space.