Lilliputiana : Tiny Christmas Villages Loom Large Among Hobbyists Who Love to Think Small

Their Christmas displays are inside the house, not outside.

Here you don’t find lights and reindeer, but entire fantasy worlds, miniature villages from distant times and places--tiny children hurrying about in Dickens’ London, skaters on frozen ponds outside Alpine chalets and a snow-covered cemetery with thumbnail-sized tombstones, some etched with the names of family pets.

One such fantasy land has taken over Chris and Mary Carnes’ Eagle Rock home: the 125-square-foot display has six “villages” with 97 houses and stores, five trains and a Ferris wheel. It starts modestly under the tree in the living room, then explodes nearly wall to wall in the raised dining area, the levels connected by a 20-foot tramway.

Jon Menick’s passion, on the other hand, is in detail: He shrank theater posters to decorate his tiny train station, where riders wait for trains that whisk them by a hillside “planted” with hundreds of snow-capped trees.

Once merely a manageable holiday tradition, the creation of village scenes in the last decade has become a mania in many households across the nation.

The current rage can be traced to a business decision of Minnesota-based Bachman’s, a large flower and plant dealer. The company already was importing ceramic flower pots from Taiwan when a buyer noticed lighted, hand-painted porcelain houses being sold there. A small first line, the “Snow Village,” was offered in 1976 by the firm’s Department 56.

“It’s a phenomenon,” said Allen Drucker, owner of the Los Angeles area’s best-known model train business, Allied Model Trains, whose Culver City store--designed like old Union Station--began stocking the villages this year.

Though exposed all his life to train hobbyists, Drucker found “this frenzy of collectors” like none he had ever seen; they “scarf up the last ones” any time the company announces it is “retiring” a piece.

Bachman’s, which dominates the market in the porcelain houses and whimsical 2 1/2-inch inhabitants, records an estimated $120 million in annual sales. There are clubs, conventions and computer networks of fanatic collectors. Some pieces, which sold for $40 just a few years ago, are priced as high as $6,000 today. “Village Addicts Anonymous,” is the name one Southern California society has given itself, testimony to an obsession that even the afflicted have difficulty understanding.

An outsider might guess it to be a heartland hobby, another venture in nostalgia for the Norman Rockwell set. But when a Louisiana aficionado staged a contest this year to find the best displays in America, the two top entries came from the Los Angeles area--specifically the stucco townhouse of the Carneses and the Santa Clarita Valley tract house where Menick lives.

“I don’t fantasize as much as some,” said Chris Carnes, gazing out at the display he and his wife start planning a year in advance. “But with all the tiny people, the tiny villages, the street lights--it is pretty easy to see yourself down there among them, living in some forgotten era.”

When Chris and Mary Carnes sat down last January to budget their household for 1991, they figured in their addiction.

A second baby was on the way and there were hard times for Chris’ profession, real estate consulting. Nonetheless, the couple managed to find $7,000 to buy more miniature stores, trees, street lights and people--their favorite an old man on a bench, reading his newspaper.

For the Carneses, as with others, their interest started harmlessly several years ago when they bought two houses to put under their tree. The European flavor reminded them of when Chris, now 37, was in the Air Force and they lived outside Amsterdam.

They now own more than 100 houses, but there wasn’t room for all in the display they began putting up after Halloween. After a month of hard labor, they videotaped the finished product and sent it to the contest sponsored by the hobby’s leading newsletter, the Metairie, La.-based Dickens Exchange.

“This is amazing,” said a neighbor who dropped by recently. “You should charge admission.”

“We need to get a house,” Mary Carnes said. “With more space, we could really go crazy.”

To which her husband responded: “Some people would say we’re crazy already.”

Jon Menick’s Canyon Country neighbors started giving him funny looks when they heard Christmas music coming from his garage in March, when he began assembling his display. “My name is now ‘Mr. Christmas,’ ” said the 40-year-old actor.

His display of “Old New York” is but 8 feet by 4 feet, small compared to others, but it’s distinguished by unique details: Styrofoam crafted to look like New York slate; moss under the rocks, in case anyone looks; sandbars in the river. And the comedian can’t help but put a tiny Dracula-style coffin in the cemetery, his own name on it and the lid slightly ajar.

Nevertheless, Menick wasn’t confident about the Louisiana contest, which drew 400 entries. He feared his subtleties would be overshadowed by others taking “the good old American approach--the bigger the better, lots of gadgetry and lots of bombs.”

In fact, “we don’t judge on size,” said Lynda Blankenship, who ran the contest. She said she had a hard time choosing between the “spectacular” scope of the Carnes’ display and Menick’s “breathtaking” detail, especially a park scene “you would have sworn was real. . . . It doesn’t look like porcelain people and plastic snow.”

But someone had to win. Last week she made the call. Grand Prize to the Carneses.

The Eagle Rock couple are not resting on their laurels. They figure they could make their display “a little fuller,” put in more details such as Menick’s. Chris wants “real running water” to replace the simulated effect now created in a river with a sequence of blue lights. “Next year, that’s definitely the thing I’m shooting for,” he said.

Menick has already started on 1992’s display.

Mr. Christmas isn’t giving away his secrets, but under construction is a North Pole scene designed to feature glaciers, an ice floe and, of course, Santa’s Village. There’s even one bit of gadgetry he might try this time.

“Santa’s sleigh,” he said. “If I can just create some device so it looks like the sleigh is taking off. . . . “