We're village people.

You know the kind -- quaint little backlit houses with colorful foilage and "freshly" fallen snow that sparkles on small scenes of holiday wonder. Our own little world of Currier and Ives is built and rebuilt each season in 3D brilliance right in our living room.

For many folks, these villages are inspired by times past and the places of our youth. There are farm scenes, snowy North Pole venues and a variety of warmly remembered "Christmasy" settings of long ago. The funny thing to me is that of all the village pieces we have and the scenes we create, none of them are inspired by my youth. I grew up in Northern California. We didn't have snow, we had fog. And while I am sure it can be done, I'd rather stick with fake snow than fake fog when building our village each year.

And we do it each season. It began several years ago as a means to help our barren little home seem a little more festive. Now it is almost as sacred as the tradition of putting up the tree.

These days you can find village pieces just about everywhere. But the hobby really began in the late 1970s as a product line called Snow Village by a company known as Department 56. They were intended then to be Christmas decorations and in my house that is exactly what they are. But as with many things associated with holiday decorating, they have become big business as collectibles.

Actually, as far as Christmas decorations go, they can be a little expensive. I purchased my first set at Costco in 1991 -- a fine Victorian-themed village -- that included seven buildings and a host of accessories for about the price of one single collectible Department 56 piece. But each year I usually invest in one new piece to add to our collection and it is usually a Department 56 piece because the detail is so exceptional compared to other makers on the market.

I had no idea how big this hobby of Christmas villages had become until I stumbled upon a Hallmark store a few years ago. It was early October and I was shopping for an anniversary card for my wife. I noticed they were putting up the new product for the season and stopped to browse. In my looking around I was introduced to a woman who headed a local chapter of Department 56 collectors who met annually to discuss new pieces and to set up "home tours" of folks who went all out in their effort to display their collections. It was the strangest thing. I felt like I was being hoodwinked into an Amway meeting.

It is a hobby we enjoy and a tradition we practice each year. But we're not fanatics about it. We're not the kind of folks who begin stringing lights in mid-August for the purposes of drawing large crowds on the street in front of our home. We do it for us.

And what a project it usually is.

We wait until after Halloween and spend several Saturdays in the effort. For my children, it is a sure sign that Christmas is coming.

Because we have so many small children, we have to take creative steps in making our village display visible to them but out of reach of prying little hands. So it is displayed high above the floor, elevated on a table designed to be multi-purpose. The lower level is kind of a play space where the kids can color or work on school projects, the upper level is set aside for our village scene, which gets turned on each night.

For a few days it remains merely a board on a table as we design where each piece will go and how we will install the wires where they won't be visible. We tried for a few years to come up with a design that would make setting up the village quicker. But we decided that the fun in doing it was in not knowing what it would look like from one year to the next. That's one reason why we start so early with it. We need time to argue out the details. (And as some of my children have become older, argue is exactly what we do, all in the name of Christmas cheer, no doubt.)

Often, just like putting lights on the tree, I find it is my job to do the grunt work. Nobody wants to do the hard stuff and clearly the early efforts of running wires and tucking them away is tedious. But once this is done the village goes up very quickly.

First, we lay down the "snow" -- a 2-inch thick foam base that gently houses each village piece and gives a clean setting to the whole display. Because the surface is soft, we can "dig" in to it to disguise electrical wires and shape it to fit the building we're placing there. Next, we place each building where we think it should go and then step back to evaluate how it should all be accessorized.

Over the next several hours, we'll agonize over a million tiny details as Christmas music plays in the background and a fire crackles in the fireplace. At this point in the process, it is my job to shut-up. We have to put some of the small kids on chairs so they can have a hand in the creation of the village. They will place trees, roadways, waterfalls, rivers and mountains in our yearly game of playing God. Some of the accessories match certain buildings and always someone will cry foul when a small piece is used out of order.

In a way, we use this time to allow the novelty of the village to wear off a little. When we drag it out each year all of the kids want to play with it and have it all to themselves. This part of the process allows them to get it out of their system because they know once it is up it is intended to be looked at but not touched. That's a pretty tough expectation for anyone under the age of ten.

After this merry activity is done, it is usually time for the kids to be sent to bed. Once gone, I will complete the laborious process of stringing and testing all of the lights. And then it is time for the old man to have his fun.

A few years back I made what I considered to be a huge investment for our Christmas village. I purchased a train set. And any of you out there with husbands, brothers or sons know that trains are just something a man never gets out of his system. As long as there are toy trains around, the little boy will come out in us all without exception.

To me, the train really makes the village a lot of fun. Not only does it add sound and motion to the set, it has lights of it's own. And without exception, after I have spent some time laying track and rearranging buildings to avoid colliding with a moving train, the kids are back up out of bed and demanding a demonstration with the room lights off. And without exception, I send them back to bed disappointed.

Our tradition -- and they all know this -- is that while you may work on a particular section of the village and "test" lights in your efforts the whole thing does not get viewed until Thanksgiving night, when we hold the lighting ceremony.

And even then, when you're sure that you have it just so, there's no debating the fact that you'll be tweaking the set all the way through Christmas.

Thanksgiving Day is spent finishing up the decorating duties around the house. The tree goes up, the doorways are trimmed with lights, the bannister strung with garland, and the stockings are hung by the chimney with care. With the aroma of fresh turkey still lingering in the house all is made ready to celebrate Christmas. And the village, ablaze next to the tree in a room glowing from the fire, adds a finishing sparkle.

The great thing about this is that it is a family activity that requires little expense and keeps us all at home.