Winter Wonderland: Building a LEGO® Christmas Village

LEGO® Story #23

I have been passionate about LEGO® since the first set I received as a child about 40 years ago. My childhood was dominated by the building toy, it’s all I wanted for Christmas and birthdays.

My passion for building with LEGO® continued on as a young adult. I had my first child at 21, and I used this as an excuse to buy more LEGO® for my daughter to play with. Back then it just wasn’t as socially acceptable for adults to play with the building bricks, so this worked well for me! In 2009 I started to get more serious about the hobby when my second child was on the way. This was also around the time when LEGO® started releasing more complex and adult oriented sets with the Creator expert line, and the first Winter Village set, the Toy Shop.

I was very excited that LEGO® decided to start this theme. As a child I always marveled at my grandmother’s ceramic winter village display she would put out each year on their fireplace mantel. The thought of recreating this in LEGO® was quite exciting and a tradition I wanted to carry on in the family in a new form.

The first rendition of my Winter Village was displayed in 2010 once the second set was released from LEGO®, and I had a modest setup with some customizations. This of course continued to grow each year as new sets were released and I acquired more pieces via buying on BrickLink and harvesting extra inventory from my own BrickLink store.

Photo by author

Around Christmas 2019 I realized I had to rethink my display with the limited space I had and the ever increasing number of sets and parts I had at my disposal. I knew I had to build up. The living room credenza was the only space I had and it measures 63″ x 16″ deep. Work began on planning the structure and ordering parts.

Due to COVID, I had more time and budget on my hand as we were at home a lot and were not traveling much. So In the summer of 2020 I finalized my design on paper and ordered the final parts I would need to build my vision. I sorted and organized everything and started the build, from scratch, in October. I spent about a month getting everything just right and to the point you see it here in my video.

My future plans include lighting and to add some movement with power functions, as there is lot’s of space under the elevated section in the back.

I have received so much positive feedback for my creation, and hopefully this inspires others to keep building!

Jason Pettyjohn – British Columbia, Canada