It Takes a Village
Putz Christmas Houses
This tree only took a Christmas village not "a village" to create. It is the easiest tree I have ever decorated. I started this project once again in my mother's attic. My parents have enough ornaments to decorate something like twenty distinctly different Christmas trees, so I was not sure what I was looking for when I started my search. I didn’t search long before I happily discovered a large box of "Putz" houses. Putz houses are small, three dimensional, cardboard houses with cellophane windows. They have a small hole at the back where a C-6 Christmas bulb can be inserted to illuminate the house. They were some of the very first Christmas decorations my parents purchased as newlyweds. I hadn’t seen them in decades. When my parents first purchased them, they resided under the tree with the narrow gauge train. I don't have many memories of them. By the time I came along, my father had gotten frustrated with the constant putzing necessary to maintain a pristine village. He was a perfectionist. Our cats had a bad habit of knocking the houses over and derailing the train daily, sometimes more than once a day. Rarely, did they ever derail the train at the front of the tree where it was easy to fix. Usually, the cats derailed the train at the back of the tree in the corner where it was necessary to pull out parts of the village to reach it. This "putzing" problem obviously wasn't unique to my family. It was so pervasive that the small cardboard houses eventually became known as Putz Houses.
They were popular and available to purchase from the late 1920's to the mid 1960's when they lost popularity. Their popularity is back, and they aren't just being displayed under the tree. I moved the village to tree. I flattened out the branches of my artificial tree and placed the houses on them. I placed the two largest on the bottom limbs to ground the tree. I graduated the rest of the houses, largest to smallest, from the bottom to the top. I put a light bulb from the tree lights in each house as I went, then nestled snow-like garland around them. I added a few sisal, pine trees, a few snowflakes, pine cones and turned on the lights. Hands down, it was the easiest tree I have ever decorated. Try it yourself!
I have seen antique Putz houses periodically over the years at flea markets and most recently on Etsy.com. The Putz houses available at Etsy are a little pricey. If you are looking for something a bit more economical, new ones have been popping up everywhere. I have found them at Hobby Lobby, Michaels Arts & Crafts, TheHolidayBarn.com, and the Dollar General store. Usually, a vintage version of almost anything is more charming than new, but I am impressed with the quality of the new houses I have found. I only bought two new houses for this tree. They are the two largest ones which I placed at the bottom of the tree. I found them at my local Dollar General.
If you are lucky enough to have antique Putz houses in your attic, but they aren't in great shape, www.cardboardputzhouses.com sells replacement parts and provides a lot of information on how to restore them. If you are interested in learning more about the origin of Putz houses, check out www.cardboardputzhouses.com and www.goldenglow.org.
