The Christmas Village Adventure started in the late 60s and in a very few years a visit to Christmas Village became an annual event for most folks with young children. We enjoyed it as much as you all did. Besides the enormous display of decorated Christmas Trees you will remember three other features: the Magic Forest which featured 100 or so animated figures in a winter scene with skiers coming down the mountain and so on. Another huge attraction was Santa. In those days as you remember every department store had a Santa, but ours was special. Carl Babiar* was Santa personified.He was everyones vision of what Santa would like if you could meet him in person. Some of you might remember we also had live animals there, a kind of petting zoo. We had several deer, some sheep, a couple of llamas and a donkey. This was an exciting time of year for us. About the second year Christmas Village was in existence, we built a “cottage”, Santas House, of course, in which children could sit in Santas Sleigh** attended by animated elves. I can still remember the thrill of sitting in the sleigh with Santa, even though I was 28 years old at the time. OK, maybe I am making that part up. In any event everyone had a good time. * Carl Babiar was a professional photographer and one of his specialties was child photography, which is why he was awesome with kids. His physical appearance and demeanor was Santa all the way. Carls hair was a little thin so he needed to use a wig but his beard was real and he really did wear the signature wire rimmed glasses. ** That year we acquired an old sleigh from Canada. Carl reconditioned it and in the process, every now and then, a child would get a peek of him working on the sleigh. Because he looked and acted like Santa in real life, these lucky children were convinced that they did indeed see Santa at work.
Posted on: Sat, 22 Nov 2014 21:13:17 +0000
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