Starting Over in a Ceramic House
By: Susan Kelley
Tags: Divorce, Love, Christmas, Relationships

I was 20 years old when I first spotted Scrooge’s Counting House on a shelf in Kaufman’s Department Store in Pittsburgh, PA. That was the year I had moved into my first real apartment, all on my own. My father died earlier that year, and suddenly all of our Christmas traditions changed.

Instead of going “home” for the holiday, to the town where I grew up, to the place where I’d spent every Christmas for all of my life, we needed a change. We didn’t want to keep things the same with my dad gone. So we decided she would come to Pittsburgh, where my brother and I were both living after college. It just made sense, to start anew.

I had the bigger place, room for her, and a nice-sized kitchen, so it was decided I would host.

But it felt off-kilter. We had no traditions in Pittsburgh. I didn’t own any ornaments or decorations. I’d never put up my own tree or made gingerbread. How was I supposed to be the keeper of any family lore?

The moment I saw that ceramic Dickens Village House in the department store, I knew.

It cost $45, which was a lot for a single girl who taught preschool at the time, but I plunked down my cash without giving it a second thought. The ceramic, painted house with the official stamped seal, “Department 56” on the bottom bore the signage on the front, “Scrooge and Marley.” I lovingly placed it on the mantel at my apartment, and plugged in the small electric bulb at the back. I was so proud of this new acquisition I could hardly wait for my mother and brother to see it.

The moment I saw that ceramic Dickens Village House in the department store, I knew.

When they arrived for the holiday, I proudly declared my intention:

“I’m going to buy one — just one — every year, and my collection will represent every year since I started, and someday I will have SO many, and they will look magnificent!” I beamed.

They nodded, and looked over at my skimpy tree, and smiled, and I smiled, and we ate our roast beef and slightly undercooked potatoes at my small table, and we exchanged gifts and missed my dad and made the best of a Christmas sorely lacking in tradition.

I packed the house away in its Styrofoam and cardboard box and marked the box with the year and tucked it away with the two or three cheap ornaments I had bought, and committed to buying another the following year.

And I did.

Year two produced Scrooge’s Flat, and year three was a lovely church. I have forgotten the order of the next and the next, and then I met my husband.

While we were out shopping for Christmas gifts, I told him I had to make time to go to the department store to pick out “my house.” He then announced that,

‘No, I want to buy one for you this year — as a gift.’

I wasn’t sure what to say to this. The houses were expensive. I was now spending “our” money, not my money, and it seemed a difficult and selfish thing. I didn’t want to cede control over buying the house. It was my gift to myself, wasn’t it? A thing of my own, for me, something I kept of my own.

But it was rather a lot of money. And he wanted to be thoughtful. And I didn’t want to be selfish. And he really, really loved Christmas. A lot. He seemed to have one special one in mind. So I acquiesced.

We finished up buying the gifts we needed, and we went to a very nice dinner. And I felt twisted in my stomach about not buying the Dickens House for myself, but I didn’t bring it up again.

Christmas morning came, and it had felt strange not to decorate with a new house for the year, but sure enough, the very last gift for me to open was a rectangular gift with the look and feel of a Dickens Department 56 box. And so it was. It was Bob Cratchit’s House, and it came complete with the ability to add some odd-smelling oil that would make the chimney smoke.

I probably would have bought the Poulterer first, but that’s just me. I mean, because you can’t go to Bob’s house without the goose, right? That’s in the story.

The next year, I practically drew a map that told him I wanted Victoria Station. I didn’t just drop hints, I said it plainly, clearly, without obfuscation. It was being retired soon, and I was abundantly clear. Ok, fair, he bought it. But somehow, I was even then a bit disappointed because I would have liked it on display before the holiday, not after. And it still had the sting of me not getting if for myself. But he seemed to get such joy out of giving them to me.

I resigned to knowing that each year, I would get a house from him. He had taken over the tradition. It was now his, not mine.

We moved to a new home, a classic Victorian home in a city neighborhood, with a perfect place to display the houses each year. He was excited about how to set them up, how they would look, high atop the built-in bookcases, featured for all to see when we’d host an annual Christmas party. He configured a system for how to hide the plugs and wires, discussed how they might be angled “just-so.”

That first holiday in our new home, he was excited to give me the Dickens House he had selected. Prior to this Christmas, I had suggested he browse through the tiny catalog of Dickens houses to familiarize himself with what they offered as historically accurate, so he’d understand that my real interest was in having the ones that were either buildings that were mentioned as part of the story, or that existed in London at the time. Instead, what he purchased was a Department 56 “Music Box Shop.” The important thing to know here is that the ceramic house he gave me that year was neither part of the Dickens Village collection nor even part of a winter set in the collection. It featured flowering baskets on the walkway at the front and green shrubs. It is also important to note that he is a music teacher. This house was, in all its aspects, for him. Not for me.

In that moment, on that holiday, I gave up suggesting any pieces that I might want, any additions to the collection whatsoever. I did not point out when he bought a Dickens House that I already had (he got not one but two of Uncle Fred’s Flat over the years and I said nothing), he bought pieces that did not match, and I said not a word. They had become a thing that HE did because he thought it pleased me and because it was reliable and took no effort. I had moved my thinking away from it being something important to me, and made it known to the kids that one day, they could merely divide the set by thirds, and I would look forward to their division.

The year that we separated, we did so in February. The houses had been packed away, as I always did, in large plastic totes to keep them safe from any moisture damage. He did not know that the same year, as I packed away Christmas ornaments, I carefully divided them into “mine” and “his,” so I painstakingly wrapped all of the things the children had made, signed, or had any significance and tucked them away to take with me when I left.

I did not have room to take those houses, nor did I want to deal with the stress right away. But when the following holiday came, and he “offered” to display them, I vehemently said no. He would get no more enjoyment from them — ever. I quickly took them to a resale store, just in time for the holidays and maximum profit. I kept Scrooge and Marley’s Counting House, of course. After all, that 20 year old girl started off strong.