I WAS quite young the year I got the dollhouse for Christmas.
I don’t remember unwrapping it, though I may have, or perhaps Santa brought it and left it under the tree.
I do remember opening the big box that rattled and finding, to my joy and delight, a full set of living room furniture – a fireplace with mantel, an old cabinet-style radio, a piano and bench, a blue chesterfield and two side chairs, one in red, one in blue. I thought it was the most beautiful furniture I had ever seen.
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I am still thrilled with it.
Today, that dollhouse – a cardboard model with six rooms, two floors and a painted-on brick exterior – sits in the front porch of our farm home. It’s still in reasonable shape, though a few of the supporting walls are a little buckled. Not bad for 40-odd years and a 1,000 mile move.
For me, it is a work in progress.
The original furniture from that long-ago Christmas is still in place and from time to time I add to it – a carpet for the living room, some miniature lamps, a cat licking up spilled cream in the kitchen (yes, even my playhouse must have a cat).
When our family visited California a few years ago, I found a store specializing in miniatures and brought home a bundle of newspapers and a Star Trek poster for my house.
The Royal University Hospital gift shop in Saskatoon has a nice collection of miniatures from which has come a record collection for the house, as well as a computer and a two-wheeled bicycle.
Will the house ever be finished? Is any house ever “finished”?
There are worse hobbies than fixing up a dollhouse and as I add to it and rearrange what is there, memories are rekindled.
The tradition of giving toys for Christmas harks back to the Middle Ages, when the guilds made toys as a sideline: cabinet-makers would build dolls’ furniture, turners carved wooden toys and potters made miniature crockery.
Timothy Eaton’s mail order catalogue of 1887 was first to advertise Christmas toys, with dolls costing from 25 cents to $5.
Eaton’s catalogue is no more, but we still have Sears Wish book, which arrives earlier every year, before harvest is even over, bringing with it a taste of things to come.
I often wonder if today’s children get the same thrill as did those of us who are older in going through the Christmas catalogue and making lists.
Surely they must, for the magic of Christmas never changes.
