When I was in college at Old Dominion University, the now-closed Veniziano Restaurant on Granby Street was a favorite stop for my crowd and me for large pizzas and seemingly never-ending pitchers of beer.
It was a classic mom-and-pop Italian establishment with red upholstered booths and Dean Martin singing on the jukebox.
Even more special was the appearance of the restaurant’s holiday village at Christmas. For those unfamiliar, Christmas villages are made up of small ceramic houses that look like a scene from a Thomas Kinkade painting.
The Venizano’s village was huge and the owner once told me it took him three days to put it up across a huge platform in one of their meeting rooms.
The trend in creating these miniature towns evolved over the decades, but really took off in my lifetime in the 1970s when the company Department 56 began issuing elaborate pieces each year. Then they started retiring certain pieces, meaning your own version of urban renewal could take place each holiday season.
The WHRV studio inside WHRO Public Media’s Norfolk station has its own Christmas village. It includes a replica of a radio station, a part of the classic Christmas village scene, courtesy of my friend Stephen Hart.
Stephen and his late husband, Richard Edgcomb, began collecting village pieces in 1997. Over the years, their holiday collection expanded to more than 150 buildings, and according to Stephen, “became almost an obsession and eventually overtook our home. Every year we would go to one store that specialized in the villages and get new releases.”
Stephen said the scenes reminded him of the winter growing up in New Jersey.
WHRV’s village piece is an homage to the years when stations were a staple of neighborhood business centers. It has a large picture window with an announcer’s headphones on in front of the microphone. Holiday wreaths adorn the building. Call letters WSNO adorn the station’s antenna.
It reminds me of stations I used to see growing up in the '60s (remember WGH broadcasting from Military Circle Mall?)
It made me wonder what villages might be taking shape across Hampton Roads this holiday season.
If you have your own Christmas - or any kind of winter-themed village - WHRO would love to see it! Bonus points if yours includes a radio station.
Have your own village? Be it expansive or even just a few pieces? Let’s see how much your home succumbs to the holiday village craze and especially, if it includes a cool radio station (I might write to Department 56 suggesting they retire WSNO and create a jolly WHRO piece!).
Share your village photos on the WHRO Facebook with some information about how you’ve developed your village and we may share your story later in the season.
