http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/A-Christmas-village-grows-in-Selkirk-home-12456384.php
A Christmas village grows in Selkirk home
Published 8:26 pm, Tuesday, December 26, 2017
Selkirk
Kenneth Mortensen Sr.'s glorious yuletide obsession began about 30 years ago when his wife, Jeanette, bought him three illuminated Victorian Christmas village buildings.
They fit neatly under the Christmas tree.
He began adding five or six handcrafted lighted ceramic structures each year from the Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" collection manufactured by Department 56, based in Eden Prairie, Minn. He acquired large quantities of figurines, street lamps, trees and other landscape features.
Eventually, the Dickens-themed Christmas villages overtook the living room, dining room, TV room, computer room and kitchen. He rearranges furniture to make room for the displays, which commandeer the tops of desks, tables and any large, flat surface.
"See what I started?" his wife asked with a shrug.
She has drawn the line at the bedroom and bathroom, declaring those spaces off-limits.
The villages depict characters from Dickens' classic Christmas story and scenes from Victorian-era England. There are fishmongers and coffee vendors, pubs and print shops, strollers and skaters circling a pond constructed of aluminum foil.
"I build each display around a famous building as a centerpiece," Mortensen explained, such as the Tower of London or Buckingham Palace.
He cuts the cobblestone paths from large rolls and lays them down with care. He paints winter scenes as backdrops. He sprinkles it all with faux snow. He conceals table legs and yards of extension cords and power strips with Christmas-theme fabric, ribbons and bows.
It all begins in early November. "It's a work of love," he said.
Mortensen enjoys showing off the village. Dozens of family members, neighbors, and members of their Bethlehem Lutheran congregation visit their house during the holidays. He gives each child a flashlight and invites them to play a game to find all 13 tiny mice hidden throughout the displays.
"We love celebrating Christmas," his wife said. She wore a colorful Christmas sweater on Saturday and showed off four specially decorated and lighted Christmas trees. Those are just the ones inside their house. There are Christmas decorations everywhere. During an hourlong tour, she kept a running conversation going with their dog, Snoopy, a whip-smart terrier mix.
"Oh, dear I've got a light out," Mortensen said, and frowned at a darkened street lamp. He made a mental note to replace the tiny bulb.
Mortensen is exceedingly organized. He keeps the ceramic structures in their original boxes, neatly stored on special shelving in the basement — all 166 buildings and counting — along with hundreds of figurines, trees and other landscape features. He disassembles and reshelves it all in mid-January.
As the collection grew, the couple's ranch house reached its Dickensian limit.
"I've run out of room," Mortensen said with a sigh. He loans buildings to his daughter, Robin Reed, a first-grade teacher at Elsmere Elementary in Delmar, who lives around the corner. Several structures never make it out of the basement. And yet he has not stopped acquiring buildings. Two gift shops where he previously purchased the buildings stopped carrying them, but he found a supply at Maggie's Gift Shop in Latham, where he has befriended the owners.
There is an anti-aging aspect to Mortensen's annual ritual, which allows time to stand still. "I guess I'm just a big kid at heart," he said.
His 88-year-old body tells him otherwise. There are 12 stairs from the basement to the kitchen. He climbs the stairs with filled boxes, three at a time, and returns with empty boxes. It takes dozens of round trips.
Despite good health, balance is a concern at his age. "It's getting to be more of a challenge each year," he conceded. "As I get older, I get more afraid of the stairs."
He is a resolute Dane for whom maintaining order and finishing a project is vital. Those traits are underscored in his reading habits. He is a voracious reader of best-selling novels of espionage. He has read a few hundred of them, shelved by author: Ken Follett, W.E.B. Griffin, James Patterson, Dan Silva, Jack Higgins, Tom Clancy and others. He rarely misses a new release by his favorites.
Mortensen enlisted in the Army National Guard in 1948 and retired as a full colonel. He also retired after a 37-year career with Security Plumbing & Heating Supply Co., a wholesale distributor with 12 locations founded in Selkirk in 1934 by his father-in-law, Harold Williams Sr. His son, Ken Jr., works there.
Mortensen and his wife, who is 85, met in high school, when it was Ravena-Coeymans. Both families lived in the same Selkirk neighborhood, within a few blocks of where the couple settled. She used to watch Mortensen play baseball at a nearby diamond. They were married in 1955 and built their house the next year. After 62 years of marriage, they have learned the art of compromise.
"She tolerates the mess of setting up the Christmas village and how it overtakes the house," Mortensen said.
"I know it makes him happy and that it will look beautiful when it's all done," she said.
He is reluctant to discuss how much he has invested in the Christmas village, but it is thousands of dollars. Each smaller building costs around $100, double the price when he started.
The couple has two grown children, but no grandchildren. They enjoy summers at her family's camp on Loon Lake in the Adirondacks. They have traveled on cruises around the world.
"God has been very good to us," she said.
Family members have wondered if this will be the last year for the Christmas village. Mortensen is undeterred.
"I'm not going to let age beat me," he said. "I'll keep doing it until they take me out feet first."
Paul Grondahl is the director of the New York State Writers Institute and a former Times Union reporter. He can be reached at grondahlpaul@gmail.com.
