All Aboard!

An often forgotten Christmas icon is the holiday train. Carrying toys south in Santa Claus is Comin' to Town, frozen Christmas cakes in Frosty the Snowman, and a little boy to the North Pole in The Polar Express, trains are a classic gift, usually for a little boy.My father is a huge lover and collector of trains. He received his first for Christmas in 1939 and still has it. He has a big set up that takes up half the basement, as well as shelves all around it with specialty trains and buildings and other things he has stored. Most of these items are vintage or special editions such as all Coca-Cola products, or a Bicentennial commemorative, etc. As he's gotten older he doesn't play down there as much, but he likes to tinker with things and go through his stuff, like all collectors do. Each Christmas he sets up a special tree that just has train related ornaments on it.Under the tree my dad has a train set and a village. He doesn't worry about things being to scale, only that they are something he likes. So there are figures dressed from the 1950s as well as Victorian carolers, and a New England style church next to a 1940s gas station. It's very cute.There is even a ski mountain and a skating rink where everything is moving. Very fascinating for two-year-olds, and difficult not to touch!With getting older and having trouble getting up from the floor, Daddy now uses a table top tree. He starts putting it up after Halloween and it stays up through January. It's something he enjoys fiddling with, and this way he isn't going up and down the stairs to the basement. His elves have gotten older, too!The regular tree in the family room also has a train. It is passenger cars where there are silhouettes of people on the windows. The lights flicker just like a real train, and the engine even smokes. He likes to build a tunnel with the gifts that aren't from Santa, which thrills my mom because they stack easier without bows, so she just has to wrap and tag!Grandpa and the kids would just sit and watch the train for hours if we let them.The trains have even invaded the dining room table. Inside the circle you can see what used to be a lovely centerpiece display that my mother put out each year. Now my dad has a small train set up with another funky village and has trapped the centerpiece!This is my tree from a few years ago. My father gave me one of his trains from the 1930s as a gift because it was almost exactly like the first one he ever had. It is all tin, and I love the way it looks, however, because it is tin it tends to "jump the tracks" when on a carpeted surface. It really needs to run on a hard surface where the track is nailed down. Now I just put out the cars in an arc and for a while I even had them on semi-permanent display on the mantle.
Is there a particular theme that your family has in decorating for Christmas? A color, a theme, an icon such as nutcrackers or birds, maybe something from your heritage?