Planning a Department 56 Christmas Village: A 7-Step Checklist From Someone Who's Made Every Mistake

Why This Checklist Exists

I've been handling Department 56 Christmas village displays for retail clients and private collectors for six years. In that time, I've personally made (and documented) nine significant mistakes, totaling roughly $2,800 in wasted budget. That December 2022 incident — the one where 12 new buildings didn't fit a mantle we'd measured wrong — changed how I think about planning. One critical deadline missed, and suddenly a tape measure didn't seem like a chore.

This checklist is for you if you're planning a Department 56 display, whether you're building a Christmas in the City scene, a National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation collection, or a mix of village buildings, figurines, and home fragrance accents.

Stripping away the holiday specifics, the real question most collectors ask is: how do you plan a home decor setup that includes a village, figurines, lighting, and scent — without letting it turn into chaos? Short answer: it's seven steps, and the order matters more than you'd think.

Step 1: Measure Every Surface Before You Open a Box

The most common mistake I see — and yes, I made it too — is buying pieces first and finding a home for them later. The National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation collection is a perfect example. The RV from that set needs roughly 14 inches of depth. I discovered that after arranging an entire display on a shelf that was 9 inches deep. (Which, honestly, should have taken ninety seconds to check.)

Measure the width, depth, and height of every surface you plan to use. Write it down. Take photos. It feels excessive until the moment it saves you.

Checkpoint: every piece you own or plan to buy fits within the dimensions you recorded.

Step 2: Pick One Collection as Your Anchor

The idea that all Department 56 pieces look good together is... basically a myth. The National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation line has a completely different visual weight than the classic Christmas in the City buildings. Mixing them without intent gets messy fast.

Choose one anchor. If you're going with Christmas in the City, you have room to build a proper skyline — the collection's full range includes buildings inspired by classic American architecture, from brownstones to corner shops (per the Department 56 website, department56.com, accessed January 2025). If you're doing National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, the Griswold Family House is the anchor, and everything else plays a supporting role.

Neither pick is better. They just set different moods. Christmas in the City feels like an elegant winter downtown; National Lampoon's is playful and gets people talking. If you want both in the same room, give them separate zones. Don't share a single surface.

Checkpoint: you can name your anchor collection and the mood it's creating.

Step 3: Inventory What You Actually Own

I knew I had the pieces for the scene we were building. That was the problem. It turned out a third of them were in a different storage building than I remembered, and two were damaged — hairline cracks in porcelain figurines that you don't notice until light hits them at the wrong angle. I knew I should verify everything, but thought "what are the odds?" Well, the odds caught up with me three days before a client preview.

Make a written list of every piece. Check each box's contents against the list. Check for damage. If you're building a Department 56 Christmas in the City entire collection display, don't assume you have every building you think you do. Go look.

Checkpoint: every item on your planned scene exists, is in your possession, and is undamaged.

Step 4: Sketch the Layout Before You Arrange Anything

Sounds obvious. About ten percent of people actually do it. The rest spend an afternoon moving buildings back and forth, nudging figurines, and getting progressively frustrated. (I've been there. I've done that. I no longer trust my ability to wing it.)

Draw a simple bird's-eye view of your surface. Mark the footprint of each building. Then add the figurines. Keep larger buildings toward the back and figurines in the front third — it mirrors the visual balance principle interior designers use in full-size rooms, just at village scale.

Checkpoint: you can identify every piece on the sketch without labels.

Step 5: Solve Lighting Before You Commit to a Layout

Here's the step nobody wants to hear about.

I once arranged a complete Christmas in the City display, placed every figurine, plugged in the street lamps... and then realized the nearest outlet was nine feet away, on the other side of a doorframe. (Surprise, surprise.) The fix was an extension cord that looked like a trip hazard.

The American Lighting Association (ala.org) recommends three layers of lighting — ambient, task, and accent. For a village, the accent layer is what makes buildings glow. You want that planned before you set a single house down. Check whether your illuminated pieces are plug-in or battery-operated. Run the cords first. It takes ten minutes and saves at least an hour of rearranging.

Checkpoint: every illuminated piece has power within reach, and no cord is visible from standing height.

Step 6: Layer Buildings, Then Figurines, Then Home Fragrance

Buildings first. Trees and street lamps second. Figurines last — because figurines are the pieces you'll want to move. The baker outside his shop, the carolers near the church: if you place them first, you'll be moving them anyway. Set them with intent: each one should tell a small part of the scene.

This is also where home fragrance comes in. A village is a visual display, but adding a warm nostalgic scent rounds out the experience — pine, cinnamon, cranberry, or a subtle fireplace-wood note placed a few feet away. Scent is one of the strongest sensory triggers of memory and nostalgia, which is exactly the feeling a village display is going for (the Fragrance Foundation has covered this extensively; fragrancefoundation.org, accessed January 2025).

One caution: keep candles and diffusers off the display surface itself. Heat, soot, and collectible porcelain don't mix.

Checkpoint: every figurine is visible, adds to the scene, and no scent source touches the display surface.

Step 7: Photograph Everything While It's Perfect

This one feels like the most unnecessary chore on the list. It might be the most useful.

At the end of the season, photograph the display from multiple angles before you touch a single piece. Label the storage bins by collection. Keep your inventory list with the bins. (Note to self: I still haven't fully organized my own bins. Do better next year.)

Here's the payoff: next December, setup takes a quarter of the time. The layout is solved. The lighting is solved. The Christmas in the City buildings go exactly where they went last year.

Checkpoint: you can look at your photos and replicate the full display in under an hour.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Six years of doing this has produced a list of repeat offenders. I'd rather you skip the experience and take the list.

• Buying the entire collection at once. The Christmas in the City entire collection is substantial. Completing it in one season means a serious budget and serious storage pressure. Build over time — the anticipation is part of the joy. (Worth noting: collectibles aren't investments. Buy them because they bring you something, not because you expect them to appreciate.)
• Assuming scale compatibility. The National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation line is noticeably larger than the classic village scale. Verify dimensions before mixing collections. I didn't once, and the Griswold house ended up towering over neighboring buildings like a big-box store in a historic district. We'd both said "village scale" and meant entirely different things. Discovered this when everything arrived and nothing fit proportionally.
• Skipping the eye-level check. You arrange from above, so everything looks right from above. From standing height, it's a different story. Take the thirty seconds to look at the display from eye level before calling it done.
• Hiding figurines behind buildings. If you can't see a piece, it's not part of the display — it's clutter.
• Unlabeled storage. It's December 1st, you have twenty bins, and no labels. Where's the church? (Lived this one every year until I started labeling. Never going back.)

An honest note on scope: this checklist works best when you have a dedicated display area — a mantle, a sideboard, a wide shelf. If your space is tight, go smaller: three to five buildings, a handful of figurines, a single home fragrance accent. There's no rule that says it has to be the entire collection. And if anyone tells you otherwise, they're almost certainly trying to sell you something.

Bottom Line

Planning a Department 56 display is a sequence. Measure. Pick an anchor. Inventory. Sketch. Solve lighting. Layer. Document.

I made these mistakes so you don't have to. Take it from someone who spent $400 learning that measuring tapes exist for a reason — your December self will thank you. Trust me on this one.