Grown sons make sure holiday tradition continues

There are skiers heading down a hill, skaters making their way around a rink, and dancers twirling around inside a house, and all with three trains circling their little winter village.

What started out with one Department 56 porcelain house and a train layout under the Christmas tree, now has grown to take over half of the living room in the Thiry household in Arlington Heights.

The annual holiday display means so much to the family, particularly to its two grown sons, that not even their father, Mike, being sidelined after major neck surgery this year, kept them from setting up the winter wonderland.

"It's been a tradition every year, but this year we had to carry on the torch," says Patrick, now a Chicago police officer.

He and his older brother, Michael, both Buffalo Grove High School graduates, started long before Thanksgiving to mount the display.

They began by laying down the boards, building two levels to accommodate the 60 houses and nearly 100 figures. Then they laid the train tracks, including the replica of the Chicago elevated train, with a real recording from the Chicago Transit Authority, where the younger Michael Thiry works as an economist in the revenue department.

Next, they began all the electrical work, including wiring all 60 houses and accompanying lampposts. Finally, they laid all the cotton down for snow, and began to position the many figures around the village.

Then, they rested. In fact, with this year's display finished before their father's surgery, scheduled before Thanksgiving, they have nearly six weeks to enjoy it.

"It's like a fireplace," says Donna Thiry, who gets the unenviable task of taking it apart and bringing it back down to the basement. "I like to just sit here and be mesmerized by it."

The whimsical snow village draws an assortment of friends back every y ear who want to see it, especially on Christmas Day, when the family holds an open house to celebrate their unique take on the season.

"Putting it up always brings back such great memories," the younger Michael Thiry says. "You look at it and you remember how old you were when we bought each piece. It's just something for us to do together."

And despite the upheaval to the living room, and all the work it takes to mount and dismantle it, Donna and Mike Thiry still treasure the display.

"It's the ages that the boys are," she says of her sons, 33, and 29 respectively. "The fact that they still want to come back and do this, means so much to us."