TORRINGTON – Luckily for Torrington residents, Santa Claus chose to set up his village on East 30th Avenue yet again this year.
Complete with a workshop, nativity, bakeshop, the Claus household and even a laundromat, resident elves don’t need to leave their small stretch of land at 810 East 30th Avenue for any amenities. The husband-wife team in charge of building and taking down the village year after year, Eddie and Bob Juve, make sure each house is fully stocked and ready for the Christmas season.
The Juves set up the village, with the help of their sons, Hayden, 10 and Kyzer, 8, for roughly three weeks before Thanksgiving, traveling to and from their home in Burns to have the village ready for visitors the day after Thanksgiving until the first week in January.
“When we were putting them up, people would stop and say, ‘Are you putting the Santa houses up again?’’ Bob Juve said.
Janet Foldenauer is the original owner of these houses, where they were displayed on D Street before she turned them over to the Juve family. Foldenauer built the houses in the 70s, when she and her husband, Jerry, lived in Alaska.
“When (Janet) had them, we would take the boys and that was what we did at Christmas,” Eddie Juve said. “And all the kids love them.”
In a red folder labeled “Christmas decorations” are clippings from Alaskan newspapers with photos of her well-lit house behind Santa’s Village and evidence of hundreds of cars driving in from across the state to experience the holiday cheer the scene provided.
Janet Foldenauer’s craftiness makes the village what it is today. Elves were intricately designed from baby dolls, with parts of the arm going into the pointy ears characteristic of the creatures, along with discarded phonograph and plumbing parts. Their torsos, she said, are made of coffee cans. But looking at them, you couldn’t tell them apart from real elves.
Those who visit the village know elves and animals featured in the display move, cutting cookie dough and scooping up animal poop in the barn – Janet did that, too.
“I’ve always been interested in gears and mechanisms,” she said. Batteries, of course, wouldn’t last very long with the village up and running from 4:30-10:30 each evening, so she “rewired a transformer to the mechanism, so it’ll run off of alternating currents.”
Janet Foldenauer taught herself these skills, all in the name of Christmas decor. She and her husband also lived in “the Bush,” which refers to the region of Alaska without road networks, meaning it’s only accessible by small plane.
“When you live in the Bush, you have to do things for yourself,” she said.
The Foldenauers eventually moved to Torrington, and they rented a “great big truck” half-filled with Christmas decorations and then their furniture.
After Foldenauer’s husband, Jerry, passed away eight years ago. Janet knew she couldn’t put the houses together on her own.
She planned to take the houses apart and throw away the wood. With some convincing from a neighbor, she instead posted on the Goshen County Classifieds Facebook page where she planned to sell the houses that could be used for sheds or playhouses, along with their Christmasy contents.
Eddie Juve bought them, and the rest is history.
“Everybody looks for these houses (during the holidays),” she said. “I thought, ‘You can’t tear them down and burn that wood.’”
Each year, they add a new house to the village. The newest addition is a laundromat thought up by Janet Foldenauer and the Juves, named the North Pole Bubble Express on a suggestion from an invested Facebook friend, according to Eddie Juve.
Aside from new houses, Eddie Juve said she tries to decorate existing structures the same way each year. Unless a community member asks her to add something, then she will make it work.
“People give me things to put into these houses, and every year I try to use at least one thing somebody gave me,” she said.
This year, it’s vintage-looking books on the mantel in Santa’s living room. The year before, it was a toy from a young neighbor.
Next Christmas, they plan to include a post office that they will start building next summer.
“People can actually see the old-style post office,” Eddie Juve said.
“The elves will be sorting Santa’s mail,” Janet Foldenauer added.
This season, Santa’s Village is open to visitors anytime, but the Juves advise people to come after 4:30 p.m., when the lights are on and the elves are moving. As long as she has to continue wiping the nose prints of excited and curious children from the windows, Eddie Juve said, the village is in Torrington to stay.
“This whole community, everybody who sees them just loves them,” she said.
