Antique and Vintage Christmas Houses, Villages, and Putz

The tradition of building miniature Christmas village landscapes ("putz"), including houses, animals, and other hand-crafted wooden figures, began with the Pennsylvania Dutch in the late 1800s. Mass-produced cardboard putz houses, sold in dimestores, became popular in the mid-20th century, and have also become highly collectible. Prior to World War I, Germany had been the go-to source for Christmas goods sold in American five-and-dimes. After the war devastated Germany, F.W. Woolworth traveled to Japan to talk to manufacturers about producing objects for an American holiday that was completely foreign to them. In the late 1920s, the new Japanese Christmas industry introduced creative and colorful cardboard houses that were a logical outgrowth of the candy/surprise-box houses the Japanese had been making for some time. As whimsical, delightful "eye-candy" on open dimestore counters, they were an immediate sensation. Little did the American families who delighted in these beautiful but cheap objects know that they'd been produced by low-wage labor working in miserable conditions. The finest, most glittery houses were produced for less than ten years, because the onset of World War II brought a trend toward more "realistic" toys like trains and other models. However, Christmas village houses have continued to be produced in some form up to the present. Today, 1930s "Golden Age" cardboard houses often sell for hundreds of dollars.