GAIL WHITE Storyteller brings enchanting Christmas village to life

I didn't know what to expect when I pulled up to Joyce Glover's home on the outskirts of Girard.
A friend of Joyce's had called, telling me about the ceramic village underneath her Christmas tree.
"She tells a story," Dorothy Peron had said when she called. "It is enchanting -- truly enchanting."
I couldn't wait to sit around Joyce's tree and listen to the story about the village below.
Truly, Joyce's village story is enchanting -- told as small vignettes of the goodness, mercy and love of the townspeople. But more enchanting than the tales of the ceramic figures under the tree is the creator of the village. Joyce is a living example of those qualities she shares in her story.
She greeted me at the door dressed from head to toe in festive red. Little gold jingle bells were dangling from her ears. At 75, Joyce is as lively as an elf.
"I've done this for 18 years," Joyce explains as we wait for other storytime guests to arrive before descending to the basement rec room where the village is set up. "I invite new members at the church, my neighbors, friends and family. I imagine, in those 18 years I've had over 800 people hear my story."
"How did you start making the village?" I ask, imagining the hundreds of people who sat before me, waiting impatiently to see this winter wonderland.
Her story
"In the mid-'80s." Joyce said. "My husband's parents and my parents started having health problems. Every parent lived with us at one time or another."
Joyce's husband, Jack, told her that she needed something to do away from taking care of their parents. One day, he brought home an unfinished ceramic church. Joyce cleaned it, fired it and painted it -- even used a technique to create stained-glass windows.
The church became the first piece in Joyce's village.
Next, Jack came home with a ceramic barn. "I was a country girl," Joyce says, smiling. She painted the barn red and placed some animals around it. This was the second piece to the village.
"Next came the gristmill, then the schoolhouse," Joyce recalls. "It grew and grew. It got so big!"
The Glovers' living room was no longer big enough for all of the ceramic pieces. Jack suggested Joyce set up her ever-growing village in the basement. That's when the story idea evolved.
"He told me to tell a story about it," Joyce remembers her husband urging her. "I told him I didn't have a story about it."
But then a story came to her.
Enchanting village
"This is my story," Joyce shares. "It's only my story. It's different every year because everybody who comes is a part of my story."
Every year at Christmas, nieces and nephews would beg to hear the story. Joyce was always happy to oblige.
In 1992, however, Joyce had no enthusiasm for storytelling. Jack was sick.
"I told my nieces and nephews and my sisters and brothers at Christmas, this will be the last time I will tell this story," Joyce said.
Jack heard Joyce talking to her relatives. He made the brothers and sisters and all the nieces and nephews promise not to let Joyce stop telling her story.
Jack died in 1992. But the promise was kept and Joyce's story went on.
When all the guests arrived, we anxiously took the stairs to the basement.
There, under a Christmas tree covered in angels and trumpets, were the twinkling lights of Joyce's village. More than 150 buildings were scattered around the snow-covered ground.
Figurines were placed throughout the village: a little girl leaving a shop with packages in her arms ... a family caroling by the town gazebo ... ice skaters gliding across a mirrored pond.
All of them has a story that Joyce is going to share.
Placing everyone in the proper seats for the best viewing, Joyce, herself sits cross-legged on the floor.
With the lights turned low and the room hushed, Joyce takes her pointer in her hand and begins:
"It's almost Christmastime in this little village. ..."
gwhite@vindy.com