They make their own little world
BY KRISTA RAMSEY
The Cincinnati Enquirer
From the outside, Ed and Jean Rahn's house looks like so many others in Madeira. Cozy, well-kept, with a small sea of white lights scattered across bushes and yard.
It's hard to believe that, inside, they share it with 450 other people.
Their guests are just here for the holidays, but at the Rahns' house, it's a long season.
It begins in October with the bringing out of boxes and backdrops, and clearing off nearly every available space.
Then, in 63 concentrated work hours, the Rahns create their own universe — a world of tiny figurines and porcelain vignettes that transform their home into England, from Victorian times to the mid-1930s.
There are ice skaters and shoppers, friendly prelates and slippery pickpockets. They fill 105 tiny buildings, spilling off mantles and out of china cupboards, crowding the edge of stairs and slipping across window sills. They are here until March, dominating the Rahns' home, their elbow space and imagination.
A perfect place
As friends, guests and even near-strangers tour the display, they understand one of the miracles of the holiday season.
That what people want, and attempt to make, with strings of lights and small decorative scenes, is the world of kindness and civility that they long for all year long.
And the world they wish for others.
If we could retreat into a place of our own making, it would surely be much as the one the Rahns have unpacked, dusted off and positioned.
It would be scenes of families greeting one another at train stations, of shopkeepers and merchants in busy commerce, of children playing in utter disregard of evil and full expectation of good.
And it would be a place filled with the intent interest and tender regard the Rahns take in their “village” — where life is replicated down to the merest detail, and where it offers good things to all.
Their own past lives
For 20 Christmases, the Rahns have set up this idyllic vignette. Each year they grow to know their “villagers” better, and to be reminded of scenes from their own past lives.
A hard-working deliveryman hurries across one scene with a carefully wrapped parcel, and it reminds Jean Rahn of “the lovely black satin-looking boxes with the red ribbon” of the Mabley & Carew store downtown, where her mother worked.
She remembers it all — elevator operators with neatly tailored uniforms, the black dresses for women salesclerks, and coats and ties for salesmen.
Ed Rahn thinks of Rollman's across the street, the department store where his grandmother worked in girls' clothing, not far from a co-worker named “Mr. Blue.”
It is another of the gifts holidays bring. They coax forward details of the lives we have long forgotten.
“I'm a saver,” admits Ed Rahn. “I go back in memories. My father was really big on Christmas trees, and whenever we decorate, I think of him.”
The gentle scenes that wrap their way through the Rahns' home evoke similar feelings for their guests. Of gentler times. Safer times. Other times.
For all of us, the world waits impatiently outside our door. This holiday season, as so many others, there are reasons to fear and actions to disdain. So there is no shame to us if we close the door a little while and find solace and peace inside our homes, families and memories.
Inside a world of our own making.
Dusk has fallen at the Rahn house. Lights twinkle forth from tiny brownstones and cottages. Porcelain church bells seem to peal. Painted faces surely glow.
This world is at peace, if not our own.
Jean Rahn smiles, and gazes at the world she and her husband have created. “This feels comforting,” she says. “This is where I feel safe, and most at peace.”
Krista Ramsey's column appears on Saturdays. Write her at the Enquirer, 312 Elm St. Cincinnati 45202.
RAMSEY ARCHIVE