Ocean Park resident Lynette Rae “Lola” McAdams creates a holiday village to brighten up these winter days.

0n a road less traveled, tucked away in the heart of Ocean Park, from Thanksgiving weekend through Martin Luther King Jr. Day, is a village with 102 trees, 75 people, 52 buildings, 18 dogs, 11 cardinals, nine crows, seven snowmen, two gnomes, one Krampus, one Santa, one Bigfoot, and one Bluebird of Happiness. (Though alas, no partridge in a pear tree… yet.)

It’s a sort of beachy Glocca Morra that magically appears and is reached only by being invited through a picturesque gate by a charming almost 13-year-old Australian cattle dog, Riley. Once your arrival is approved by Riley, the village-maker, long-time Peninsula resident, Lynette Rae “Lola” McAdams, may invite you in.

Some might remember Lola from her early stints working at the Ark Restaurant and Bakery, or as manager of the Anchorage Cottages in Long Beach. Capable and ingenious, she and Bette Lu Krause also collaborated on a home repair business for a short time years ago. More recently, you may have caught her at a holiday event, reading from her popular illustrated book, “A Coastal Christmas,” which has sold almost 3,000 copies locally. So, all in all, I should not have been surprised when I got a hint about the “spectacularity” of her Christmas Village. Despite a few attempts by others to describe it to me, I was gobsmacked the first time I walked in her door.

But before I attempt my descriptive rendition, Lola shares a bit of her story, “After college, I worked for a small, pioneering eco-cruise company that focused on natural history, traveling annually between the waters of the Sea of Cortez and Alaska, with regular seasonal stop-overs on the Columbia River. I fell hard for the forests, beaches, and close-knit communities, and moved here full-time in 2001, working in hospitality and management until making the formal switch to writing in 2011. I continue to freelance the magazine markets, mostly in the travel genre, but that shifted remarkably during the pandemic, so I’ve since branched into writing for the field of medical technology and working as an assistant for environmental compliance in the upstream oil and gas industry.”

“I also have a small flock of mixed breed chickens — they’re mostly Riley’s but he lets me keep the eggs. I have four right now of varying ages; the longest lived is twelve. I adore keeping chickens. Even after they age-out of laying, they’re lovely company and a rich addition to the garden for slug control. Riley checks on them first thing in the morning and makes sure they’re all secure in the evenings. Nothing gets by him.” (For more on Lola, see: tinyurl.com/4wmjr5y6.)

Falalalala lalalala

For most of us, holiday-time is a strange mash-up of joy, darkness, levity, missing beloveds, over-eating, friends and family, arguments, music, and, perhaps, questionable financial expenditures. Fortunately the new year is just around the corner — as is the blessedness of the light returning (winter solstice is Dec. 21 at 7:27 p.m.) — so things are about to change. 2024 gives us a chance to start over, set new goals, reevaluate who we are.

But before that happens, the holiday season throws us back nostalgically. Some of us reflect on our childhoods: family traditions, the anticipation of gift opening, midnight services, special food. Some have darker memories. Many of us are missing important people and will experience the holidays for the first time without them.

Perhaps to counteract all this mishegas, Lola has invented a new tradition for herself: her Holiday Village extravaganza. As she says, “It started innocently enough. A couple years ago I saw a Christmas Village set in a box at a yard sale. Fourteen houses, all in their individual boxes. But three of them were shattered. At the same time, I was inspired by this PBS show called ‘The Repair Shop’ so I thought, well, I’m just going to see if I can repair these. I was going to give them away, but after I was done gluing all these little shards together — I mean it was like an archeological dig — I realized I was totally attached. I loved the porcelain and the glow of the lights. It reminded me of the little Christmas Village my grandmother had. So I thought it would be fun to keep it and set it up. By December that first year I’d found more buildings online, at garage sales, or on eBay. So I had 30 buildings all together.” And now — see above!

What makes a village?

Lola’s Village has a blacksmith shop, a theatre, an all-faith worship center, a humane society with 18 dogs, several libraries, candy shop, market, school, bookstore, post office, city hall, a train that works, a VW bus with a tree on top, lots of houses, carolers, lamp posts, walkways. Everything you’d expect and need in a little town. There are buildings and people from different “village” eras. She even has a Sasquatch walking over a bridge carrying Bob Pyle’s book “Where Bigfoot Walks.”

When I ask how long it takes to set up her village, there is a long, long pause. “I don’t even know,” she finally says. I can barely imagine. Each building is packed in its own box, so even unearthing them must take hours. Then there’s emptying the bookshelf of its books and making five different “regions” and innumerous levels for the village installation. The tracks must be level so the train runs properly; the exact height for gondolas and a ski lodge must be created so skiers can frolic up and down the snowy slope; signs for new buildings must be painted, and lots of accoutrements fashioned by hand. Plus, OMG, everything has lights so where do all the cords go?

For Lola part of the joy of the village is watching people take it in. “Kids are just overwhelmed at first, by everything, the lights, all of it. Depending on how old they are they start to see other things — all the jokes.” A dog painted to look exactly like Riley, who has two different colored eyes, is peeing on a fire hydrant. Our friend Jill Mulholland made and wore a Krampus head during the Big Heads parade in Astoria this year. (Krampus, you may remember, is the folkloric monster who, during advent, scares children who’ve been naughty.) Jill, as Krampus, now has a prominent place in the village.

And everyone who visits is tasked with finding the Bluebird of Happiness. I admit Lola gave me a hint. “I placed her especially for you…” Of course, on the roof of the New York Times news building! Finding her meant I could place a small amanitas mushroom that Lola crafted anywhere I wanted in the village. I chose to put it at the feet of Krampus, adjacent to naughty children knocked to the ground from fright.

“People come in and look at it and they find it’s evocative,” Lola says and she’s right. Her amazing village brought back my childhood memories of decorative holiday scenes: we had a mirror ice rink with skating elves, spun glass snowbanks, an angel choir, wax reindeer and Santa’s sled full of teeny wrapped presents. Seeing Lola’s village inspired me to go home and unpack my mother’s “Klockspiel” and assemble the intricate copper structure with three angels who, when set spinning by the heat of candles, ring little chimes.

Light up the dark

Along with Lola’s village, she has brilliantly lighted trees and candles everywhere. As she says, “These are the darkest days of the year. We’re supposed to be joyous and celebrating but the holidays are such a struggle. Our joy is laced with sorrow. That’s why I decided to add a cemetery to the village this year — we’re dancing with our ghosts all through this season.”

There are several empty chairs around my holiday table, and it doesn’t matter how long our beloveds have been gone — it doesn’t get any easier not to have them beside us. But now I have, along with visions of sugar-plums, the incredible fun of laughing with Lola as she walked me through her blazing holiday village. The creativity, the thoughtful arrangements, the wit, imagination, and humor Lola instilled in her village is an image that’s going to stay with me all year long.