Where Christmas Lives: The Magical World Bob and Elsi Sly Built

Photos by Cynthia Furlong-Reynolds

Christmas lights shimmer in windows bedecked with wreathes. Carolers wander down village lanes singing. A young man has dropped onto one knee to propose to a delighted woman. Families of all ages gather to decorate trees on a village green. Choirs sing to the heavens near a nativity scene. Farmers tend their herds and flocks by lantern light. Others tap maple trees outside a cozy sugar house. Children cling to sleds as they careen down a snow-covered hill, while in the distance, skiers slalom and snowplow their way to a cozy inn. Carousels spin. A Christmas train filled with happy passengers winds its way through the valley, while an ancient locomotive arrives with holiday visitors. And everywhere, charming Christmas villages and farms range across Michigan-style hills.

For forty years, Bob and Elsi Sly have designed, built, and erected an ever-expanding Christmas village display in the home they call Hickory Lea. But this year, the couple, 86 and 85 years old respectively, have created a one-of-a-kind Christmas extravaganza.

“This is unbelievable,” a startled visitor whispered in awe when she walked into the room.

Many people display Dickens-inspired village scenes during the holidays, but the Slys’ display is unique. Not just massive, it is a visual story of the couple’s life: their family histories, travels, commitment to their faith, hobbies, and interests.

With Elsi as designer and village storyteller and Bob (a retired Ford engineer) as builder and mechanical genius, the work began the day after Halloween and finished the first day of Advent as they staged scenes for 106 buildings, two trains, waterfalls, ski slopes, countless animals (including 46 dogs), gazebos, forests, and wintery backdrops.

Elsi’s passion for creating the villages started with a winter weekend trip to Petoskey with friends in the mid-1980’s. Most went cross-country skiing, but a friend decided to go shopping downtown with Elsi and discovered Department 56 Christmas cottages. Elsi bought four and displayed them on the grand piano. 

The next year, several more houses “happened” to show up, and Elsi’s sister-in-law added two miniature trees. “Then I was hooked,” Elsi says. “If I saw a house or activity that made a connection to our family, it became part of the settlement.”

The village outgrew the piano. Returning from a spectacular train trip through the Alps in 2015, “left me no choice but to paint a mountain background and set up a table with a train,” Elsi says, grinning. Bob made trestles and laid the track for a scene that reminded them of magical travel memories.

In 2016, the scene was so large they moved it into the great room.  Elsi painted more background panels, Bob built staging, and they named the settlement Hickory Valley—their home is called Hickory Lea. 

When she saw a sugar shanty at a local store, Elsi knew she had to create a scene from her childhood, complete with a sugarbush and a tiny couple making maple syrup the old-fashioned way. Her grandchildren gathered tiny maple branches, and Bob made tiny wooden sap buckets for the trees. It is one of the Slys’ favorite scenes.  

 Every subsequent year has inspired new additions to the panorama. “My motivation comes from trying to set each building in a believable, cozy atmosphere with a story,” she says. She names many of the tiny businesses for family members.

Two years ago, a granddaughter who had just given birth to twins gave Elsi an observatory. Bob unloaded a built-in cabinet and constructed a two-tiered scene under a night sky painted with the twin constellation of Gemini. Because the Slys have two sets of twins, the building was named Twins Observatory.

Last Christmas, a stranger who heard about the Slys’ village donated twenty-seven houses that had belonged to her mother, explaining she wanted them appreciated and viewed. To further expand the display, Bob created more staging and commandeered yet another great room wall.

 This summer, they crafted a village of Alsatian half-timbered homes, hillside vineyards, and Christmas markets reminding them of their travels in the Alsace region of northeastern France this summer. Bob built the homes, towers, and petite train from blocks of wood; Elsi painted and decorated them. In honor of that wine-growing region, Elsi offers her guests wine from Dexter’s new Social Vines Winery, along with appropriate cheeses.

 For the first time, the Slys are offering tours to anyone interested in touring the Christmas display. Elsi has created a scavenger-style challenge for visitors, to make certain that no scene goes unnoticed. There is no charge for tours, but if visitors feel inspired, they are welcome to make a free-will offering that will help buy stoves for remote Guatamalan villages. Bob has been a member of the team from Huron River Methodist Church that delivers and installs those stoves.

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Elsi Potter Sly is a consummate storyteller, in many forms and several media.

A graduate of the University of Michigan’s School of Music, she played piano and organ for her church while offering piano lessons to generations of children. For every recital, she merged her students’ musical selections into a compelling story (along with props). When her hearing became an issue several years ago, she continued to play (“I knew all the hymns by ear by the time I was thirteen”), but also branched out into painting. Last summer, she took a painting class in France from a renowned artist. (“That was so inspiring!”)

This summer she also fulfilled a long-time goal: to write her memoir, telling the story of her family’s history in Michigan and her experiences growing up on a Michigan Centennial Farm. Many of her Christmas scenes reflect farm adventures in days gone by.

“When I look back on my eighty-five years, I see snapshots of past times, long-gone people, and the events that changed my life. That’s what I designed into my village, and that’s what I wrote about,” she says. “If you look closely, you’ll see the truths imbedded in those short moments.”

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To schedule a visit to the Sly Christmas village, either email Elsi Sly at [email protected], or call her at 734.426.8251.