Pat, my grandparents on my father's side were both first-gen German-Americans, i.e. their fathers were both born in Germany and emigrated to the U. S. in the 1870s. They were teenagers living in or near Alsace at the time of the Franco-Prussian war, which led to them being sent by their families to America during a pretty rough time. Many Germans entered the U. S. through Baltimore, which is where they ended up settling. Given this, the putz thing was likely inevitable
We've never been able to find any pictures of Christmas at their house from sixty years ago. I can tell you the display my grandfather assembled each year was relatively small, say a table that was roughly four-foot square, covered with green sawdust and some sort of a skirt around it. He had many painted cast figures, numerous small vehicles that were penny toys he purchased in one or two shops downtown, along with a half-dozen or so cardboard houses that he'd bought or made himself. I have vague memories of some years there was a four-foot artificial Christmas tree in the center of the whole thing. He had a small electric train set, but that was never included in his display. He had a set of cast-iron fencing that went around the table-edge that kept his grandchildren's meat-hooks out of it. The look and feel, at least from what I remember, was very similar to that which you have assembled (only yours is quite a bit bigger).
Legend has it that Baltimore is the home of the Christmas "garden", the big toy train/village displays that come out every year for the six weeks or so that follow Thanksgiving. There's still a great tradition of it here, but mostly in public spaces, not in peoples' homes anymore. I think this "garden" thing goes back to the preponderance of German culture in the city.
When my cousins cleaned out my grandparents' house a few years ago (my uncle had lived there for a few years after their passing, then it had sat vacant for a decade or so), they found my grandfather's and my uncle's trainsets, which they handed off to me. Unfortunately, they never found any of the stuff from the "garden", so I'm left with just a few vague memories.
Paul
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