Boardman resident Sandy Moran’s Christmas village is aglow each year. Since she was a child, Moran has created Dickens’ Village scenes, inspired by the novels of Charles Dickens.

BOARDMAN — Walking through Sandy Moran’s family room is kind of like stepping back in time.

Moran has spent years curating an extensive collection of Dickens’ Village collectibles that take hours — if not a few days — to assemble each year.

The tradition for her began in childhood when her mom put up a few Dickens’ Village buildings at Christmas.

“I’ve had some of these since the ’80s,” Moran said, explaining her mom got her started when she gave her part of her collection. “Then people just started buying them for me,” she said.

The winter landscape includes 35 structures and accessories, including people, fences, a pond, shops, bridges and carriages. The back of Moran’s display, which is lit, is a neighborhood, and the front is a townscape, with a church, post office, theater, train station and various stores.

Moran, 81, will be hosting family on Christmas Day and said her collection has been central to each year’s celebration because the holiday meal is served in the family room.

She has lived in her split level since 1972, raised three sons there and inherited seven more children with her second marriage.

She has a host of grandchildren and great-grandchildren and said it was challenging when the kids were young to keep them from touching the display.

Moran was the oldest of five children. She grew up outside Pittsburgh before her dad, a truck driver, moved the family to the Youngstown area for his job when she was 17.

She said her mom always made a big deal out of Christmas and credits her with getting her hobby started.

“She only had a few pieces but I always admired hers,” Moran said.

She bought some of her collectibles at Kraynak’s in Hermitage and others at Bronner’s Christmas Wonderland in Frankenmuth, Michigan. The rest, she said, were gifts.

She usually starts putting up the display before Thanksgiving and takes it down in January. She said her companion, Jerry Compton, is a big help.

“It’s a lot of work to put it up,” she said.

There has only been one year Moran didn’t bring out the display. That was two years ago when she was diagnosed with breast cancer.

“I just couldn’t deal with it,” she said, explaining she was diagnosed in January, started six rounds of chemotherapy in February and eventually had a mastectomy.

She is cancer-free now and said she feels good but doesn’t know how long she’ll be able to continue decorating so extensively for the holidays.

The pieces on display come from the Dickens’ Department 56 collection and Moran estimates she has about $5,000 tied up in it. She doesn’t plan to add to the village and said she’s told friends and relatives not to buy any more pieces for it.

“I tried to count the people in the display the other day and I lost track at 70,” Compton said.

Moran laughed and said the display wouldn’t be complete without some residents frolicking around.

“You know if you have a town, you have to have some people,” she said.

Moran, who is active in her church and sings in the choir, said a lot of care is taken each year to dismantle the display. She has an extensive system to organize it and said she packs the pieces in boxes that are labeled and have coordinating pictures so she knows what’s inside.

She’s not sure if any family members will eventually decide to take over her collection, but Moran said she wouldn’t rule out selling it if the right buyer comes along.

In the meantime, she plans to continue setting up and enjoying the display each year, and said she’s always had a connection to the Victorian Era, the period when Charles Dickens lived and wrote novels.

“Just looking at it, it brings back how things were in olden times,” she said. “I would like to have lived back then.”