Enchanted Village is a broken spell

For several generations of Bostonians, nothing signaled the arrival of Christmas quite the way the Enchanted Village did. At its original home at Jordan Marsh department store, lines snaked through the sixth floor, and parents would quietly slip money to nearby elves to ensure a gift from Santa.

But now, after an increasingly nomadic existence , in an enormous tent on City Hall Plaza and, in recent years, occupying the cavernous Hynes convention center -- the elaborate village of snow-capped houses and moving figurines has been reduced to a ghost of its former self, a few precariously wavering figures and a single house in the lobby of City Hall. Though memories of Christmas for thousands of Bostonians are bound up in the village's kitschy soundtrack and rosy-cheeked carolers, Mayor Thomas M. Menino said it is time to move on.

"We all remember the Enchanted Village; I remember visiting as a child," Menino said in a statement yesterday. "But maybe the time has come and gone for the Enchanted Village."

Yesterday, the main reminders of the once grand display were four aging plastic musicians in red and blue uniforms, rheumatically swaying to Christmas carols played muddily on a stereo. The repeating carols so annoyed security guards in the lobby that they finally turned off the music, leaving the figures to move to the sound of their own turning gears.

Menino said that this year the city is planning instead to put lights up outside City Hall for the first time in 10 years, something he hopes will become a new tradition.

However well loved the village once was, the Boston of the mass media age had grown steadily less enchanted with it. Attendance dropped from as high as 200,000 in its heyday to about 50,000 in 2003.

Still, though the village was on the verge of being packed away several times, it was saved repeatedly.

A 1940s marketing gimmick, the village was discontinued in 1972. Jordan Marsh revived it in 1990, when the department store hoped it would attract shoppers during a recession.

In 1998, after Macy's took over Jordan Marsh and decided to discontinue the Enchanted Village display, Menino moved it to City Hall Plaza.

When Menino announced in 2003 that the city could not afford to erect and staff the display, donors put down $250,000 to keep it alive at the John B. Hynes Veterans Memorial Convention Center.

"This is a tradition for Boston families, just like skating on the Frog Pond and holiday tree lightings," Menino said in 2004.

Along with fading popularity is the sobering affliction of time. Some pieces are lost; some broken. Many motors no longer work. Gone is the barber shop where the boy awaits a haircut. Gone is the living room with children decorating the Christmas tree.

"It's not to say that the Enchanted Village will never come back," said Dot Joyce, the mayor's press secretary. "But after a while people got tired of it. We're going to try to do something new."

Several people strolling through City Hall remembered the grand occasion it was to bring their children to see it.

"It was quite a thing," said John Kelley, 82, who works in the city's tax collecting department.

"I think it's kind of sad," said his wife, Carmella, who works in assessing. "It's not the same. And it bothers me that other kids are missing it."

Matt Viser can be reached at maviser@globe.com.