ROCKWELL — The Rockwell Museum will be hosting the 17th annual Festival of Trees and Christmas Village event, with volunteer Mallory Allen bringing a tiny Winter Wonderland theme park to life this year.

For the past 17 years, Allen has spent approximately 300 hours each year building a miniature village. Each year has a different theme, with this year being “Winter Wonderland,” a theme park filled with various activities including shopping in a German Christmas market, visiting the North Pole with Santa’s manufacturing center and an ice castle and a rustic area complete with country foods, crafts and sports. Throughout each area, Allen said she works to create small storylines for the characters, with tiny events including Santa lookalike and snowman building contests as well as an area filled with reindeer hijinks.

“There are all of these little stories in there. Most people, they’ll spot one or two. They don’t really ‘read’ the stories, exactly, but they get a feeling that it’s alive and there are things happening,” said Allen.

Allen said that she works to make sure that the villages are as historically accurate as possible, a desire which dates back to her childhood. She said her great-grandfather was an architect and she majored in art history with a focus in architecture in college. However, she worked in IT so she used the miniature villages as an outlet for her passions.

“I like to get buildings that are models of real places when I can. Some villages have a lot of that. Dickens (London) had a lot of that, the New England village had a lot of that and people get excited, like ‘I’ve been in that building. I’ve walked through that covered bridge. I’ve been here, I’ve been there,” said Allen.

This will be the first year where the village will have two trains, with a passenger train running around the exterior of the village and a smaller excursion train following an inside circuit.

While Allen does much of the work, she does not do it alone, as she received assistance from her husband Walter Allen with the electrical supply and substructure work as well as assistance from Lucas Safrit with the railroad work.

The event will also include 11 different Christmas trees decorated by various civic groups, business and churches from around the community.

Allen said that there will also be a table set up during the event with pieces from prior year’s villages, with pieces that are specific to prior villages or duplicate pieces being sold.

The event is free for all to attend and is open from Dec. 6 through Dec. 22. The hours will run from 6 to 8 p.m. on Mondays through Fridays, 1 to 4 p.m. and 6 to 8 p.m. on Saturdays and 1 to 4 p.m. on Sundays. Groups who wish to attend can also schedule special visiting hours by contacting Rockwell Town Hall at 704-279-2180.