Some collections begin with a gift. When Dick and Kay Erb received a little white church from one of Kay Erb’s piano students, they had no idea it was the start to a Christmas village that now takes up about a quarter of their living room. The little white church arrived in the early ’70s, and it became the first of what’s now a collection of 34 churches, a few houses, a gondola and two train sets – all of which the Erbs painstakingly put up every year.