Since North Shore Boulangerie opened at 4401 N. Oakland Ave. in 2014, it’s become a tradition to display a beautiful holiday scene made from gingerbread in the bakery’s front window.

This year is no exception. In fact, children of all ages can enjoy the 2024 scene, which will be on display through Christmas at the Shorewood bakery and cafe.

Peep through the bakery window this season (better yet, pop inside for a treat and get the full effect) and you’ll see a playfully designed and fully-lit Christmas village featuring warm, cozy homes, snowmen, ice-skating villagers and more.

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This year’s display was created by Christina Schubert, a pastry chef whose work has been showcased at The Drake Hotel in Chicago, on the Food Network and in past years’ displays at the Shorewood bakery and cafe, where she headed up the pastry program for about four years. She created the animated Christmas village alongside Abbey Seiberlich, a fellow pastry chef and colleague at Elegant Foods in Madison, WI.

A magical holiday village

Together, Schubert and Seiberlich designed and built a detailed five-piece multi-dimensional village that straddles the look and feel of both modern and classic gingerbread displays. And it’s absolutely filled with little details like cheerful snowmen, tiny whimsical bluebirds, cardinals and squirrels, decorative lamp posts and various other details that bring the scenes to life.

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 “We explicitly designed the village so that it would look interesting to people who saw it through the window of the bakery, but really fascinating when they came in and viewed it from the inside,” notes Schubert, noting that the idea was to draw people in.  “We want it to be the sort of display that people can enjoy exploring while they have a cup of coffee and a pastry. And we wanted it to have enough detail that they would see something new each time.”

And that’s exactly what the display accomplishes. Certain elements are visible from outside including the front of the large gingerbread house, its oversized eaves dripping with icicles and windows draped with decorative holiday garlands. 

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You can glimpse of the rustic cabin on the hill behind the house. But it isn’t until you come inside the cafe that you can explore the details of the cabin with its blue door, Triscuit roofing, melted butterscotch candy windows with decorated wafer cookie shutters and the most charming rustic “natural stone” chimney (made of chocolate rocks) on its backside.

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When I prodded a bit, Schubert suggested that there was an older, solitary-but-friendly man who lived in the cabin. And I could envision him sitting by the fire, reading a book in the evening and laughing heartily as he offered up peppermint sticks to the village children brave enough to climb the hill to his home and knock on the door.

“My goal is always to create gingerbread homes that people want to live in,” says Schubert. “I want people to look at the exterior, peer into the windows and imagine what kind of people might live there.”

The final home is painted a retro mint green color. It boasts three types of roofing (Necco wafers, nonpareils and maybe chocolate sticks?), a glittery path to the door made of Necco wafters and wreaths and window swags to decorate for the holidays. A warm light emanates from the inside of the house, glowing outward.

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Just down the hill from the mint green home is a little red schoolhouse that Schubert says is modeled after a school where she once worked in Delaware. It boasts peppermint sticks as porch columns, melted butterscotch candy windows that glow warmly as if the rooms are filled with people, a rooftop made of cinnamon toast crunch and a bell tower with a silver candy bell inside. Outside there’s another snowman, a gingerbread sandbox (filled with sugar) and a tiny squirrel sitting along its gingerbread edge.

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But the town square with its rotating skating rink, expressive skating villagers and rustic skate rental hut brings the whole display together.

The skating rink is the focal point of the scene. Its glittery ice spins round and round, bringing life to the sculptured villagers who are skating (or falling, as it were). The rink is surrounded by pine trees, including the village Christmas tree decorated with brightly colored lights.

“I loved the idea of a skating rink because it allowed us to integrate motion,” says Schubert. “But the thing I’m so excited about is the lights on the tree. They’re new to me, and they’re really, really bright so they look amazing in the late afternoon and evening.”

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You’ll also find a small warming fire with pretzel “logs” for seating. There are also little plates of gingerbread cookies and mugs of hot chocolate topped with marshmallows, at least one of which is guarded by a tiny blue bird.

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Follow the sparkly grey-blue Necco wafter trail and you’ll find a rustic shanty where villagers can rent ice skates and maybe even get a refill on their cookies. 

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Schubert says that coming back to North Shore Boulangerie to create the 2024 display was fun and she hopes that guests will take the time to explore the little details that make it so magical and fun.

“When I’m working on projects like this, I always think that you know you’re moving in the right direction if you stop, look around at what you’ve created, and it makes you giggle. We giggled a lot while making this. I love creating gingerbread displays. But I love seeing other peoples’ reactions to it more than anything else.”

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Lunch with Santa

Right now his chair sits empty astride the gingerbread display. But soon North Shore Boulangerie will be hosting two very special visits from Santa himself.

On  Saturday, Dec. 14 and Sunday, Dec. 22 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., guests can enjoy a visit with the jolly elf as well as a special prix fixe lunch.

Reservations are required (with a $5 deposit per seat). Lunch is $20 for kids and $30 for adults. For more information and to make a reservation, visit northshoreboulangerie.com and scroll down to "Lunch with Santa".