IT TAKES A VILLAGE TO RAISE SPIRITS HOLIDAY COLLECTOR SPREADS JOY.

Byline: DENNIS McCARTHY 

Some people never grow up. It doesn't make a difference if they're carrying an AARP card in their wallet, or collecting Social Security. The holidays roll around, and they go back to being kids again.

Take Claudette Fillet and her friends in Village Addicts Anonymous. Most families bring out old home movies or photo albums to remember Christmas past. Not these people. They bring out whole towns.

``That's my village growing up in Montreal, Quebec - I'm in there,'' Claudette says, standing over a miniature motorized winter wonderland taking up an entire room in her Sherman Oaks home.

Claudette used to go home for Christmas. Now she brings home to her.

``I started collecting Department 56 company collectibles in 1995, and now, basically, I'm out of control,'' she says with a laugh.

The 45 miniature homes, and hundreds of items in her snow village - including gondolas, ski slopes, a hockey rink with players, tobogganers, animals, snow-capped trees, and plenty of people - represent about 30 percent of the collection she stores in her attic.

``I started that first year with five houses, and now I have over 200, plus thousands of accessories, including hundreds of glass, hand-painted ornaments from the Christopher Radko Co.''

She doesn't want to put a price tag on it, but it's enough that she'll be sitting down after Christmas this year to inventory everything for her insurance company.

That's the way it is with a lot of the 100 local families who are members of Village Addicts Anonymous, say Bob and Barbara Gross of North Hollywood, co-presidents of the group.

``Once you get started, it's an addiction,'' says Barbara. ``It's like you've entered a fantasyland, and you don't want to leave.''

Her husband laughs. ``We're all basically kids at heart,'' he says.

That's why Claudette joined the group a few years ago. She needed other kids with gray hair to talk to who would understand.

``You talk to regular people about all this, and they think you're nuts,'' she said. ``I had to be around people who understood, other fanatics.''

Even her neighbors shake their heads at the four or five hours a day for three months Claudette works to bring her childhood holidays home again.

Shake their heads, then bring their grandkids over every Halloween and Christmas to see.

``It's just magical; the kids absolutely love it,'' says Elaine Conway, who lives a few houses away and helps Claudette with the tours for friends, neighbors, and other collectors she invites into her winter wonderland every year.

``She lives for this,'' Elaine said. ``I guess she just never grew up.''

Even Claudette's Jewish friends, like Carol Horowitz, can't wait to help her decorate her home for Christmas.

``Ever since I was a child I'd be blown away by Christmas,'' Carol says, laughing. ``I'd look at that little menorah, and think, this is really boring.

``Now I get to come here with this wonderful woman, and be part of the magic.''

If there's one thing Claudette regrets in this holiday obsession of hers, it's overlooking Thanksgiving.

``I love it, but I just can't do it,'' she said. ``There's just not enough time between Halloween and Christmas for Thanksgiving.''

So, the kid grows up on turkey day. She turns out the lights in her winter wonderland, and goes out to a restaurant with friends.

If you're a kid with gray hair who needs to talk out your holiday collector's obsession with people who won't think you're nuts, give Barbara and Bob Gross from Village Addicts Anonymous a call at [phone].

Dennis McCarthy, [phone]

dennis.mccarthy(at)dailynews.com

CAPTION(S):

4 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) Claudette Fillet of Sherman Oaks spends two months before Christmas creating a miniature village in her home.

(2 -- 4) Claudette Fillet's village, above, includes ornaments, below, and figurines, bottom.

David Sprague/Staff Photographer