Tiny houses dusted with snow light up. A train chugs around a track. A small deer kisses a snowman, and tiny people on the street wave.

If you walk too quickly, you’ll miss this magical miniature Christmas village.

But if you take your time and notice the window on this empty Washington Street storefront, between Taylor and Adams streets, you will find a bit of Christmas magic.

“There’s two groups who walk by,” said Ted Krysinski, who started the Christmas window project. “There’s a family that has kids, and they’ll walk by and see the window, and then mom or dad will lift the kids up, and you’ll see this instantaneous smile from ear to ear. That’s what it’s about. The other group is people that are older, and they walk by and they stop, and you can see them become kids.”

Starting at 4 p.m. each evening, the Christmas village glows inside its window. But during the day, lucky passersby can sometimes spy the elves working, a–– Krysinski and his wife Linda add more houses and figures to the sprawling village.

Although his day job is the training and operations chief with East Jefferson Fire Rescue, Krysinski has a background in theatrical lighting. When he attended a Port Townsend Main Street meeting late November, he suggested creating a Christmas window.

“I said I had this harebrained idea to put in a Christmas window in an empty storefront,” Krysinski said. “And the group said, that’s a great idea, but we’re not gonna get this done in time, because this meeting was around Nov. 28.”

But the time crunch didn’t deter Krysinski, who put word out to his friends on Facebook, asking for loans of Christmas village figurines.

“I said, ‘If you get me the space, I’ll make it happen,’” Krysinski said.

And in just three days, the magic happened.

On Dec. 1, during the Christmas tree lighting on Washington Street, the window was lit up for all to see.

Since then, it has only grown larger. At least a dozen people loaned pieces from their own Christmas villages to be part of the Port Townsend window. And on Christmas Eve, the Krysinskis have plans for a big reveal of the final product.

For Linda Krysinski, who is a painter, arranging the village has become an artistic endeavor. You can often see her inside, arranging things, and then running outside to see how they look from the window.

“This is new for me, but it’s been a lot of fun,” she said. “It’ll be interesting to see how it turns out.”

The project has become more than just holiday fun for Ted Krysinski. He hopes the Christmas window will continue in future years, and that he can use it as an opportunity to train students in technical lighting.

He hopes to create a foundation, where he will bring in fellow technicians and set-design artists, and allow students in nearby vocational colleges to use the window as a project space.

“My goal is, wherever I can get space, I will start in August, design the space, bring in student technicians, have them do their college work, and then their final project will be the presentation,” Krysinski said.

He has big ideas for next year, with possible animatronic figures, painted backdrops and multiple windows that tell a story.

“There’s training for actors to be actors and musicians to be musicians, but there isn’t training for people to learn how to do lighting or sound,” Krysinski said. “Ultimately, (the window is) for all those people we’re going to teach.”