Ornament Review: Central Tower Church - Candlelight Services #8 - 2005 Hallmark Ornament

Stars: 4 out of 5

Pros: Nice looking church...

Cons: ...except for the confetti windows

The Bottom Line:

Like how the church looks

Just don't understand windows

Full of confetti

Central Tower Church Introduced Confetti Windows

The eighth entry in Hallmark's Candlelight Services Keepsake Ornament series is called the Central Tower Church.  It's probably because I'm a California native, but the style seems a little weird to me.  Never the less, I do like the ornament.

The ornament is made out of plastic, but the church is carved and painted to look like it is made out of brick.  It's got a grey slate roof.  The church is fairly rectangular with the two big windows on the sides sticking out a bit to keep it from being a true box.

What seems a little strange to me is the tower.  It's actually attached to the front of the church, and the front door is in it.  Basically, you'd walk directly into the tower to walk into the church.  I can't remember ever seeing anything like that before, but I'm sure it's out there somewhere.  I really do like the tower itself.  It goes a couple of inches above the roof with a steeple on top.  No sign of a belfry, but I could picture a bell being in the tower as well.  Because the tower is narrower than the rest of the church, it allows two evergreen trees to hug the side.  They have a dusting of snow on them, which really adds to the festive feel of the ornament.

The church is sitting on a white "snowy" plastic base.  It's not too much bigger than the church, and provides a nice, flat bottom if you want to display the ornament on a mantle or something like that.  The bottom also has the series information (an 8 in the middle of a Christmas tree) and the copyright date.  That 2005 also shows up in a block in the middle of the church's tower.  If you decide to hang the ornament, there is a little silver hook just front of center.  The location of the hook made me think it might hang a little crooked, but it actually hangs perfectly straight.

The reason I started collecting this series is for the lighting effect.  The back of the church has a hole in it where you can insert a light bulb from a normal string of lights.  The windows are see through, so they shine when the lights on turned on.

Quite often in this series, the windows make or break the ornament, and that's certainly the case here.  The ornament has many small windows, including several in the tower.  The light reaches them all quite well, but most of them look plasticy instead of like glass.  These windows are all either blue or yellow, but the fact that they are one color doesn't bother me as much as how they look.

The big windows on the side of the church do look more like windows.  And they are multicolored.  This isn't a good thing, however.  The colors in the windows aren't in any pattern.  In fact, it looks like confetti falling instead of a design.  I would rather they were all one color instead of this strange miss mash.

Window colors aside, I do like the Central Tower Church.  The scenery is nicely wintery and the church looks nice.  If the windows were better, this one would be perfect.

Be sure to check out the other ornaments in the Candlelight Services series.

Original Price: $18.95