Inside the business of New York City’s oldest Christmas shop

While Duncan’s Toy Chest, the sprawling New York City toy store from Home Alone 2, tragically doesn’t exist in real life, there’s an actual—albeit much smaller—store which dubs itself the city’s oldest Christmas shop, selling the film’s iconic turtledoves, among many other holiday trimmings.

Christmas Cottage, now nestled on 7th Avenue a few blocks below Central Park in an under 600-square-foot shop, has been selling festive wares since 1985, co-owned by couple Paul and Diane Prianti, with tourists from China to the UK to Brazil flocking to the store every year to secure trinkets for their trees.

“I’m happy to know that the average person thinks, ‘Oh, well, it’s a Christmas shop,’ but we’ve become a destination,” he said.

The shop has seen many iterations. In 1985, a then-single Prianti ran it as a holiday pop-up shop, across Fifth Avenue, Madison Avenue, and Rockefeller Center’s Channel Gardens for several years, he told Retail Brew. When he met his now-wife and began a family, he realized it was time to settle down in the holiday retail business, too, finally securing a long-term lease at Channel Gardens for 10 years. Then, rent prices rose, and the shop moved to the Wellington Hotel on 7th Avenue in 1997, but was forced out in 2021 as the hotel shuttered amid Covid-19. For a year and a half, Christmas Cottage sold products from a mobile truck, which it now largely uses for advertising, before finding its current location on 7th Avenue between W 53rd and W 54th Street.

Prianti shared what’s kept him—and the shop—going since 1985.

Small packages: With such a small retail footprint (for comparison, Macy’s Herald Square flagship 20 blocks south has 1.25 million square feet of retail space), Christmas Cottage optimizes its space by merchandising just a few of each ornament on its hook-adorned walls, while also showcasing them on color-coordinated trees. Apparel is displayed close to the ceiling, while additional decor fills baskets lining the floor.

“That’s the key to success,” he said. “I don’t need to show the same sweatshirt 10 times over. I don’t need to show Christmas eight times on a hook. If you know how to generate the traffic and move the traffic, you can achieve the same bottom line.”

Diane tends to the store—which stays open as late as 11pm, occasionally drawing a few jolly drunkards, Prianti noted—in the middle of the night or early hours of the morning to refresh it for the next day, he said. Christmas Cottage’s biggest department is “writeables,” customizable ornaments celebrating milestones like engagements or first Christmases, Prianti said. It also offers classic ornaments like elves and snowflakes, along with more NYC-themed items like a Santa Statue of Liberty, ornaments of pizza slices and NYC marathon runners and, its most well-known item, the turtledoves, a large driver of in-store visits (and TikTok views).

Prianti said ornaments are typically manufactured six to eight months ahead of the holiday season, and in January, he’ll order inventory to be in the store for April and May. He uses Kurt Adler, a leading ornament company that itself has been around nearly 80 years, as a bellwether for ornament trends.

“It’s a battlefield…because some years you have a great year, some years a fair year, and you try to make it as best as possible,” he said.

‘Tis the season: Prianti said the shop used to change with the seasons—shifting to decor for Valentine’s Day, Easter, and Halloween—but found that those holidays alone didn’t pay the rent, though it still offers small sections of items geared toward those holidays. Surrounded by Carnegie Hall, The MoMA, Radio City Music Hall, and Times Square, Christmas Cottage garners quite a bit of tourist foot traffic, but is also, of course, surrounded by a slew of gift shops slinging “I Heart NY” T-shirts that it must compete with for any non-holiday offerings. To stand out, the shop works to stock items not found in those stores, often self-manufacturing items like tees and sweatshirts, Prianti said.

“We try to stand out a little bit from the rest of the tourist-driven retailers,” he said. “It’s a game you play, and you have to navigate and be current and try to change constantly. Not an easy task, but we try.”

Prianti said he thinks Christmas retail in New York City isn’t quite what it used to be, believing it peaked around the mid-’80s to early ’90s, when department stores, like Macy’s, Saks Fifth Avenue, and the now-closed Gimbels—which have struggled as of late—were at full strength.

But the fourth quarter still brings plenty of hustle and bustle, and Prianti said he loves the excitement around the holiday season. But his favorite part of running Christmas Cottage?

“December 26.”