Despite its name, the Christmas Shop in Merchants Square does not open its doors on the yuletide holiday.
The other days of the year, though, the shop offers all manner of festive cheer, as it has for the last 50 years.
Cabell Wallace, a co-owner of the quintet of family stores — the Christmas Shop, R. P. Wallace General Store, Williamsburg General Store, the Campus Shop and Wallace’s Trading Post — said he tries to please all types of merry-makers, from lovers of olive wood nativity scenes crafted in Bethlehem to those who would prefer an LED Santa that sings.
“We try to have a representation of what Christmas means to everybody in 500 feet, so we’re packing it in,” Wallace said.
He took the lead at the store in 1991 from his father, who inherited the business from his father, who got the idea from his wife after seeing a similar model on a visit to California in the early 1960s.
By now, other shops have sprung up like it in the area, but Wallace said the cozy feeling is what makes this one special.
When customers fill the store in the busy seasons – which include the colder months but also July and August with Williamsburg’s tourist draw – they bump elbows in the tight space and happen upon new decorations with every turn of the head.
When the Wallaces opened the Christmas Shop in 1964, they had trouble finding enough merchandise to populate the shelves.
Now, Wallace said, the commercialization and mass production of Christmas have put an end to that worry, and the challenge becomes getting a span of ornament and knick-knacks to bring a smile to every face.
He has watched as technology has changed the industry and its products. While the tree — and the reason for the season — have stayed constant, advances in lighting and electronics mean what goes with it have a new look.
“It used to be everything was wound up, and your music box was hand-cranked,” Wallace said.
His preference is for the more traditional elements, with his favorite pieces in the shop a set of traditional smokers made in the mountains of Germany.
When stocking the store, Wallace tries to keep the focus on the unique and hand-crafted, hailing from all over the globe, or pieces made locally in town or across Virginia.
“Our niche in this is to try and have the ma-and-pa types of things,” he said.
For many out-of-town guests who take in the Christmas spectacle of the shop, shopping gives them the chance to take a bit of their visit back home. Wallace enjoys imagining them, whichever their spirited persuasion, hanging their ornaments on the tree year after year and reminiscing about the charms of Williamsburg.
