Christmas never ends at the Christmas Attic

View Photo Gallery —  Through the scorch of the summer and the scourge of recession, it’s always Christmas in the Attic.

By DeNeen Brown,

At the Christmas Attic, a year-round Christmas store along a cobblestone street in Old Town Alexandria, the managers carry business cards stamped with this on the back: “YES, I KNOW I HAVE GLITTER ON MY FACE.” The glitter stamps spare them from repeating themselves as customers with good intentions point out stray glitter that has fallen on their cheeks, on their foreheads, in their curls — flyaway flecks of glitter lit up like diamonds under a tangle of blinking Christmas lights strung from the store’s ceiling.

Glitter is part of the job in this year-round Christmas store. It falls like fairy dust from the merchandise onto rugs, aisles, stairways, lace-covered tables, cash registers, and covers the angels, snow globes, holiday books, antique clocks. And employees.

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“I’m always conscious of it,” says Diana Bridger, 52, assistant store manager, with a twinkle in her eye (or is that glitter?). She is standing on the second floor near a Christmas tree. “But I wonder whether people are saying silently, ‘Isn’t she a little old for glitter make-up?’ ”

Inside the Christmas Attic, time is stuck like a record needle in the groove of a corny old Christmas album, skipping beats, then starting over again. The mood, too, is in a time warp; a strange happiness permeates the place, as owner and clerks attempt to help customers match their memories of Christmases past with crushed velvet, fragile glass ornaments and hand-painted nutcrackers.

On a recent sunny afternoon, the store’s owner, Cheri Hennessy, 52, dodges hanging ornaments, tinsel and angels as she hurries around a fluffy white Christmas tree.

“Diana! Hold this,” Hennessy calls out, extending a five-foot branch of silver pine cones — covered in glitter. Her pale blue eyes flash worry. Fulfilling nostalgic wishes is a tall order.

“Why am I holding this?” asks Bridger, standing near stacks of old-fashioned red, blue and green Christmas lights.

“Because I don’t know where else to put it,” says Hennessy, as she turns to move a display.

Space is precious here. The store is packed like a jar of Christmas jam. There are rows of tabletop-size wooden carolers with mouths frozen in perpetual “Oooos,” frosted snowmen, flying peacock ornaments and angels on high. Hand-crank music boxes spin, Scrooge figurines brood, a choir of “boy with bells” sings.

If you are standing still, you are bound to be in somebody’s way.

“We call it the Christmas Attic dance,” says Hennessy, in a red sweater and apron. She deftly positions a rack of holiday guest towels that capture the store’s giddy cheer.

“Let’s eat, drink and bond over shattered holiday expectations,” reads the red stitching on one towel.

“Let’s eat, drink and pray our butts fit in our velvet pants,” reads another.

“This is my favorite one,” Hennessy says.

The towel on the lower rack reads:

“There are no Freaking Elves.”

* * *

Time in the Christmas Attic is measured not in years, but in Christmases. “As in, I have been here 39 Christmases,” says Hennessy, who started working at the store at a card table, “guarding the money box,” when she was a pre-teen.

 
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