Wrapped In Nostalgia

That's music to Richard Kinderman's ears. He represents the fourth generation of Kinderman men to helm the family business, which grew out of a turn-of the-century dry-goods operation in downtown Philadelphia to become a major player in the yuletide trade. (His father, Brite Star chief executive and president Sandy Kinderman, who still answers proudly to the honorific "the King of Tinsel," works mainly from home these days.)

Since 1932 the company not only has made and sold enough tinsel to "stretch to the moon and back," according to Sandy Kinderman, but also has functioned as a major importer and distributor of festive holiday decorations. The synthetic gingerbread houses, artificial Christmas trees, decorative snow, illuminated lawn ornaments (sacred and secular) and tinsel garland that fill the Brite Star showroom may not be showing up in the pages of Martha Stewart Living anytime soon, but they do have the effect of making all who come in contact with them feel like a 9-year-old kid again.

Leading a tour of the showroom, Richard Kinderman stops at a conference table on which are displayed boxes of Brite Star Icicles from throughout the years. Though the packaging has changed over time to reflect the graphic design styles of each decade, this year's package design is practically indistinguishable from that of the early 1950s. The retro look, says his mother, Judy, is tapping into a consumer trend that can be seen as a response to 20 years of sterile, if stylish, Christmas decor.

"In just the last five years or so -- since 9/11, really -- people have felt the need to go back to a more traditional look for Christmas," she says, adding that customer requests for old-school decorations -- like the big, fat, brightly colored bulbs that were once among the most popular -- have led Brite Star to consider bringing them out of retirement. She also shows off a pair of apothecary cases containing dozens of vintage Christmas decorations from as far back as World War II, a collection she hopes will serve as the germ of a Brite Star Christmas museum.

The process by which laughable kitsch morphs into desirable nostalgia is a mysterious one. "There's sort of a magic boundary line," says Christmas collectibles expert Travis Smith. "Something has its moment, and then it's gone; it becomes thrift-store trash. But then, once enough time has passed, people say: 'Oh, yeah! I remember those.' It used to take about 20 years, but everything is so sped up now that our sense of nostalgia has been sped up, too, so it doesn't take as long -- I'd say about 10 years."

Smith, who with his partner, Skip Przywara, owns and operates Good Eye, a vintage furnishings store in Washington, is also the author of a recent book, "Kitschmasland," that celebrates Christmas decor from the 1950s, '60s and '70s: an era when plastic and tinsel reigned supreme, and "camp" was the place where city kids spent their summers.

"You have to remember that what we perceive now as kitschy or campy was not the intention when these decorations were originally produced," says Smith. "They were produced to be cute. We may look at them now and go, 'Oh, my God, that's hideous.' But back then it was considered charming."

Though he considers himself a connoisseur of Christmas camp, the love that Smith has for many of his book's featured items is genuine. And he has seen enough people come into Good Eye, where many of the items can be found, oohing and ahhing over the merchandise to know that while homemade garlands of cedar and eucalyptus may look beautiful, they're no match in the heartstring-tugging department for a 40-year-old, made-in Japan, light-up Santa.

"For some people, seeing it for the first time, it still works on just a purely visual level," Smith says. "They have no sentimental attachment to it, no nostalgic recollections; they're responding to it exactly as the person in 1957 was responding to it on a dime-store shelf: 'That's cute; I have to own it.'

"And then there are the people who bring in their older family members to the store specifically so they can show them these things," he continues. "They say: 'Look, Grandma and Grandpa, there's a whole store devoted to selling the stuff you had in your house at Christmas.' And Grandma and Grandpa say: 'See? We really did have good taste. We really were pretty hip.' "