Every room downstairs, it seems, houses a tiny, teeming, well-lit metropolis. There's Santa pedaling a three-wheeled cart of presents outside his house in North Pole Village. In the next room, a happy gent sits on a park bench reading a newspaper in the Christmas in the City display. Over in the fifties kitschland of The Original Snow Village, a father and son leave the Harley dealership toting wrapped gifts. Dad is a bald, paunchy biker in a leather jacket and sunglasses, but his face, nonetheless, is filled with good cheer.
Children skate on a glassy pond in New England Village.
Six geese can be seen a-laying in Dickens' Village. And tucked away in a back-room corner of the shop, a nutcracker vendor pushes his wares in Alpine Village, the least popular of the collector sets. Department 56 drives the year-round Christmas business. New pieces in each of its porcelain and ceramic town collections come out in January. In the days and weeks after the introductions and before retirement day, collectors course through the aisles of Department 56 retailers like reindeer in flight.