Bronner's, the World's Largest Christmas Store

Just south of downtown sits a building the size of five and a half football fields, glowing every day of the year with roughly one hundred thousand lights along a lane called Christmas Lane. This is Bronner's Christmas Wonderland, which bills itself, with a straight face and a world record to back it, as the world's largest Christmas store. It began small.

In nineteen forty three a young man named Wally Bronner started painting signs after school in his parents' basement, and marked his official business start in nineteen forty five after graduating. In nineteen fifty one he took on the job of designing Christmas decorations for the town's lampposts, and that community work grew into a retail empire. By nineteen fifty four Wally and his wife Irene had built their first permanent storefront.

In nineteen seventy seven the family consolidated three stores under one roof at the current location on Christmas Lane, and later expansions brought the building to roughly three hundred twenty thousand square feet. Inside are hundreds of decorated trees, around eight hundred animated figures, and products from some seventy countries. Bronner was a devout man who insisted the season keep its Christian meaning, and in nineteen ninety two, with permission from the government of Austria, he built a replica of the Silent Night Memorial Chapel from Oberndorf, honoring the famous hymn.

Wally Bronner died on the first of April, two thousand eight, but the store he built still draws more than two million visitors a year.