A TRIP TO TINSELTOWN
Tinseltown Christmas Emporium owner Audy Czigler and his mother Tonie Czigler stand amid holiday cheer that thrives year-round in the Hintonburg shop.
Audy Czigler wears glitter like a Pennsylvania miner wears coal dust. It's on his face and hands, in his hair and on his clothing. It's an occupational hazard that he says he just can't get rid of.
And when he's sifting through job applications from people wanting to work at his Tinseltown Christmas Emporium on Somerset Street West in Hintonburg, the glitter is a consideration. For he's not looking for people who can simply endure it; no, he's screening for people who revel and carouse in glitter, for those for whom the 10,000th playing of I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus is as refreshing as the first, for those who believe that the 12 days of Christmas last 365 days a year. The believers.
Sure, he has heard the voices of skeptical passersby on the sidewalk outside his shop, especially in the summer months when visions of sugar plums have receded from many people's minds.
“I hear them out there a few times a day,” he says, “wondering how a Christmas store can possibly survive year-round.
“I want to go out and tell them,” he adds, but his voice trails off as a customer approaches and asks about an ornament she saw there recently, of a red cardinal in a white heart. Where is it?
There's scant room for sidewalk skeptics now, crowded out by the dozens of shoppers who, since October, have regularly lined up outside the store, patiently biding their time (and flocks) as pandemic-induced regulations limit the shop to 18 customers at a time.
Once inside, visitors will be forgiven for not first noticing the glitter, or even the rendition of Baby, It's Cold Outside playing on the speakers. For there's no specific “first thing” you notice. The first thing you notice is EVERYTHING — a floor-to-ceiling cornucopia of festivity, reminiscent perhaps of how the blind man in the Gospel of John may have felt when Jesus rubbed spit and mud in his eyes and gave him sight for the first time.
Wreaths and trees and ornaments galore, or course, but also cards, candles and holders, oven mitts and glassware, flowers, snow globes, crèches, ribbon, candies, plush owls, chandeliers, a ferris wheel, elves and angels, saviours and Santas. Poinsettias and salt and pepper shakers, napkins, pillows, stockings, sachets, crackers, towels and glittering, glowing lanterns. For just a dollar, you can purchase a mini-ball decoration, while for about $3,000 there's a human-sized nutcracker soldier, perfect for late-night fever dreams.
Czigler says there are currently almost 30,000 unique products crammed into the store. “It was never supposed to be this overthe-top, but it took on a life of its own.”
Czigler is, himself, a Christmas baby — he turns 40 on Dec. 27 — and was presumably born with the dial on the Christmas gene turned up to 11. When he was five years old, rather than ask the Rideau Centre mall Santa for a Transformer, skateboard or Atari home games system, he requested a white Christmas tree, with white lights. “And make sure the wires for the lights are also white,” he advised St. Nick, “so they don't show up against the tree.”
Of course, Santa brought him the tree. He also routinely asked for ornaments.
His mother, Tonie, who helps out at the store during the Christmas rush (“I come at Christmas and then I leave with Santa,” she says), recalls there were always two trees at their home, one of them in Czigler's bedroom.
“It was Christmas all year round,” she says. “When it was Valentine's Day, he'd change his tree. If it was Easter, it was an Easter tree. At Halloween, it turned black.”
In Grade 12 at St. Paul High School, meanwhile, Czigler's fourmonth work placement — “an easy credit,” he says — was at Christmas in the Capital, a year-round Christmas store on Elgin Street. He ended up staying for 10 years, until the store closed, then spent seven years in Toronto in non-Christmas jobs, before returning to Ottawa and, in 2012, opening Tinseltown and its adjacent sister store, Marie Antoinette, which Czigler describes as French country/shabby/chic.
Czigler insists there are more than enough people with a yearround interest in Christmas to keep Tinseltown open 12 months a year, with tourists arriving with Ottawa's first tulips and business steady through the year.
“People like to come in because it reminds them of Christmases when they were kids. I see 50-yearold men — tough guys — come in and become like little boys again.”
COVID-19 brought a great deal of uncertainty, and during the store's closure during the first wave, Czigler did renovations and built a website.
But his concern that the public's more muted plans this Christmas might hurt sales appears, at least as he heads into December, to be unfounded, with this year outperforming last.
And among this year's hottest-selling items are pandemic-themed ornaments.
Czigler believes that part of the store's appeal for many shoppers this year is that it provides a break from COVID-19.
“Some people are thinking, `If we're only going to have a few family members over this Christmas, let's really do it up.' People are so excited for Christmas. I think they want to think about something besides COVID and American politics.
“They come in here to forget about that. It's a different world in here.”