Like Santa checking on his workshop, Wayne Bronner roams the back rooms and aisles of his family’s store, Bronner’s CHRISTmas WONDERLAND–if a place as big as 5 1/2 football fields can be called a mere store.
Beneath a galaxy of Christmas lights and 5-foot-tall fiberglass nutcrackers and Santa Clauses, he points out the massive Nativity sales display, where you can buy everything from the Italian-made, 1-foot-high stucco likenesses of Mary, Joseph and Jesus for $165 each, to a $29, three-inch-high, tin creche from Mexico.
“Frankly it’s getting hard to find Nativity scenes,” said Bronner, 54, president and CEO of the company.
“A lot of stores don’t sell them. They’ve kind of backed away from them. They’re taking the approach, `Well, I don’t want to get into that. We’ll get criticized.’ Well, we don’t shy away from it. We jump right in . . . and we’ve got a tremendous selection for people to purchase.”
In this small, Bavarian-themed town, the store–open 361 days a year–has always been devoted to the sale of Christmas-related goods and has become over 61 years an icon for shoppers in the Midwest and around the world.
But if you’re hoping to hear “Happy Holidays” or “Season’s Greetings” as you shop for your “winter celebration” ornaments, you’ve come to the wrong place.
This year other retailers around the country, such as Wal-Mart, which switched back to using “Christmas” in its stores, are agonizing over what religious items they sell or how they advertise the season or greet customers, fueling an annual skirmish in the culture wars. Not at Bronner’s.
Frankenmuth, 90 miles north of Detroit, was founded in 1845 by German-Lutheran missionaries who wanted to spread Christianity to the Chippewa Indians, and the owners at Bronner’s wear their Lutheran faith on their Christmas-red sleeves.
From cellar to sales heaven
“Whoever may not wish to visit a Christmas place or complain that it’s called CHRISTmas . . . well, the sign is outside and they know what the facts are,” said Wallace “Wally” Bronner, 79, Wayne’s father and store “originator,” who started it as a signmaking venture in his parents’ basement in 1945.
From “CHRISTmas” in the store’s name to the star of Bethlehem in its logo, to the signs with letters 2 feet tall outside both entrances that proclaim “Enjoy CHRISTmas/It’s HIS Birthday. Enjoy Life/It’s HIS Way,” Bronner’s welcomes the controversy for a simple reason.
“We’re seeing more sales,” said Wayne Bronner. “A lot of the people here . . . 95 percent of them would say `Hey, keep Christ in Christmas.'”
Religious-related items like crucifixes, Nativity sets and angels make up maybe one-third of the store’s sales. But the Bronners — Wayne’s parents, wife, two sisters and their husbands are all part of management — have chosen a decidedly businesslike approach, even as they lay bare their personal view that Christmas can be properly observed only as a celebration of Jesus Christ’s birth.
Everyone of any faith, country, race, or ethnicity is welcome in the store — “Welcome” and “Merry Christmas” are written on store signs in more than 60 languages — and as long as customers are seeking ornaments and gifts, the store will sell them. The store even sells menorahs but was out of them on a recent visit.
The idea has worked so well that for the last 30 years they’ve proclaimed in advertising that Bronner’s is “The World’s Largest Christmas Store.” No one has ever challenged it, the Bronners said. But some worry about the dual message a store on such a scale sends.
Reminding people of the original meaning of Christmas “is good intentioned, but it has unintended consequences,” said Marva Dawn, an evangelical Lutheran theologian and author from Vancouver, Wash.
She visited the store 20 years ago and was worried even then, when the store was less than half its current size, about “how easily it could be mistaken as just a push to buy more things.”
At 320,000 square feet, or more than seven acres, Bronner’s is roughly double the size of most big-box stores like Target or Wal-Mart. In its 96,000 square-feet of display space, Bronner’s sells more than 50,000 individual ornaments and gifts, including 6,000 ornaments sold exclusively at Bronner’s, many of them designed in-house. There are more than 350 individually decorated trees on display, 150 different nutcrackers and 500 Nativity sets.
It is seasonal shopping bliss for most– about 98 out of every 100 customer comment cards applaud the store — but Christmas on steroids for some.
“I’m overwhelmed,” said Vanessa Verstral, 24, who came 150 miles from her home in Custer, Mich., with eight friends and her 4-year-old daughter to shop at Bronner’s recently. “I think there’s too much.”
100,000 lights, 20,000 visitors
With more than 100,000 Christmas lights and up to 20,000 visitors a day on weekends creating lots of heat, the store has to keep its air-conditioning running through December.
But in a store that has sales islands dedicated to dog and cat ornaments, including eight different ones of golden retrievers, some may wonder exactly what a 2-inch-high, $5.99 ornament of a plastic lobster in a “Clam Bake” bucket, made in China, has to do with CHRISTmas.
Wally Bronner has pondered that question with his family.
“What we basically say: Is it a tribute to the individual whose birthday is being observed?” said Bronner, who still comes to work every day in his trademark red leather shoes. “It’s what people make of it.”
And what most of more than 2 million annual visitors make of it is that it’s fine by them.
“I think it’s awesome,” said Melissa Kish, 32, who came from Cleveland, three hours away, with her mother to shop at Bronner’s for the first time. “I love all the religious stuff. It shows the government doesn’t do it right, trying to get involved in Christmas.”
Her mother, Ruth Sopata, 55, was similarly taken.
“That’s what I’ll tell people: That the government is trying to take the Christ out of Christmas, and here’s a guy trying to push back,” she said.
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530 miles of lights
Keeping count at Bronner’s CHRISTmas WONDERLAND:
– $900 daily electric bill
– 1.3 million glass ornaments sold annually
– 135,000 light sets sold each year — 530 miles long if stretched out together
– 700,000 feet of garlands sold annually
– 1,250 cars and 50 buses fit in the parking lot 60 billboards advertise the store in seven states 3 million catalogs mailed or given out in a year
–Sean D. Hamill
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ON THE WEB: For an audio slide show about CHRISTmas WONDERLAND in Frankenmuth, Mich., go to chicagotribune.com/ frankenmuth
