Minnesota’s magical, maximalist Christmas-shopping tradition

From November to New Year’s, Anthony Scornavacco’s self-titled antique store displays 50 Christmas trees, sized from towering to tabletop, laden with thousands of fancy new ornaments. There are armies of nutcrackers, flocks of angels and all sorts of feathers and frills.

Twinkling lights and shimmering chandeliers set the grand room aglow, from its marble floors to soaring ceiling. Cue the “Hallelujah Chorus.”

It’s Minnesota’s maximalist Christmas: downtown St. Paul’s longtime, hidden-gem shopping tradition. And it’s an especially treasured one since the demise of Minneapolis’ Holidazzle parade and Dayton’s eighth-floor displays.

Visitors to Anthony Scornavacco Antiques, in the historic Hamm Building, ring the doorbell and then wait a beat before their dapper host — typically Scornavacco himself — lets them in. The old-fashioned custom serves as a dramatic pause before the big reveal.

Today’s TikToks and reels can’t replicate the sense of awe that stepping into Scornavacco’s shop inspires. Even the most pathetic, Charlie Brown-tree decorators among us — or the actual Grinch — would admit it’s the magic of secular Christmas, incarnate.

Scornavacco still remembers his delighted reaction to seeing the holiday display at the antique shop that predated his — though it was 50-some years ago. “I was like a child,” he enthused.

Scornavacco and the shop’s manager, Isaac Nelson, start buying next season’s Christmas décor in January. They focus on hand-painted, blown-glass ornaments made by decades-old European companies.

Scornavacco tries to carry something for everyone. There are entire themed trees with ornaments for dog lovers, travel fans or ornithologists. Shoppers can spend $100 on globes that resemble Fabergé eggs, or 25 cents on mini glitter balls.

Speaking of glitter, Scornavacco and Nelson resign themselves to a season covered in twinkling specks.

“Even if you shower, it doesn’t go away,” Scornavacco said.

Nelson shrugged. “It’s the holiday of light.”

By early December, the top third of the shop’s majestic, 16-foot tree had been cleared of ornaments by early-season shoppers. It’s the same faux evergreen Scornavacco saw half a century ago visiting the Christmas display of his shop’s predecessor, Nakashian-O’Neil interior design and antiques.

Scornavacco and Nelson remember O’Neil as a real character with a wealth of knowledge about opulent aesthetics — and his clients’ personal lives.

“He knew everybody up on the hill who had money,” Nelson explained.

Like O’Neil, Scornavacco, has spent a lifetime immersed in fine furnishings and décor. His first exposure to antiques came from inheriting his late grandfather’s trunk as a child. It held postcards, glassware and other memorabilia. “There was really nothing of great value in it, but it intrigued me,” Scornavacco said.

Scornavacco has owned H&B Gallery in Uptown, Minneapolis, for decades, consigning high-end household goods, art and antiques. When his St. Paul showroom isn’t displaying Christmas ornaments, it holds Scornavacco’s personal inventory of 18th- and 17th-century furniture, paintings, tapestries, jewelry and silver, from Chippendale chairs to Spode china to Tiffany glass.

Scornavacco says his many buying trips across the Atlantic reinforced the European perspective that many generations preceded his own. “In America, you’re sort of at the moment always, as if you’re the first thing,” he remarked.

This year, tariffs quashed the annual custom ornament Scornavacco commissions to commemorate a St. Paul landmark. (Past ornaments have featured hand-painted images of Como Park Conservatory, the Minnesota State Capitol and the Cathedral of St. Paul.)

But customers haven’t been deterred. On Saturdays, a line forms outside the door when the shop reaches capacity. Crowds and fragile ornaments don’t mix. (“I usually break the first one,” Scornavacco admits.) But plenty of shoppers are happy to wait an hour for their dose of Christmas spirit.