Our family found a Christmas treasure this year. Tucked away off Sprague in an industrial part of East Central Spokane is a warehouse called Old World Christmas. As you can imagine, there is all kinds of magic inside.
It’s a pretty cool story. Old World Christmas is actually a company with a worldwide reach that produces glass ornaments and ships them to giddy customers on all corners of the globe. It also so happens that Old World Christmas is headquartered in Spokane. And when the company isn’t shipping ornaments thousands and thousands of miles away, they are offering their overstocked ornaments to locals at a heavily discounted price.
Twice per year, Old World Christmas opens its warehouse retail store to the general public. The schedule almost reminds me of Willy Wonka occasionally opening his chocolate factory 😂. You can go in the middle of summer for “Christmas in July” or you can go from mid-October through Dec. 23. When you walk through the doors, you enter a Christmas oasis with beautifully decorated trees and bin after bin of reduced-priced ornaments.
We made our first trip to Old World Christmas during Thanksgiving weekend. In fact, many other families did too. Thanks to an in-depth feature in the Spokesman-Review, the hidden gem was made known to a larger audience of us living in Spokane.
Overstocked, outdated, and chipped ornaments find their way to the Old World Christmas retail store. Many are priced at 70% off their original value. Most of them you can’t tell why they landed in the shop. The variety is insane: fruits, vegetables, beverages, household items, hand sanitizer, automobiles, animals, famous people, candy bars, and so much more are available in ornament-form at a cheap price.
My favorite section? The sports teams! Old World Christmas boasts bin after bin of MLB, NFL, NBA, and college ornaments. If you need a unique gift for the sports fan on your list, you know where to go!
During our first trip to Old World Christmas, I let both Sloan and Beau pick something out. Sloan chose a Taylor Swift-themed ornament while Beau opted for a mushroom. When we returned this past weekend, Sloan picked out a “World’s Best Teacher” ornament for Mrs. DeRuyter. I plan to make a Thanksgiving weekend pilgrimage to Old World Christmas an annual tradition for the kids where they can pick out an ornament. I can’t wait to see their collections grow over the years.
If you are looking for a festive activity in the remaining days before we celebrate our Lord’s birth, venture over to Old World Christmas located at 4007 E. Main Ave. Don’t Blink.