The store where Christmas began in September

Just before noon on October 5, Richard Morrison hung a glass ornament resembling a garlic bulb from a small metal tree. It was one of several trees installed at a John Derian store in Manhattan’s East Village neighborhood, where Mr. Morrison, a floor manager, and his coworkers had been putting up holiday decorations since Sept. 30.

It was the first time John Derian, 61, has started the Christmas season in his store since he founded his eponymous retail company in New York in 1995.

Mr. Morrison, 36, was one of five employees who were in the store unpacking and arranging jewelry on Oct. 5, a balmy Thursday. As he hung up the ornament, he wiped a line of glitter from his forehead. “It’s a hazard here,” he said of the glitter. Claire Cook, 28, a store manager who was also decorating, added: “Working here you don’t have to deal with glitter.”

Mr. Derian, owner of three stores on East Second Street, not only started the season earlier than ever this year, but he also devoted more space than before to holiday decorating by transforming a store normally used as a furniture showroom into a festive wonderland. “People don’t buy furniture as Christmas gifts,” he said, “so I thought it would be fun to do that here.”

Inside are a dozen trees with hundreds of decorations and wreaths; vintage glass streamers; Paper mache tree toppers; and a giant snowman named Tony that Mr. Derian bought from an antiques dealer in Rhode Island. He paid about $1,200 for the snowman, he said, adding that if a customer wanted to buy it, he would charge about $2,400.

But on October 5, the day before the holiday store opened to the public, it was still chaos. Around 1 p.m. that afternoon, a young woman walked in, wearing a blush-colored athleisure set, as Judy Garland’s “Over the Rainbow” played.

“We’re not actually open,” Mr. Morrison told her, “but feel free to take a look around. Be careful!”

A group of angel ornaments in blue and pink pastel shades hung from brass meat hooks near the cash register. Cardboard boxes scattered throughout the store contained even more decorations: pickles, mermaids, artichokes, caviar tins, corgis, oysters, vegetables and mushrooms were just some of the designs. Most were made of glass in Poland or Germany. Their prices vary: a small glass peacock ornament costs $32; a large glass dragon costs $352.

When the young woman left the store, her LL Bean tote bag, embroidered with the word “slay,” barely missed a peacock.

Mr Derian said he had about 50,000 pieces of jewelery for sale online and in his stores this year. Employees try to exhibit three of each style. When ornaments are sold – or broken – they are replaced. Some extras are stored in a courtyard behind the holiday shop for easy access. Others are held down the street, in a room used for shipping and storage, and in a studio on Chrystie Street where Mr. Derian makes decoupage, a kind of cut-and-paste art.

Mr. Derian estimated that a few pieces of jewelry break every day in his stores, but there is no “you-break-it-you-buy-it rule.” “When someone breaks an ornament, we say an angel grows wings,” he added, referencing a line from the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

Several were destroyed when the store was set up on October 5. Their shattered remains were thrown into a box that workers called the “ornament graveyard.”

“Every now and then you hear a crash and you hope for the best,” said Patrick Dugan, 36, a sales associate who helps set up the store.

At the back of the store, a towering artificial spruce tree, speckled with fake snow, was decorated with fungal ornaments in various shapes in colors like red, green, purple, pink and aquamarine. Many employees said the mushroom tree, versions of which have been set up in recent years, has become the most popular holiday display.

Piotr Morawski, whose family business, Morawski Ornaments in Lodz, Poland, has been selling items to Mr. Derian for about a decade, called him “the mushroom man.”

Mr Morawski, 29, added: “He loves them.”

Mr Derian said his love for fungi grew after he started looking for mushrooms in his spare time, adding that he usually used what he found for decoration, not cooking. “You can grow your own mushrooms here,” he said of the store, without a sign.

He started selling ornaments 15 years ago because of his love of Christmas, he said, “and it just kept growing and growing.”

The actress Amy Sedaris, a longtime customer and now a friend of Mr. Derian, likened the inside of the holiday store to “the bottom of the ‘I Dream of Jeannie’ bottle.” Anna Wintour, the Vogue editor and another longtime client, said in an email, “There’s always something surprising, whimsical or amusing.”

Certain people have made it a tradition to visit Mr. Derian’s stores this time of year, he said, and some bring their children. He added that the collaboration with Target, for which he recently designed a line of Thanksgiving decor, had brought him greater fame. “It became something that I didn’t expect would change,” he said.

A newer element of Mr. Derian’s holiday setup is the rope post he has used on East Second Street to limit the number of customers who can shop at one time. He started using it in 2020, when pandemic-related restrictions imposed strict capacity limits on stores. But he has continued to use the stand, he said, because “if you have too many people in there, it’s not fun for anyone.”

Sometimes, especially on weekends in December, a line forms outside. At first, Mr. Derian said, “I would feel bad about the line.” But then he started noticing the lines that could form nearby on Lafayette Street, outside Levain Bakery and the Kith clothing store. “I would go there and there are lines and people are okay,” he said. “It’s a neighborhood of lines.”

Mr. Derian, who grew up in Watertown, Mass., and whose father managed a local supermarket, does not use point-of-sale software in his stores. Prices are written on paper labels and customers are given handwritten receipts. “I’m a creative person running a business, not really a businessman,” he said, adding that he has been meeting with a business coach online since 2022.

He said about a quarter of his stores’ sales were holiday-related. As in years past, he opens a number of stores during the season, including the holiday store, on Sundays when they are normally closed. Mr. Derian also hired five seasonal workers this year. He employs about 40 people full-time and also has stores in the West Village and in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

He thought starting the season earlier and converting the furniture showroom into a holiday store would help increase sales, he said, and provide a better shopping experience, in part because he’s using a larger space. “It’s easier to get in and out,” Mr. Derian said.

On October 5, just after 2 p.m., a cloud of smoke appeared outside the store’s entrance as employees were preparing the displays. The smoke wafted from a bunch of sage leaves, lit by Thomas Little, whose company, Urbangreen, has carried out landscaping and planting work at Mr Derian’s shops for the past decade.

Mr. Little, 59, said he began every project for Mr. Derian with a wise ritual.

“When you go into John’s,” he said, “it’s something sacred.”