SARANAC LAKE — At night, when the Twin Crystal Rock Shop on Broadway is closed, lights in the windows stay on, illuminating the faces of dozens and dozens of nutcrackers standing at attention in a variety of uniforms, gazing out at the street.
This is the second year Saranac Laker Kasey Riley’s personal collection is on display at his twin brother Kean’s shop.
Kean lives upstairs next to the shop and gets to hear adults and kids admire the display at night, picking out their favorites from the bunch. This year, he said the kids’ favorite is the M&M-shaped nutcracker.
THE COOLEST THING
Kasey’s been collecting the functional decorations for more than 20 years now. Back then, his aunt-in-law had a couple on her mantle and he loved how each one had a unique styling on the traditional nutcracker form.
“I just thought that they were the coolest thing,” Kasey said.
He purchased a few for himself. But once his friends and family found out he was collecting them, that’s when their numbers soared. The collection stands at 120 and counting. Kasey added a couple new ones just the other week.
He challenged Kean to see if he could find them amid the army of stoic faces. Kean said he didn’t stand a chance. Hidden on the shoulders of one of the tallest nutcrackers in the back were a red and a green felt nutcracker.
For years, Kasey has displayed his collection at the DeChantal Apartments. Last year, Kean asked him to set the arrangement up in the shop window. Kasey said he also has a Christmas village miniature collection, currently on display at the apartments. Next year, he plans to swap the two, with the village at the shop and the nutcrackers at DeChantal.
SET FOR DISPLAY
The largest collection of nutcrackers, according to Guinness World Records, is 10,000 by a man named Arnas Jurskis in Lithuania. Kasey said he’s not trying to break this record.
“I have nowhere to put them now!” he said.
Just setting them all up in the shop window took him a solid 24 hours. Part of that came from the “domino effect.” If one gets bumped, he had to start over.
Ornamental nutcrackers carved in the shape of soldiers, knights and kings have existed since the 15th century. They became popular in the U.S. in the 1940s for two reasons. The first production of the ballet “The Nutcracker” was held in the U.S. in 1944. and some soldiers returning from World War II brought back with them German-made nutcrackers as souvenirs, according to a 2014 article in National Geographic.