While Duncan’s Toy Chest, the sprawling New York City toy store from Home Alone 2, tragically doesn’t exist in real life, there’s an actual—albeit much smaller—store which dubs itself the city’s oldest Christmas shop, selling the film’s iconic turtledoves, among many other holiday trimmings.

Christmas Cottage, now nestled on 7th Avenue a few blocks below Central Park in an under 600-square-foot shop, has been selling festive wares since 1985, co-owned by couple Paul and Diane Prianti, with tourists from China to the UK to Brazil flocking to the store every year to secure trinkets for their trees.

“I’m happy to know that the average person thinks, ‘Oh, well, it’s a Christmas shop,’ but we’ve become a destination,” he said.

The shop has seen many iterations. In 1985, a then-single Prianti ran it as a holiday pop-up shop, across Fifth Avenue, Madison Avenue, and Rockefeller Center’s Channel Gardens for several years, he told Retail Brew. When he met his now-wife and began a family, he realized it was time to settle down in the holiday retail business, too, finally securing a long-term lease at Channel Gardens for 10 years. Then, rent prices rose, and the shop moved to the Wellington Hotel on 7th Avenue in 1997, but was forced out in 2021 as the hotel shuttered amid Covid-19. For a year and a half, Christmas Cottage sold products from a mobile truck, which it now largely uses for advertising, before finding its current location on 7th Avenue between W 53rd and W 54th Street.

Prianti shared what’s kept him—and the shop—going since 1985.

Keep reading here.—EC

Somewhere in County Meath, an old Irish farmer orders a Guinness in solitude at the Waxies Dargle, while halfway across the world, a guy named Matt downs his third pint at a place called the Dubliner. Such is the Guinness revival.

What’s happening: The beer of Irish farmers is swelling in popularity among regular young people who have no idea what a lorry is. One Boston bar told the New York Times that it increased its Guinness order by 63% from last year to meet demand. And this week, Guinness owner Diageo placed a limit on orders throughout Great Britain, citing “exceptional demand.”

The foam-filled fury is due to a variety of factors.

Keep reading here on Morning Brew.—CC

We’re right in the heart of the holiday season now, and shoppers should know that this Wednesday is the deadline for FedEx Ground Economy to ship your packages before Christmas. So get those orders in, or you’ll be relying on costlier shipping options such as USPS Priority Mail Express.

Here’s what else is going on in retail this week:

In data releases: The consumer price index for November is dropping on Wednesday, and economists are expecting the rate to hold steady. The index ticked up 0.2% month over month in October for a 2.6% annual increase, which was in line with expectations. Related, US Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell last week said the economy was running hotter than expected, which should allow the central bank to be more cautious with rate hikes, which it began earlier this year.

Keep reading here.—AV