Christmas never ends at this long-running Las Vegas showroom

It’s a quarter till 8 a.m. on the first Saturday in February, and this ragged stretch of East Charleston Boulevard is largely barren save for the line forming in front of a nondescript building across from a vacant lot and a tire shop that has seen better days.

“I feel like I’m at a Who concert,” one guy gushes to a round of knowing chuckles from the dozen or so fellow early birds flocked around him.

The countdown’s on, the morning chill countered by the warmth of camaraderie — you’re not here if you’re not a diehard.

Fifteen minutes later, the doors open to Ralph Jones Display and everyone pours into the winter wonderland that boasts the region’s most elaborate display of Christmas goods.

Today marks the start of the company’s annual half-off sale, which is almost as big a deal for Yuletide obsessives as Christmas morning itself.

The showroom quickly becomes mosh-pit-packed, fake mistletoe comingling with real excitement, as we wander through this maze of LED snowmen; 12-foot-high, $2,300 faux Anchorage fir trees; muffin-shaped Santa Claus decorations; shelves full of squirrels clutching pine cones and — because goths love Christmas, too — a skeleton butler holding a snack tray.

Some free spenders lug cardboard boxes with plastic handles to contain all their finds.

Strangers congratulate each other on their scores.

A man in a red flannel shirt pumps his fist as he completes his purchase and lets out a celebratory “Woo!”

The sale takes a month for the staff to prepare for and is among their busiest days of the year.

“I’m movin’ like a freight train,” a worker notes as she bustles by. At the door, a greeter sips a can of Red Bull.

“We sweat bullets right before it happens,” Ralph Jones co-owner Kate Jones, who runs the business with her husband, Jody Jones, explains in an interview months later. “Even though we’ve done it so many times, it’s always a new crowd, a new rush. It always gets our nerves up.”

For decades now, Ralph Jones has become synonymous with Christmas in Vegas — and beyond — decorating myriad casinos annually, including Circa, the Golden Nugget and the Boyd Gaming corporate offices, while also drawing customers from around the globe.

“We have all sorts of people coming in,” Jones notes. “We have them from Sweden, Denmark, I have people from Hawaii, nonstop. The magnitude of humans coming through this building, it overwhelms my staff.”

What brings them here is the promise of eternal seasonal cheer, this winter wonderland that never thaws.

At Ralph Jones, it’s as if Dec. 26 never comes.

“We’ve really pushed, my husband and I, to make it a destination for people,” Jones says. “It’s the way we decorate. They want to come in and be immersed.”

Origins of an eternal Christmas

To think, this all started with a little tinsel.

Kate Jones plucks an old black-and-white photo from the wall behind her, an aerial shot of the building in which we currently sit.

“This spot was Young Electric,” she says of the site’s previous owners, Young Electric Sign Co., which built the iconic Vegas Vic sign here back in the day.

Close to 60 years ago, Jody Jones’ grandparents, Ralph and Doris Jones, who owned a general store in the Salt Lake City area, traded that property for the location in question. They moved to Vegas to open a store selling greeting cards, knickknacks and the like.

Ralph Jones befriended the city’s mayor, Ralph Lamb, and the two rode horses together.

One day, the mayor made a business-altering request.

“Lamb asked Grandpa, ‘Can you get that tinsel crap you put across the street? Because we want to decorate downtown Las Vegas,’ ” Kate recalls. “So Grandpa said, ‘Yeah, sure. Let me see what I can do.’ From there, they just started bringing in Christmas stuff.”

The store would be passed down to Ralph Jones’ son, Ralph “Hoot” Jones, and his wife, Ginda, with Hoot adding a retail fixture business that remains a big part of the company’s bottom line.

“That’s what keeps us going year-round,” explains Kate, who’s been working here for 22 years, first doing grunt work for Ginda Jones before assuming more responsibilities as she and her husband took control of the company upon his parents’ retirement.

Kate is now immersed in all things Christmas in the store.

After February’s annual sale, she spends weeks traveling to various holiday markets — Atlanta and Dallas being the two biggest, she says — to purchase all the new Yuletide gear.

On July 1, she begins getting the showroom ready, which takes months to complete, usually opening right after Labor Day.

This year’s debut was delayed a week because of shipping issues. It has not dampened her enthusiasm.

“You’ve got to see the big room right now,” she says on a Tuesday morning in October, enjoying a moment of relative calm before the oncoming seasonal storm. “It’s a showstopper.”

‘We’re fanatics about Christmas’

Behold, the pair of life-sized, singing, $6,000 reindeer.

“This is my pièce de résistance right here,” Kate Jones beams. “These are my guys. They actually come with an SD card with six songs, but they’re Bluetooth as well, so you can play whatever you want. They’re my new babies.”

Around the corner rests an entire family of stuffed polar bears.

“This is my other amazing piece that I found,” Jones says, gesturing toward the massive mama bear on her side. “She’s sleeping.”

In the back of the room, though, is this year’s most impressive addition: a hand-crafted, life-size advent calendar that spans an entire wall. It was built by Jody Jones, an ace woodworker who had his own cabinet-making business until he shuttered it recently.

“He always asks me, ‘What props do you need?’ ” Jones says of her husband. “And so I said, ‘I need a life-size advent calendar.’ He’s like, ‘Seriously?’ ”

Whether you’re here to buy anything or not, the place is an attraction.

“The best thing is when people come up the stairs,” employee Lisa Maruda notes, “and they, like, just stop and (makes gasping sound) or their mouths, you see them drop.”

Perhaps this is why the place gets so much repeat business.

“A lot of our clientele is all-the-timers,” general manager Kara Kirschman says. “They come multiple times throughout the season.”

The vibe helps: Just being here is like a natural mood enhancer, with pretty much everyone buzzing with Buddy the Elf levels of enthusiasm.

“When you work around Christmas, it makes you so happy. It makes us happy,” Jones says. “We love Christmas. We’re fanatics about Christmas.”

Before we leave, we ask Maruda what her job title is, for attribution purposes.

“Put ‘elf,’ ” Jones instructs. “That’s her.”

“Yes, ‘elf,’ that would be right,” Maruda agrees, pointing to her boss. “And that’s the head elf there.” ◆