Since the debut of the very first Christmas village in 1976, Department 56 has been a name associated with the magic of the holiday season. Half a century in, the brand still wows collectors with new buildings, figures, and accessories introduced each and every year, and this page is your standing guide to everything that is new for Department 56 at St. Nick’s, season after season.
Whether your Christmas village is timeless and traditional or quirky and licensed, the annual releases always include something impossible to resist. Here is how the cycle works, what each village line is about, and where the new arrivals land.
How Department 56 Releases Work
D56 runs on a rhythm collectors learn quickly. New pieces are announced and introduced through the year, dated pieces mark their season, and older designs retire from production as new ones arrive. Retirement is what turns a piece from a product into a collectible; once a design retires, the hunt begins. Big licensed sets sometimes open for preorder ahead of arrival and have a habit of selling through, so collectors who want a headline set reserve early.
That cycle is also why the Department 56 collection at St. Nick’s is worth checking more than once a year: new arrivals, restocks, and the occasional retired treasure all flow through the same shelves.
Dated pieces and anniversary years
Watch for dated designs, the pieces stamped with their year. They exist to mark a season: the year the collection started, the year of a wedding or a first home, the year a child joined the family. Because each dated piece belongs to its year alone, they become tiny time capsules on the shelf, and anniversary releases celebrating milestones in a village line’s history tend to be the ones collectors reminisce about later.
The Classic Villages
The Original Snow Village
The line that started it all in 1976: warmly lit small-town America, from diners and service stations to neighbors on sleds. If you grew up near a main street, Snow Village is that memory in ceramic.
Dickens’ Village
Victorian England, gas lamps and all. Dickens’ Village is the literary heart of the catalog, with Scrooge, carolers, pubs, and street vendors wandering out of the pages of A Christmas Carol and into your display.
Christmas in the City
The Big Apple at holiday height: brownstones, theaters, department stores, and taxis in the snow. Christmas in the City pieces regularly tip their hat to real New York landmarks.
North Pole Village
Santa’s hometown, where the buildings are candy-striped and the industries are toys, sweets, and wrapping paper. North Pole Village is the most whimsical of the classic lines and a favorite with kids.
Alpine Village
Inspired by the charming towns of Bavaria: cuckoo-clock shops, mountain guides, and snow that looks like it means it. Alpine Village brings the European postcard to the shelf.
The Licensed Lines
No year is complete without the movie, TV, and character collections, and the roster at St. Nick’s reads like a family movie night: Disney, Harry Potter, The Grinch, Peanuts, The Nightmare Before Christmas, A Christmas Story, Christmas Vacation, Ghostbusters, and even Schitt’s Creek. From the halls of Hogwarts to the town of Whoville, these lines let a village travel anywhere your family’s favorites live, and they mix happily with the classic villages on the same shelf.
The licensed pieces also solve a particular gifting problem: the person who has everything but quotes one movie all December. A single lit building from their film is a gift that lands harder than its size suggests, and it plants a flag; more than one full licensed village has started life as somebody’s stocking-adjacent surprise.
Which Village Should You Start With?
If you are new to D56, let taste pick your line:
- You miss your hometown’s main street: the Original Snow Village, where the diner is always open and the gas station still checks your oil.
- Your December smells like a Dickens paperback: Dickens’ Village, obviously, and you will not stop at one building. Nobody does.
- You love the city at the holidays: Christmas in the City, brownstones, theaters, and all.
- You have kids, or are one at heart: North Pole Village, the line where the factories make toys and the shops sell sweets.
- Your family skis, or wishes it did: Alpine Village and its Bavarian postcards.
- Movie night is sacred: the licensed lines, starting with whichever film your household quotes most.
- October is your month: the Halloween Village, no contest.
There is no wrong first line, and no rule against a second one. Ask a longtime collector and they will tell you the villages have a way of annexing adjacent shelves.
Accessories, landscape, and lighting
Buildings get the glory, but accessories build the world: figures, trees, fences, street lamps, and the village landscape and lighting pieces that turn a row of buildings into a town. A good ratio for a young display is two or three accessories per building, which keeps streets busy and shelves alive.
The Halloween Village
October gets its own zip code. The Halloween Village puts a spooky spin on the D56 tradition, from sweet to scary, and we gave it the full tour in our D56 Halloween Village guide. If your decorating year starts before the leaves finish falling, start there.
Rare and Retired Department 56
Because designs retire from production for good, vintage D56 hunting is a hobby of its own, and retired buildings dating back decades are genuinely difficult to find. St. Nick’s maintains a dedicated corner for exactly this: browse the retired buildings and accessories and the rare, retired, and pre-loved collection, where pieces from earlier eras surface, sell, and are gone. If a building you missed years ago still stings, that is the shelf to watch.
Hunting a specific retired building rewards patience and a little method. Keep a written want list with the piece’s exact name and line, check condition and the original box whenever a candidate surfaces, and tell the store staff what you are after; they see what comes and goes. The one rule every longtime collector agrees on: when the piece you have hunted for years finally appears, do not sleep on it, because the next collector’s want list looks a lot like yours.
Shop What’s New for Department 56 at St. Nick’s
Adding a new Department 56 piece has become a treasured tradition for so many families, and the craftsmanship makes these pieces natural heirlooms. St. Nick’s has carried D56 since 1976, the year both the store and the brand began, and we look forward to the new releases as eagerly as our customers do.
Browse the full Department 56 selection online, come see the villages set up in person at the Littleton store, and when you get your pieces home, our guide to displaying a Department 56 village will help the new arrivals earn their spotlight. New pieces appear online as they land, which makes the category page the closest thing D56 collectors have to a release feed, and the store staff can tell you exactly what arrived this week. Some families make the first village visit of the fall its own small holiday, which, frankly, we encourage.
Frequently Asked Questions
New designs are announced and introduced through the year, and collectors typically see fresh arrivals reach shelves ahead of the holiday season. Dated pieces mark their year, and large licensed sets sometimes open for preorder before arrival. Checking the collection more than once a year is the collector’s habit for a reason.
The classic lines are the Original Snow Village (small-town America and the line that started it all in 1976), Dickens’ Village (Victorian England), Christmas in the City (New York at the holidays), North Pole Village (Santa’s whimsical hometown), and Alpine Village (Bavarian charm), plus the Halloween Village for October.
The licensed roster includes Disney, Harry Potter, The Grinch, Peanuts, The Nightmare Before Christmas, A Christmas Story, Christmas Vacation, Ghostbusters, and Schitt’s Creek, among others. The pieces are scaled to mix with the classic villages, so Hogwarts can sit a street over from Scrooge’s counting house.
Retired means the design is permanently out of production. Once a piece retires, remaining stock is all there will ever be, which is what makes retired buildings collectible and increasingly hard to find as years pass. Condition and original packaging carry real weight for retired pieces.
Retired and early pieces are actively sought by collectors, with desirability driven by the piece’s popularity, rarity, condition, and packaging. Rather than thinking of them as investments, most collectors treat value as a happy side effect of hunting the buildings they love.
Yes, and plenty of collectors do. The lines share a general scale, so licensed pieces and classic villages coexist happily. Purists keep lines separate by shelf or zone; storytellers mix them. Both camps are correct, which is the great thing about a hobby with no referee.
Start with one building from the line whose world you love most, add a character or accessory to make it a scene, and grow a piece or two a year. Risers, a bit of landscape, and lighting come later. The best first piece is the one you would display even if you never bought another.
Yes. Alongside the current lines, St. Nick’s maintains retired buildings and accessories and a rare, retired, and pre-loved collection where earlier-era pieces surface. They tend to sell quickly, since each one is effectively the last of its kind on the shelf.
The buildings are designed to glow from within, which is most of their charm after dark. Plan for cords at the back of the display and one switchable power strip, and keep a few spare bulbs with the village boxes so opening night never stalls.
St. Nick’s in Littleton, Colorado sets up the villages in the store, which is the best way to appreciate the detail before choosing pieces. The store has carried Department 56 since 1976, the year both the store and the brand began, and staff can tell you what is new each season.
St. Nick’s Christmas and Collectibles has been Littleton, Colorado’s Christmas store since 1976. Shop online, visit us in person, or call 1-800-875-8865 with any questions.
