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Inside New York City's most festive bar, where they spend more than $60,000 a year getting ready for Christmas

Over 150,000 Christmas decorations fill this relatively small German restaurant.

  • Rolf's German Restaurant is known for its over-the-top Christmas decorations.
  • By December, lines wrap around the block, and the place gets packed with locals and tourists.
  • They spend $60,000 on lights and ornaments.

When it comes to getting in the Christmas spirit, no one does it quite like Rolf's German Restaurant in New York City's Gramercy Park.

The otherwise quiet restaurant and bar is a spectacle during the holidays. Thousands of sparkling ornaments, icicles, lights, and dolls dangle above customers as they sip spiked hot apple cider and mulled wine.

Business Insider spoke to restaurant manager Suhal Uddin in 2015 to get the scoop behind Rolf's tradition of over-the-top Christmas decorations. He estimated that there are about 15,000 ornaments and 100,000 lights hung up inside. It all costs the restaurant between $60,000 and $65,000 each year.

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We had to check out the decorations for ourselves.

The Christmas decorations usually start going up during the last week of September.

Over the following six weeks, six men work overnight, five nights a week, to complete the ornate decorating process.

By November 1, it's complete. At Rolf's, the holiday season begins well before Thanksgiving.

Uddin said that the decorating tradition was carried over from the restaurant's previous owner. It gets more elaborate each year.

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According to Uddin, there are an estimated 100,000 lights strung up throughout the restaurant.

About 15,000 ornaments are hung from the ceiling.

In addition to that, there are thousands of icicles.

Plus, there are about 800 dolls.

Once you notice the dolls, you can't help but begin spotting them everywhere.

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And here they are again.

According to Uddin, Rolf's replaces every ornament that's broken or damaged. "The decorations cost us between $60,000 and $65,000 every year," he told Business Insider.

Special Christmas-themed cocktails, including spiced eggnog and mulled wine, are served throughout the season.

The restaurant becomes extremely busy starting the second and third weekends of December. Uddin told us that the line to get in sometimes wraps around the corner.

Tourists flock from all over the world to see Rolf's. "We get a couple hundred international calls for reservations every year," Uddin said. "We can't accommodate everyone, but we try our best."

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Luckily, they keep their decorations up until April, so that anyone who couldn't make it for Christmas still has the chance to experience it in the spring.

After that, all of the decorations are packed up and sent to a storage room in Brooklyn, where they sit until the next Christmas season.

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