This Wisconsin bar has been serving up holiday cheer nonstop since 1970

With the holiday season in full swing, businesses around the state are putting up festive lights and ornaments to celebrate. But one bar in Appleton is ahead of everyone, as it’s had Christmas decorations up for decades.

Cleo Brown, an Appleton native and local restaurateur, opened Cleo’s Brown Beam Tavern on College Avenue in downtown Appleton in 1970. As the legend goes, after putting up Christmas decorations that first December, Brown left them up for several months past the new year — and people noticed.

“The customers — as they are oft to do — gave her a little grief about it, and Cleo decided to double down,” bar manager Alicia Andrews told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today.”

During the spring of 1971, Brown expanded on the bar’s Christmas decorations in a big way. This included adding a couple trucks’ worth of window decor she received from the Gimbels department store that was kitty-corner from Cleo’s. 

The result? A year-round festive winter wonderland that put Cleo’s on the map as “the Christmas bar.”

Since that first year, Cleo’s has leaned even more into the Christmas vibe with a themed cocktail and mocktail menu, including a candy-cane martini (served as a special in December) and the bar’s signature drink, the “Dirty Snowball,” which Andrews describes as “essentially a blended White Russian.”

Christmas music, however, is not typically on the menu. Andrews said the bar generally doesn’t play those tunes outside of the official holiday season.

“I would not be able to keep a staff, myself included,” she said with a laugh. “But that doesn’t mean that patrons aren’t going to come in and play Mariah Carey on our jukebox in the middle of July.”

Cleo’s enduring legacy

Due to health issues, Brown sold the bar to brothers Al, Dean, Carl and Steve Sosnoski in 2000. She passed away the following year, on April 28, 2001, at age 81. Brown’s legacy lives on at the bar, where a portrait of her hangs over the cash register.

The new owners and managers have continued to embrace the year-round Christmas theme.

“When you have a place like Cleo’s, you don’t want to go too crazy with the changes,” Andrews said. “If it’s not broke, you don’t really have to fix it.”

Over the years, Cleo’s has become a tourist attraction. Todd Fricke, a longtime employee, said when he used to travel for business, he’d sometimes overhear people from other cities talking about Cleo’s. 

“People didn’t always know what it was called, but they knew there was a Christmas bar in Appleton that they had to go to before they left,” he said.

Fricke has been working at Cleo’s in various capacities — as a doorman, barback and maintenance staff — for the past 20 years. He said it’s not uncommon for Cleo’s staff to stay on for many years.

“Once you become part of Cleo’s, it’s just in you,” he said.

For the staff and the regulars, Cleo’s is a special place outside of the unique Christmas theme. Fricke, who knew Brown from his days as a customer, remembers her as warm and accepting.

“Cleo (Brown) was inclusive before it was popular,” he said, adding that Cleo’s got a reputation as a gay bar in the 1970s and ‘80s because it was welcoming to all patrons at a time when that wasn’t the norm.

Another unique feature of Cleo’s is the bar itself, which Fricke said has a U-shaped layout with lots of “nooks and crannies” to allow for more social interaction.

“Cleo (Brown) designed it to be a conversation meeting-place as well as a bar,” he said.

Andrews believes the bar is so special because of the feelings Christmas evokes for many people. 

“You see people that come here every year around Christmas time. They gather with their families, they come down for a Snowball,” she said. “It’s associated with warm feelings for a lot of people now.” 

For Fricke, the bar is a kind of home away from home in a fast-paced, changing world.

“At Cleo’s, time stands still,” he said. “Everything else in life changes. Kids grow up. People get married, they get divorced. They have loved ones pass. But when you walk into Cleo’s … it’s the same old Cleo’s that you always remember. And I think that’s a very comforting thing.”

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct the name of Carl Sosnoski.