Christmas on Clearance -- a Digression
Warning: Today's entry is a digression on Christmas and corporate retail. It has nothing to do with spinning, knitting, fiber, or alpacas. Fiber blog purists may wish to stop reading now. Sentimental traditionalists read on!
When I was growing up, Christmas didn't really start until the 24th. Partly this is due to my father's tradition in which the Christmas season lasts from December 24th to January 1 and the children don't see the tree until Christmas day.
But mostly it's due to the fact that we ran a Christmas Tree Farm.
And it's not like we didn't do anything for Christmas before the 24th. I have no idea how mom managed to purchase (and hide) all the presents and fill the fridge for the Christmas feasts, but somehow she did. Somehow I managed to get to all my rehearsals and Christmas concerts. It's just that we really didn't start doing any decorating or celebrating until after the last weekend before Christmas. There were years when we finally cut our own tree about noon Christmas Eve, decorated it in a hurry, stuffed the presents underneath, and hurriedly opened them so we could get up at 5:00 AM for the four-hour drive to Grandmother's on Christmas day.
No wonder we didn’t do much between Christmas and New Years. We were tired.
I remember the time between Christmas and New Years quite fondly. Dad usually took the week off from his day job. We'd spend a few hours working on the farm, and then hole up in the house to read or play board games. It was family time -- close, relaxed family time.
Except for a tradition of the Christmas carols hitting the stereo the Friday after Thanksgiving, my youthful Christmas celebration really started sometime after December 20th and ended with a return to work or school after New Years Day. I think the family time between Christmas and New Years is a lot of what makes Christmas so important to me today.
And that's why I object so much to the "Christmas" season of my current retail employer. I arrived at work one day in late September to find a Santa and Jumbo Snow Globe on display outside the store. Now, two weeks prior to the actual holiday, Christmas is almost over for the store. Markdown of holiday merchandise has begun (but lest you rush to my place of employment on reading this blog, please note the keyword is begun.) Christmas shelves are being reset to the usual items. And, we can't get any more Christmas trees for the garden center.
Yup, Christmas is almost over and it's only the 12th.
Sad. Very sad. And, I think, very symptomatic of what's wrong with the big retail industry in the United States.
To explain, I once again digress to my childhood Christmas.
As a child, we would happily re-arrange our Christmas Eve schedule to help somebody purchase a last minute Christmas tree. It wasn't that we really needed the money from those last few sales, but helping somebody else celebrate Christmas was the right thing to do. Part of giving at Christmas was giving of our time and schedule to help make somebody else's holiday -- and it felt good to do so.
Last minute sales were sometimes a pain, but they were an expected part of the holiday. Christmas never went without glitches in my childhood household and customers were but one more aspect of the adventure.
Adventure makes for a wonderful, if interesting, holiday.
So here I am working retail for a major chain. It's two weeks before Christmas. Just as I'm getting close enough to Christmas to really get in the Christmas mood, Christmas is on clearance.
No wonder the retail industry keeps disappointing Wall Street with Christmas sales figures. The holiday is being pushed so hard and so early that Christmas revenue is being moved into September and Christmas sales tail off before December really gets going.
It's December 12th. Christmas is on clearance. The party's over before the holiday has really begun.
When I was growing up, Christmas didn't really start until the 24th. Partly this is due to my father's tradition in which the Christmas season lasts from December 24th to January 1 and the children don't see the tree until Christmas day.
But mostly it's due to the fact that we ran a Christmas Tree Farm.
And it's not like we didn't do anything for Christmas before the 24th. I have no idea how mom managed to purchase (and hide) all the presents and fill the fridge for the Christmas feasts, but somehow she did. Somehow I managed to get to all my rehearsals and Christmas concerts. It's just that we really didn't start doing any decorating or celebrating until after the last weekend before Christmas. There were years when we finally cut our own tree about noon Christmas Eve, decorated it in a hurry, stuffed the presents underneath, and hurriedly opened them so we could get up at 5:00 AM for the four-hour drive to Grandmother's on Christmas day.
No wonder we didn’t do much between Christmas and New Years. We were tired.
I remember the time between Christmas and New Years quite fondly. Dad usually took the week off from his day job. We'd spend a few hours working on the farm, and then hole up in the house to read or play board games. It was family time -- close, relaxed family time.
Except for a tradition of the Christmas carols hitting the stereo the Friday after Thanksgiving, my youthful Christmas celebration really started sometime after December 20th and ended with a return to work or school after New Years Day. I think the family time between Christmas and New Years is a lot of what makes Christmas so important to me today.
And that's why I object so much to the "Christmas" season of my current retail employer. I arrived at work one day in late September to find a Santa and Jumbo Snow Globe on display outside the store. Now, two weeks prior to the actual holiday, Christmas is almost over for the store. Markdown of holiday merchandise has begun (but lest you rush to my place of employment on reading this blog, please note the keyword is begun.) Christmas shelves are being reset to the usual items. And, we can't get any more Christmas trees for the garden center.
Yup, Christmas is almost over and it's only the 12th.
Sad. Very sad. And, I think, very symptomatic of what's wrong with the big retail industry in the United States.
To explain, I once again digress to my childhood Christmas.
As a child, we would happily re-arrange our Christmas Eve schedule to help somebody purchase a last minute Christmas tree. It wasn't that we really needed the money from those last few sales, but helping somebody else celebrate Christmas was the right thing to do. Part of giving at Christmas was giving of our time and schedule to help make somebody else's holiday -- and it felt good to do so.
Last minute sales were sometimes a pain, but they were an expected part of the holiday. Christmas never went without glitches in my childhood household and customers were but one more aspect of the adventure.
Adventure makes for a wonderful, if interesting, holiday.
So here I am working retail for a major chain. It's two weeks before Christmas. Just as I'm getting close enough to Christmas to really get in the Christmas mood, Christmas is on clearance.
No wonder the retail industry keeps disappointing Wall Street with Christmas sales figures. The holiday is being pushed so hard and so early that Christmas revenue is being moved into September and Christmas sales tail off before December really gets going.
It's December 12th. Christmas is on clearance. The party's over before the holiday has really begun.
posted by Upper Alpacas | 9:33 AM
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