How about this? It took until today, November 1st, for me to see the personnel at Kroger break out the Christmas decorations. What a nice show of restraint, compared to what the department stores have likely been doing.
I may have touched on this before: It's a shame that department stores have to follow the credo of planning their sales two or three holiday cycles ahead of time. We had two nice days of Indian Summer this week, and I didn't want it polluted with reminders of snow, slush, and carols. That will come in due time.
I still admire professionally-created Christmas displays at stores & malls, especially when there's some depth & creativity to them. By "depth", I mean that the displays don't actually look like props; that they were just thrown there just to please the people. I see these displays from all angles and I appreciate depth, which shows actual care was taken when putting up the display.
When I actively decorated, I took great pains to make sure my little displays had that depth; even having a strategically-placed four way mirror in the display to reflect the images of the details in the back. This gave the display an illusion of being bigger than it really was.
Of course, that's when I actively decorated. I am sad to say I have not prepped for the holidays since 2000. Due to a rift in the family at that time, my Christmas stuff was repossessed and has never been seen again. This was a collection built over many years, dating back to my grandmother when she was in her 40s. A lot of those ornaments were glass, which you simply don't find today. I even got my late uncle to get on the family's case, saying the decorations could even go back to them, instead of me, due to the family meaning. That argument went nowhere, and I just gave up the chase a year later.
Then came the Christmas disaster of 2001 at my ex-girlfriend's, where I wasn't allowed to have a say in anything that went up. Half of what actually went up ended up broken due to two destructive kids, two hyperactive cats, and a loose iguana or two.
Since then, I've not decorated, save for an occassional wreath I might put up on the front door. My stepmother recently asked why I don't decorate much more. In addition to those reasons, I don't have the time, energy or desire to do it anymore. To get the collection back to previous levels would take an investment my budget can't handle. If I want to decorate, I'd like to go all-out. It just can't be done.
This self-practiced restraint was seen today at the Kroger, and made me smile. We still have over 50-some shopping days remaining until the actual holiday. I don't think stores are going to take that much of a budgetary hit just by using common sense.
I hope I can be proven right one of these days.
