Real Christmas

The nation’s retailers got a much-needed sales boost during Black Friday’s traditional shopathon as consumers, lured by deep discounts, spent nearly 3 percent more than they did last year.

Sales on the day after Thanksgiving rose to $10.6 billion, according to preliminary figures released Saturday by ShopperTrak RCT Corp., a Chicago-based research firm that tracks sales at more than 50,000 retail outlets.

Last year, shoppers spent about $10.3 billion on the day after Thanksgiving, dubbed Black Friday because it was historically the sales-packed day when retailers would become profitable for the year.

While it isn’t a predictor of overall holiday season sales, Black Friday is an important barometer of people’s willingness to spend during the holidays. Last year, it was the biggest sales generator of the season.

But experts caution that this year’s sales growth may be hard to sustain for the remainder of the holiday shopping season, which has 27 days between Thanksgiving and Christmas instead of the 32 last year.

Still, the sales boost was surprising in light of data showing shoppers are scaling back on discretionary spending because of a recession fueled by uncertainty related to turmoil in the world’s financial and credit markets.

“Under these circumstances, to start off the season in this fashion is truly amazing and is a testament to the resiliency of the American consumer, and undeniably proves a willingness to spend,” ShopperTrak co-founder Bill Martin said in a statement.

Across the country, sales in the South were up 3.4 percent from last year while they climbed 2.6 percent in the Northeast as shoppers began scouring store aisles at midnight hoping to snag the best selection on early morning specials.

Patty Saal, 60, of Mogadore, Ohio, began her Black Friday shopping at 5 a.m. when she and her daughters went to a Sam’s Club to purchase iPods.

“We’re doing fine,” she said.

Fifth grade teacher Daphna Stepen, 42, spent Black Friday hunting for deals inside Macy’s and at the Limited Too clothing store and headed out again on Saturday. The Chicago resident said she was surprised by the discounts as well as how many coupons she’d received from stores, which helped her save even more money on already marked-down items.

“You can get almost 40 percent off stuff if you work the coupons,” she said.

Separately on Saturday, J.C. Penney Co. Inc. said business was strong in its sites across the country as customers responded to sales. Some of the department store’s best sellers were smaller electronic gadgets and practical gifts, such as sweaters, boots, coats and luggage.

But the chain said it wouldn’t provide specific sales figures.

“In light of the challenging and volatile economic climate, and shifts in this year’s retail calendar, we don’t believe that reporting sales data for any one day (or weekend), including Black Friday, would provide a meaningful barometer of our business,” the Plano, Texas company said in a statement released Saturday afternoon.

“Closer. Closer!” I say to my husband, motioning in the direction of the French-laced leg and fringed hemline. “Would you just touch it already?”

Who would’ve thought, after all these years, I’d have to beg him to get near it?

Christmas after Christmas, my husband’s family has gathered around the television and laughed hysterically through repeats of the movie A Christmas Story.

Now here we were at the actual house where parts of the movie were filmed, standing in the living room an arm’s length away from the famous leg lamp (won in the movie by “the old man” as a “major award”), and my husband Ish was acting like he wanted nothing to do with it.

Even if, like me, you have never seen the movie in its entirety, chances are someone in your home considers it a classic.

This holiday season marks the 25th anniversary of A Christmas Story. In the film, Ralphie – a precocious misfit played by Peter Billingsley – wants a Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas, but his mother fears he will “shoot his eye out.” Hilarious hijinks ensue (cue: eye rolling) and in the end Ralphie gets the gun and proves his mother was right … sort of.

The house we’re standing in was the one used in all the exterior shots in the movie (including the classic final scene). And judging by the 60,000 visitors who have passed through its doors since they opened in 2006, my in-laws aren’t the only ones who find the movie funny.

Count Brian Jones among the movie’s fans.

The 32-year-old San Diego native turned his childhood love of the film into a lucrative business. When his dreams of being a fighter pilot were dashed after he failed the sight requirements, Jones began making and selling replica leg lamps (www.redriderleglamps.com).

In 2005, when the two-family apartment house in Cleveland went up for sale on eBay, Jones paid $150,000 for the property and then spent 10 months and $250,000 more to renovate the house to match his all-time favourite movie.

The rest is history.

Lest you think my husband, his sisters and the two men who run this shop are the only die-hard fans, you should know that every November over the American Thanksgiving weekend (Nov. 28-29), an A Christmas Story convention brings people from around the globe out to the simple yellow house with green trim.

This year, in celebration of the 25th anniversary milestone, original actors will be back in town, two documentaries about the film will debut and rides will be offered in the original Canadian fire truck used in the film.

Year-round tours offer visitors a chance to take photos throughout the house while a guide explains the various rooms and special touches, as well as access to the museum and gift shop across the street (where mini replicas of the leg lamp in night-light form sell for $15).

“I find people who are of the retiring age like (the house) because in many ways it is similar to what they grew up with,” says our tour guide. And because the house is a renovation, not a restoration, guests can go to town re-enacting their favourite scenes.

“Everyone likes to climb under the kitchen sink,” she says, referring to a popular scene from the movie.

The items in the museum across the street are less hands-on. All have been purchased, collected or donated to the museum. The walls are lined with Warner Bros.’ archive shots of the film and actors have donated their own snapshots of fun in between takes. Original costumes from the Chinese restaurant chop suey scene, Randy’s “I can’t get my arms down” snowsuit and anything else that could be damaged or stolen are protected behind glass.

While many of the cast members have already made a visit to the museum, “Ralphie” remains a holdout. What, you may be asking, ever happened to that pudgy little guy with a penchant for guns?

Turns out he did all right.

“He went on to be an executive producer of some small movies you may have heard of,” museum executive director Steve Siedlecki says with a grin, “like Iron Man and The Break-up.”

Not bad.

And yet, despite what everyone has gone through to make this moment possible, my husband is standing stone-faced, a full foot away from the lamp others would kill to touch.

It takes a few minutes of begging and cajoling but I finally make it happen: the husband and the lamp in one shot. His fears that I’ll somehow expose his obsession to the world subside as I snap another shot by the Christmas tree and yet another by the film-family portraits on the stairs.

“See?” I say as I shut down the camera and pat him comfortingly on the back. “That wasn’t so bad.”

Of all the letters that Santa Claus gets in his mailbox, this one will likely stand out. In a big way.

A Rumford, Maine, man is hoping to get into the Guinness Book of World Records by sending the largest single-page letter ever written.

The letter, which will be a missive to Santa chock full of Christmas wishes, is expected to be 25 feet wide by 100 feet long. That’s bigger than a volleyball court and about half the area of a basketball court. When folded up, it’s expected to weigh 51 pounds. And it will require an estimated 195 first-class stamps to put in the mail.

Scot Grassette, 42, an electrician at the NewPage Corp. paper plant in Rumford, said his company thought it was a “pretty crazy” idea but still donated the paper.

Tony Lyons, a spokesman for the paper plant, said Grassette had been driving home from work one day trying to think of how to raise funds for school groups and activities his daughters are part of.

“I think he suddenly had this big brainstorm,” Lyons said.

Lyons said the mill, which makes paper that is used for catalogues, magazines, and brochures, is already involved in a lot of outreach in the community, and it hoped that the letter project would “help the kids in the community have an understanding of the scope of what we do inside the mill.”

Grassette said the letter will be the centerpiece of a Nov. 29 benefit to raise money for his daughter’s Mountain Valley High School majorette squad and for the senior class’s “chemical-free” graduation party.

During the benefit, the letter will be laid out on the floor of the school gymnasium. Students will write down their names and Christmas wishes and will be able to see “elves” write them on the paper in letters eight to 10 inches high.

Grassette calculated that about 800 names and wishes will fit on the paper. He said he has three rolled-up pieces of the paper. One is for practice, one is for the real thing, and one, he said, “is just in case we mess something up.”

As Mike Thelemann ate dinner with Laurin Lowery on Thursday, Oct. 9, he knew something really important was taking place back home.

His brother was on the roof, setting up a yes-or-no question with Christmas lights that Thelemann really wanted to ask his girlfriend of more than two years.

Everything was on schedule until his brother called and said he ran out of lights.

Thelemann did what many men would do in that situation and decided to visit a home improvement store to stall. He even resorted to looking at the store’s Christmas-related items for a bit, he said.

His brother got everything working, though, and the couple arrived home when it was dark.

Thelemann plugged in the lights stretched across his roof without her knowing and then told her he wanted to show her something in the neighborhood.

Soon she noticed the bright message: “Will u marry me?”

“She read it and turned around and I was on my knee,” said Thelemann, who lives at 483 Graafschap Road in Holland. “I asked her to marry me and she said yes.”

Lowery said she was speechless when it happened.

“I was just shocked at first,” she said as she stood in the home’s driveway less than 24 hours after the proposal. “Got a little teary-eyed. Gave him a great big hug.”

Thelemann said he wanted to do it earlier in the week, but couldn’t get her away long enough to get it set up.

SANTA CLAUS, Ind.—Many things can be said about this town along the Indiana-Kentucky border, but there is one unequivocal truth: Santa exists here, even in the dead of summer.

The jolly fat man is everywhere. The town hotel is Santa’s Lodge, with St. Nick’s Restaurant inside, where Buffalo wings are called “Reindeer Paws.” Down the street on Holiday Boulevard is Silent Night Cafe, a short walk from Lake Rudolph Campground and Frosty Fun Center, which is around the corner from St. Nicholas Catholic Church. The post office, at 45 N. Kringle Place, receives thousands of children’s letters addressed to Santa Claus each Christmas.

Here in the lush, rolling green hills of southern Indiana, 3,585 miles from the geographic North Pole, a town’s economic engine is dependent on tourists who seek a Christmas experience year-round. The facade may have a whiff of gimmickry and/or clever marketing, but there are 2,200 people who call Santa Claus home year-round.

So, what is it like to live in a town where “Jingle Bells” plays in July? We took a trip down there to find out.

“It’s really neat, because you get away with it,” said Sylvia Seger, surrounded by an astonishing Christmas display of more than 500 Santa-related paraphernalia in her living room. “You wouldn’t get away with this anyplace else.”

By outward appearances, there is perhaps no happier, more joyful place than the Seger residence. In the living room, lights adorn trees, Santas come in many forms two and three-dimensional and everything has a red-and-green warmness to it. It risks tackiness, but it’s all charm.

Another way of looking at this: They don’t have to take any Christmas ornaments down, not even after Jan. 1.

“When I bring people into the room, I always tell them to think of this room as a museum,” said Seger, a retired first-grade teacher. “Because if you think of this as a living room, it is a little overwhelming.”

The Segers live in Christmas Lake Village. Their house is on the corner of Evergreen Drive and Melchior Drive (Melchior being one of the three wise men). The Village is a gated community built in 1969, spreading over 2,500 acres with three artificial lakes: Christmas Lake, Lake Noel and Lake Holly. During December, the gates open up for “The Festival of Lights,” an electric meter- spinning display of 800 decorated homes that lights up the southern Indiana sky.

And there are few families that also exhibit the Christmas spirit as colorfully as the Segers. This raises the question: Does it ever get old?

“Since I have Christmas all year long, perhaps Christmas isn’t quite as special on just that single day as it might be for other people,” Sylvia said. “But I like it that way. It’s not that it is worse or boring. I just get to enjoy it more.”

At the post office where mail addressed to 47579 is delivered, the madness begins at Thanksgiving.

This may be true of any postal facility in America, but in Santa Claus, Ind., upward of 10,000 letters addressed to Jolly St. Nick arrive at Marian Balbach’s office.

Balbach, the town’s postmaster, said she receives letters from as far away as Japan and Sweden.

Some of them come from really needy families,” she said. “Some of them are really heart-wrenching, because they are asking for a job for Mommy or a job for Daddy.”

Her job then, is to make sure all the mail addressed to Santa gets answered. The letters are handed off to a group of volunteers called “Santa’s Elves” at the Santa Claus Museum, where one of four form letters is used.

One letter is intended for children who ask for lots of presents (“My elves are all scurrying around helping me find special gifts for all our friends … we will try to bring some of the presents you are wishing for.”) Another letter is aimed for adults (“Remember to share your gifts with others”). All return letters include a personalized handwritten P.S. note. Postage is covered by donations.

“The letters they send are general, and (don’t) promise anything,” Balbach said. “But it lets them know that Santa is thinking about them, and that they’ll see him at Christmas.”

By KEVIN PANG and MICHAEL PASTERNAK
Chicago Tribune

Christmas in July? Maybe not a bad idea this year.

Retailers in the United States are already talking about price increases of up to 15 per cent this year on holiday goods, from staples like tree ornaments and toys to luxury gifts like European handbags and clothing. The main cause? It’s the same old chestnut, soaring energy prices.

While most consumers are just starting to think about back-to-school shopping, retailers are already preparing for the critical holiday season. Consumers have been seeing prices creep up for many products, but now escalating cost pressures — which are also being fuelled by the weaker U.S. dollar and higher labour costs in China — are forcing merchants from low-price warehouse clubs to upscale clothiers to pass on more of the burden in the months ahead.

Many stores are still deciding on their holiday prices, and receding oil prices in recent weeks could provide a bit of relief. Still, buying that status handbag now might help shoppers save a little — but for some items, it’s already too late.

And any big surge in demand could lead to more bad news on the inflation front, serving as a catalyst for prices to spiral.

With bigger price increases, merchants risk turning off shoppers who may end up buying fewer holiday gifts to keep to their budgets. That could mean a serious hit for the economy, since consumer spending accounts for two-thirds of all economic activity and the holiday period accounts for a huge chunk of merchants’ sales and profits.

“Truthfully, I probably won’t purchase items that go up that much — especially something like Christmas decorations,” said Marilyn Reese of Cincinnati, who works at an insurance company. “I will just go with what I have.”

Carl Steidtmann, chief economist at Deloitte Research, says that price inflation will be yet “another factor that undermines consumer purchasing power and will hurt spending even more.”

“This will be a very difficult holiday season,” he said.

The price increases come as stores also have to be pushing even deeper discounts this holiday season to attract customers. But that 50 per cent off may not be as good a deal as last year since the original price could be higher.

Even Costco Wholesale Corp., which had been one of the bright spots in retailing, warned last week that its profit was getting squeezed by rising energy costs and it would have to raise prices more. Richard Galanti, Costco’s chief financial officer, specifically cited holiday decor and rotisserie chickens, which are popular for holiday meals.

Holiday decor will be as much as 12 per cent pricier this holiday season than a year ago, and the price of rotisserie chicken, which had been US$4.99 for years, was raised to $5.49 about three months ago and just went up to $5.99 last week.

Toy prices are likely to be about 10 per cent higher for the holidays than a year ago, said Sean McGowan, an analyst at Needham and Co.

K-B Toys Inc., which focuses on selling past toy hits at discounted prices, says it isn’t increasing prices for now. The chain even unveiled a program Monday that offers temporary price cuts on some already reduced toys. But the discounts are a result of logistical manoeuvring. Advertising director Geoffrey Webb said the chain has started consolidating trips from the distribution centres to stores to save fuel costs.

Kathleen Waugh, a spokeswoman for Toys “R” Us, Inc., said that prices for some products will stay steady, while others will have “gradual” increases beginning in early fall. But at Kidstop Toys and Books in Scottsdale, Ariz., which offers mostly European brands, 10 per cent price hikes have already begun, according to owner Kate Tanner.

’This will be a very difficult holiday season.’

The CEO of Nintendo is warning consumers in the U.S. that if they want to get their kids a Wii for Christmas they had better get it now. Come the holiday season it seems the Wii will be in short supply — again.

He cites “unusually high demand” in the U.S. for the Wii.

Consumers in Europe can walk in to any retailer and buy the game system any minute of any day — year round, even during peak holiday seasons.

So why is it so hard to find in the U.S.?

We don’t suppose the weak dollar has anything to do with it. We’re sure Nintendo just can’t find the U.S. on a map.