Real Christmas

As a retailer I’m always looking for ways to squeeze another nickle out of Christmas. As Stan Freberg said, “Christmas has two S’s in it and they are both dollar signs”. That’s our motto, our sacred code of honor. Quite frankly, it doesn’t matter how well I do the eleven other months of the year. It’s all about Christmas, baby.

If December isn’t good, my whole year is a waste. And when your whole year rides literally on the 12 Days of Christmas, you need every maid-a-milking indeed.  We hold doorbuster sales, dress up in Santa hats, offer free gift wrapping, staff the store to the hilt and “stack it deep and sell it cheap”.  But what more can we do? Surely science and modern technology have something to offer that can make this year’s must-have double digit increase possible against last year’s push.

Consider recent research that they are hoping will make retailers like me practically salivate at the possibilties:

Customers like stores’ scents to match their sounds, according to research by Eric Spangenberg of Washington State University. Participants were invited to a laboratory to experience Christmas or non-Christmas music combined with Christmas or non-Christmas scents. They were then shown photos of a store and asked how they felt about it. Participants who were exposed to a Christmas scent in combination with Christmas music gave the store higher ratings than those who experienced a Christmas scent with non-Christmas music. As a result, Spangenberg advises retailers to attract customers, and their money, with scents that complement the rest of the store’s atmosphere.

I have to wonder how much these guys paid for this research. All they had to do was to walk into Yankee Candle on December 14th and smell the sugar cookie candles softly glowing while listening to Bing do his thing. Ka-ching.

Or, they could simply head into Bath & Body Works where they would be speedily and merrily greeted by a hostess humming “Deck the Halls” while being only too willing to slather on some peppermint hand lotion. Cash or charge?

It’s a winning combination born of heralded retailing tradition taught by Hallmark, of all people, more than two decades ago who perfected the art of atmosphere selling by holding outrageously priced ornament selling events in the dead heat of summer.

Those guys are masters.

Long before anyone even has a tree up Hallmark sells boxed plastic ornaments fashioned into traditional-looking icons of the season with super-inflated prices representing near-evil margins.

And they get their price while selling in a frenzy. How? By putting on the smaltzy music, brewing a pot of culled cider, offering a plate of festively decorated cookies and showing doe-eyed, gooey smiles while saying Merry Christmas just two weeks after the 4th of July. Paper or plastic? 

To those who love Christmas, Hallmark in December is the equivalent of Scrooge collecting Christmas eve rents. Ruthless, greedy — and brilliant! But to those of us who depend on Christmas to fill our stockings, they are revered as true masters of the art and science of selling Christmas.   

In exactly five months millions of people around the world will celebrate Christmas… or maybe not.

If Santas and elves from Europe, Australia and Japan have their way, the date of Christmas could be changed from December 25 to either December 24 or even January 6 or 7.

This controversial topic was discussed this week at the 50th International Santa Claus convention at which 160 Santas and elves gathered in Copenhagen, Denmark.

In most places around the world, Christmas Day is celebrated on December 25. However, the Armenian Apostolic Church, predominantly in South Western Asia, observes Christmas on January 6, while some old rite or old style Eastern Orthodox churches celebrate Christmas on January 7.

The date as a birth date for Jesus is merely traditional and is not widely considered to be his actual date of birth.

The debate has raised the eyebrows of some Christians in Durban who say the religious significance of Christmas always takes a back seat and should not be tolerated.

Bishop Lawrence Naidoo of the New Apostolic Church (NAC) in KwaZulu-Natal said all that mattered to him was that Jesus was born, crucified, resurrected, ascended and he that will be returning - the specific date is not important.

“If December 25 is the date given and accepted for centuries, I don’t see a problem with that,” he said.

Can anyone be blamed for longing for Christmas in this heat? I read with interest this blog about a man and his wife who received their first Christmas catalogue on July 10th. Is there something wrong with that?

I don’t know a thing about Gooseberry Patch, the retailer that sent him the catalogue. But I was a bit surprised at this writer’s dismay at receiving a Christmas catalogue now. Christmas is a year-round season for many of us. People follow baseball in the winter and football in the summer. Nobody gets hung up about that. Why should we dis Christmas-fans and the people who market to them? 

He actually sent them a letter asking why they were sending out Christmas so early. The nerve!

I have six daughters ranging in age from 5 to 21.

Unlike the dark ages when I was growing up with my sisters, today’s girls live in a world of toys, gadgets and games that are vastly unlike the Barbies and Easy Bake ovens of yesterday. A girl today still has the feminine flair that makes them distinct from boys but most must and do possess of bit a tech savviness — a trait that in my day was almost exclusively masculine.

I’m not the first father to sweat Christmas eve bike assembly (a timeless Christmas tradition that remains, joyfully, unisex) but I start to worry when my kids are getting toys I don’t understand anymore and that makes Christmas eve a little more daunting. Take for example the Tamagotchi.

The idea behind this toy is that it is an electronic pet — kind of like Dolls 2.0. In the old days, girls played with dolls that were at first made exclusively of cloth. Over time, technology was improved that introduced plastics, ceramics and even glass to the child’s play thing. Later, dolls were made to wet, cry, talk, move and even poop. The Tamogotchi takes it all to a new level by making the doll virtual, interactive and portable in a way even my boy-imagination with my GI Joe never could.

Through some non-sensical series of beeps and button-pressings a kid can now manage the upkeep, care and progression of their doll — reincarnated as the Tamagotchi. They have to be nurtured — the more the kid plays the better their “doll” or ”pet” progresses. They can be put to sleep, fed, encouraged, made to laugh or cry. There are nefarious elements that enter in to play — robbers and bad guys who steal vital points or who make the Tamagotchi mad or sad.  

Some think Tamagotchis are a passed fad. This article, for example, calls this year’s Christmas offering of Tamagotchis a “comeback”. I must have missed them the first time around.

But they are hot for Christmas 2007. My four youngest daughters each have one (completely accessorized, of course). Even my five year old, a beginning reader, goes everywhere with this little thing hanging from her neck, beeping now and then for her attention and drawing unexpected and vociferious reactions from her as it gets into various types of trouble. My 7 year old, 9 year old and 11 year old all have online Tamagotchi buddies that they have found on forums and sites dedicated to this little world of virtual reality.

I recall back in the day I could blow away my kids with the techno-wizardry once reserved just for the old man. I remember having my first mobile phone — a “car phone” we called it. It was so big it was housed in it’s own purse-like carrier. But it was cool because I could talk and drive at the same time. I remember taking my little girls then on drives just so they could call their mother from the car phone.

Today I have a Blackberry that gives me not only a phone but also email and Internet instantly wherever I want it. But my girls are no longer impressed. If it can’t “link up” to their Tamagotchi, it’s just not cool.

I’m not sure how many Tamagotchis Santa will be stuffing in the stockings this Christmas. Maybe I’ll find a good magazine to read or something for after we put them down on Christmas Eve.

Can’t we all just agree that Hollywood is just incapable of making a great Christmas comedy without making Santa look juvenile? Isn’t it time to admit that nothing is left sacred from today’s movie makers when they try to have fun with a Christmas theme?

Making the rounds online and in theaters now is this trailer of what will obviously be another terrible Christmas comedy:

As the news broke this week of Robert Zemeckis working on a “motion capture” rendition of A Christmas Carol I briefly thought it might be good news. Zemeckis has brought us some good films in his time: Back to the Future, Forrest Gump and in the Christmas genre specifically, Polar Express. In fact, motion capture is the technology used in Polar Express that let us see Tom Hanks so differently.

But I’m wary now.

Jim Carrey is tabbed to play Scrooge. Nothing against the Liar Liar but I hardly see him as convincing in the very British role of Ebenezer Scrooge. Think about it. In any of his roles has Carrey remotely done anything this serious? Yes, he’s had some dramatic moments. But unlike Robin Williams or, frankly, Tom Hanks who also dabbled as a comedian, Carrey just isn’t much beyond slapstick and absurdity.

The argument can be made that A Christmas Carol has been done by both Bill Murray and the Muppets. And both of those productions have become holiday classics in their own right (much less so for Murray’s portrayal as a Scrooge character).

Nevertheless I see problems for this film to overcome — and Carrey is just the first.

Don’t think that “motion capture” is going to do much to improve on Carrey’s lack of frenetic presence in the film. Most people liked Polar Express. But I can’t tell you how much email I got about it at the time about one quirky little aspect of it: whenever a character spoke their mouth looked like a gaping black hole. One viewer, upon reading my review of the movie, agreed that it gave him the creeps that Santa was toothless throughout the whole movie. One even observed that “it was like the entire cast were zombies from another world — without teeth, tongue or soul”.

A toothless Scrooge might be a nice touch. But it doesn’t work for Tiny Tim. That kid has enough to worry about.

So, I don’t know. There is no doubt I’ll go see this movie, probably on the day it releases. That is likely why they are making it. But if they are making it for people like me they’d had better treat it with kid gloves. This story is that connected with Christmas and that important to those of us who celebrate it.

There is hope though. I voiced the same concerns with Nativity Story. A with that one “they done good”.  

There’s much in this life that is beyond my control. In fact the list of things that I can control is a short one, the list of those I can’t is not.

Life gets confusing and scary and overwhelming…I feel unworthy when things get good, and unaccepting when they get bad. All in all I’m a normal man, living a slightly eccentric but very real life. The one thing that I’ve got, that many other men have not, is my love of Christmas.

Like a warm bed on a cold winters night, Christmas comforts me, soothes me and frees me from the bondage of self. I’m not sure when it began, this love, but it’s been with me for many years and I intend to keep it, hold it, cherish it until God takes me to meet the man who’s birthday the day celebrates, the founder of our feast.

Many people discuss when the Christmas season begins for them. It never begins for me, as it never ends, it just always is. The lights and decorations get put back in the basement, the radio stations stop playing the music, the crowds leave the malls, many folks turn and leave their churches knowing that twelve months will need to pass before they return. They forget what the season means until it comes round again. I don’t. Forget the season I mean. I’m not affiliated with a church at the moment but the spirituality that is Christmas is with me every day. Jesus is with me, although I’d never dream of forcing him on anyone else. Attraction rather than promotion seems a much better plan. His birthday is the reason for the season for me but that’s not to say that I don’t love the rest of it too!

Some days leave me without another drop to give. Life gets the better of me and I’m exhausted. But for me, nothing perks me up more that to listen to a Christmas album on my ride home…Sure the sight of this six-foot-three, two-hundred and twenty pound man climbing into his truck and listening to Christmas music in July is an odd one, but the comfort that it brings me makes my life whole again, and makes the lives of those I might come in contact with better too because I smile, wish them a good day and say a small prayer that they are protected in their lives as well.

I love the lights and the decorations. I love to give and get presents. I love cookies and cakes. I love my family, especially around Christmas. I love our traditions and memories of Christmases past and I especially love the feeling in the air in December. The cool, crisp days, the children excited and on best behavior, the Santa’s in the stores and on street corners ringing bells and collecting change. I love all of it!

In some ways it’s an escape, this Christmas I love. It clears my head, fills my heart, connects me with my God. To carry that all year long, to me, is not eccentric but rather a form of worship, a form of prayer, a way of life. Kenny Rogers once sang “keep the spirit in your heart and it’s Christmas everyday”. No wiser words have ever been written, no truer sentiment ever offered. It is this man’s opinion that world might be a better place if we all did what Kenny sings about, all kept the spirit and all loved one another a little bit more.

Although it has never put a stich of gold in my pocket, I say God bless it, and God bless you!