Real Christmas

Walmart isn’t waiting until the day after Thanksgiving. They want it now. Walmart isn’t playing games this year with websites who break news of their ads early either. They’re telling everyone first. Walmart is take Christmas serious this year and they want you to know it.

Wal-Mart will offer black-Friday prices three weeks early when the retailer unveils secret in-store specials: extraordinary prices on five of the most sought after gifts this season. Understanding that more and more consumers are using the internet to comparison shop, Wal-Mart plans to reveal online a round of unbeatable savings on Thursday. The items will be available in stores beginning Friday morning, November 2 as the merchant officially opens special Christmas shops.

Visit Walmart’s “secret” web page by clicking here. A 50″ plasma TV for $998? Available right now. A $350 laptop? Get it now.

How smart is this?

It’s brilliant. Given Wally’s demographic breaking this ad the first weekend of the month will give their buyers plenty of incentive to spend month-end paychecks. The values are Walmart trademarks and it clearly sets them aside. Unlike JCPenneys and similar retailers who hold “door-busting” events now year round this sale screams value and it screams Christmas.

U.S. Christmas shoppers may spend more this year than last year, a Gallup Poll indicated Monday.

The poll, conducted Oct. 4-7, found U.S. shoppers plan to spend an average of $909 on Christmas gifts this season — $2 more than a similar forecast at this time last year, the Gallup Organization said.

Gallup cautioned that last year’s mid-October average estimate fell to $826 by mid-November.

If the spending estimate holds up through December it would possibly be enough to make this shopping season better than average, Gallup said. And if spending drops between now and November by as much as it did in 2006, the figure would still be at the upper end of the range seen in recent years, Gallup said.

Some 35 percent of adults nationwide said they would spend $1,000 or more on gifts, Gallup said. Twenty-seven percent said they would spend $500 to $999. Thirty percent planned to spend less than $500.

Eight percent offered no estimate, including some who said they did not celebrate Christmas.

The telephone poll of 1,010 national adults, age 18 and older, had a maximum margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points, so differences of less than that amount are statistically insignificant.

Here they go again. The British media is all a ga-ga about Christmas trees — upside down Christmas trees. This trend started in earnest two years ago when trendy trees colored with black feathers first hit the media. They were supposed to be all the rage. But at more than $500 per tree the trend never really caught fire.

So now the media there has taken it in another direction — the upside-down tree.

For the space saving novelty that an upside-down tree is the UK media is taking it a bit far, however, by touting these trees as old-time traditional. They quote promoters of the trees as saying that the upside-down tree is tradition and rich in religious symbolism.

A spokesman for the company said: “The ‘upside down tree’ is not so new!

“Hanging fir trees upside down dates back to the Middle Ages.”

“Legend has it that a 7th century monk used the triangular shape of the fir tree to describe the Holy Trinity to the German people.

“It then became revered as ‘God’s tree’ and was hung upside down from the ceiling as a symbol of Christianity.

Er….right. Try and find any kind of historian to back you up on that one.

Having a live Christmas tree that you plant outdoors after the holidays may seem like the green thing to do. But there are complexities to consider. It’s a lot of trouble and the tree’s long-term survival is iffy.

1. You would have to dig the hole before the ground freezes — by Thanksgiving, to be safe. You’d have to cover the pile of soil to keep it from freezing until you backfilled the hole.

2. Trees don’t normally live in houses and indoor heated air is very tough on them. You would only be able to keep the tree indoors for a few days, watering it diligently, and then would have to plant it outdoors right away. And you still would stress it.

3. It would be very hard to maneuver the heavy tree in and out of the house. The root ball on a 4- or 5-foot tree can weigh a couple of hundred pounds.

4. How would you water it indoors? You would have to put it in a galvanized washtub or other very large waterproof container. Which means you would have to lift it, and remember, it would weigh a ton.

5. You would have to go easy on the decorations, which can break branches, and the lights, which can dry out the tree.

6. The kind of tree you think of as a Christmas tree might not be what you need in your landscape in the long term. Any of the traditional evergreens might rapidly outgrow your space. It would be smarter to choose a kind of tree or shrub that is right for your yard — possibly a deciduous species — even if it doesn’t look much like what you think of as a Christmas tree.

7. A live tree likely will end up being more expensive than a cut tree and you may not have much of a choice — unless you buy it soon, while nurseries have a good selection, and keep it, watered, with the root ball covered in mulch, in a sheltered spot until Christmas.

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.