Here we are in December.
Decorations are starting to go up around the neighborhood.
One neighbor’s decoration is a for sale sign. I’m not surprised about that, it’s gotta be tough for a single guy living up here. The local dating pool is really thin and most of the people he’s likely to date aren’t willing to to make the trek up here with any regularity. It can be lonely.
Given what he paid for the house, and the current market, he’s likely to make a profit on the sale. I’ll be sorry to see him go because he’s a decent guy. On the other hand he’ll drive the value up on all the houses on the street, so that’s welcome.
I’ve been trying not to look at the news with any regularity. At this point even the “normal” news is like doom scrolling. I thought I’d gotten away from that when I stopped using social media. Alas, I was wrong.
I’m just not very Christmasy. I haven’t been for several years. It’s just not the same kind of fun it used to be.
Some might say it’s the commercialism, others might say it’s the fact that some shopping areas put their Christmas displays up along with their Halloween displays. So that by the time you get around to Christmas, there’s nothing special about it anymore.
When I was a kid, there were three distinct holidays and the shops changed their displays each month. My first job at Toys R Us we changed the store during those three months. We worked overtime November 1, and November 20th to make the transition. November was a good paycheck month! It was a lot of work, and we were just transitioning from Halloween to Christmas.
The change was still magical. We knew that the kids coming into the store would light up seeing Christmas trees decorated in the aisles and empty boxes in bright wrapping paper stuffed under the fake tree branches.
These days, it’s like all the magic has gone. Sure, there’s holiday music blaring in all the shopping centers. The decorations are still out, although the last time I was in a shopping center at Christmas, a lot of the decorations looked shop worn. Oddly, decorations in the several shopping centers I visited, looked alike.
I remember years ago, part of the season’s fun was going from shopping center to shopping center because each one was unique in their decorating style.
If you stopped for a moment in a mall you’d see “character” and know that someone had put real effort into creating Christmas displays that were a delight to the eye. The yearly displays also changed making each Christmas special.
I suppose all that changed when people started dwelling on being offended by the season (or for that matter anything else). It really started changing when those people began winning court cases.
Of course all of this is California specific. It’s been very rare for me to be in other states during the holidays over the past 30 years or so.
These days, the majority of the holiday shopping experience is homogeneous. One mall or shopping center is very like another.
This may be due to a several factors. One is that the malls don’t want to offend anyone. The second factor is that so many of the malls are owned by the same conglomerate so they’re buying all their decorations in bulk. Lastly, the conglomerates may think that a consistent shopping experience across their properties is better for business.
I suppose you could argue all of these factors are beneficial. But I would argue that the “sameness” diminishes the joy of the season.
There was a time when we’d say, “Lets go to XYZ mall today,” now it’s, “let go to the mall.”
I’m trying to get in the mood. I really am. I’m looking forward to the annual shopping trip with one of my best friends. It’s not so much about the shopping as it is about the comradery. I think to some extent it hearkens back to our shared heritage of ancient hunting parties.
Only this annual trip has lots of eating and drinking as part of it unlike those hunting parties where cold and wet were often the norm. Halfway through the day we’re both fairly full of good cheer! That good cheer, might offset any shortages of goods due to the supply problems this year.
A couple of friends and I would laugh ourselves stupid if we came around the corner into this shopping area.
I hope the place had a PG rating.
Hmm. Maybe I’ve found a reason to be Christmasy, I can wander the local malls for examples of holiday decorations that tried really hard, but didn’t quite work out as planned.
Have a wonderful holiday season.