It's that time of year again

The time that I used to look forward to in the shop; but it's now the time that holds no excitement any more. What am I talking about? Christmas of course.

 

To me it just starts way too early these days, that the whole festive period and season gets lost in a sea of adverts, tinsel and fairy lights. These things are great and everything that sums up Christmas, but to see them now just seems so wrong. It's not even the middle of November and shops are already putting trees up.  I know of several florists that already have their Christmas window displays in. You will NEVER find me putting anything christmassy in the shop (or window) before December. In fact this year the plan is to put our window display in the weekend of the 8th.

 

A window display is a great selling point for any business, but if people are driving past every day for 7 weeks seeing the same thing in that window they are soon going to get bored, and the last thing anyone wants is a bored customer. Someone bored is most likely to try a competitor.  Christmas is already rammed at us from every angle thanks to television; do we really need it in local/small shops too? I don't think we do.

 

Maybe I am stuck in the 70's, but I think the Americans actually have it right on this score. They rarely (yes you do still get the odd few) put their decorations up until after Thanksgiving, which as we all know is the end of November. I was lucky enough to be stateside from mid November to December a few years back, and it was great, because there wasn't a strand of tinsel to be seen until the beginning of December. I'd left the UK full of anything and everything Christmas and arrived there to nothing, so by the time they did start to get their decorations up the timing was just about right.

 

So for those of you wondering why we currently have a window of pretty creams, yellows, blues and pinks, and not full of Reds and Golds (a colour scheme we will NOT be using) now you know why. It's just way to early.