I'm still standing

[kiya]

teinedreugan and I made it down to Maryland all right. That was Sunday.

We did all the rest of our holiday shopping the next day, which was good. And wandered around. And it's hard to find a leather jacket when one doesn't want to make a fashion statement, but rather a statement of +2 AC.

I've figured out why it doesn't feel holiday-shaped to me. No Salvation Army Santas prowling about and ringing little bells. Where'd they go?

Christmas stuff before Thanksgiving is wrong; Christmas stuff before Hallowe'en is immoral. I'm trying to figure out what after-Christmas sales THREE DAYS BEFORE Christmas is. . . .

Visited relatives yesterday - Mom, my aunt, my cousins. Got my cousin Nate's CD today. My cousin, the socialist hip-hop artist with the dreads wrapped up in a kerchief. (Good line from post-dinner: You stay here and drink!) It snowed; Aunt Chris's church was cancelled, so she could enjoy the Scotch tasting.

Did various today. Hung out with sstaten. Had traditional Jewish Christmas: Chinese takeout and movies. sstaten, teinedreugan, my brother, and my father played Scrabble, with me as Scott's consultant occasionally.

Go bed soon. brooksmoses and suzimoses here tomorrow. Must remember to write wcg as soon as I acquire clue.

Stuff.

Comments

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Clue!

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Christmas sales three days before Christmas is a major recession.

It's the smell of desperation. I remember it from the eighties recession in Britain. I've seen pictures of it from the thirties as well, from the Great Depression. It's a bad sign for the economy, for sure.

Also when I lived in Lancaster there was a nearby seaside town called Morecambe (pr. More-cum) which has been terribly popular and elegant in the Victorian and Edwardian period but had fallen on hard times since and is decaying gently, it still has a summer season and in the rest of the year is bleak and desolate and half-deserted, with odd little flurries of gangs and pushers among the left-over old ladies. There is no sea, usually, but the mud stretches to the horizon and the wind howls straight across it under lowering clouds. When I was very hard up I used to do Christmas shopping there in the January sales that started in December because the shops were desperate. I only did this when I was very short of money despite the fact that Lancaster would be expensive and heaving with people and ugly all-the-same Christmas lights and muzak carols, because bustle and commerce is more Christmassy than bleakness is. Morecambe was technically part of the city of Lancaster (which also included a ton of countryside, more sheep than people in that city) and I sometimes used to get that "One Who Walks Away From Omelas" feeling when I went there.

[redbird]

As papersky said, it's a sign of desperation.

Also, in my opinion, foolishness. Why not put up signs saying "Christmas sale!" and then listing discounts or whatever. They can always change them, or just write "after" on the signs on the 26th.