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A timeless holiday tradition

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By STEVE OTTO | The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 7, 2009

With the temperature hovering somewhere in the mid-90s, I wasn't about to sit in the parking lot at Sam's Club. Besides, the Frau wanted my expert advice on buying a bottle of wine, as long as we didn't go over her allotted $6-a-bottle budget.

We walked inside ... and it was Christmas!

"Christmas?" I said, staring at a bank of pre-lit artificial trees.

"Oh, they've been up for weeks," my wife said. "I think they are already running out of some of the decorations."

"How can it be Christmas?" I repeated, trying to remember whether our neighbors had already put up those slow-moving, lighted reindeer on their front lawn. "I saw some Halloween pumpkins rotting on people's doorsteps this morning. Are we skipping over Thanksgiving this year?"

Actually, it wasn't all that surprising. I found the Frau sitting in the living room weeks ago watching one of those shopping networks where they were gushing about why we should start a holiday tradition with our own artificial tree and synchronized lights that you could fold up neatly after the holidays.

Better dead than fake

I had said back then I was not going artificial again this year. I was holding out for a genuine dead tree that most of the needles would fall from about a week before Christmas and that instead of pointing straight up in our stand would be at kind of an angle, sort of like a Korean missile about to launch.

Now, just in the St. Nick of time, I see that what we're going to have, if retailers have their way, is just an old-fashioned Christmas.

According to The Associated Press this week, "Stores are turning back the clock, conjuring up images of hearth and home as they stock their holiday merchandise." The report goes on to say that shoppers will see "more gingerbread houses and fewer exotic teas and flavored olive oils. ... Traditional Christmas colors - red, green and gold - are also back."

Fad is bad

It also says that fads, such as the upside-down Christmas tree fad of 2007, are out. Somehow I missed that one, although a couple of trees we bought at the lot could have been put in the stand upside-down and it probably wouldn't have made much difference.

To tell you the truth, I'm not too sure what a "traditional Christmas" is anymore. When I was a kid, it was going downtown to the big Maas Bros. store, staring at the window displays and then going up the escalator to Toyland, an entire floor done up for Christmas.

Maas Bros. is long gone. It became Burdines and now Macy's, and those toy stores in the malls just don't cut it. Not that it matters. Our boys are bigger than I am and their taste in gifts is mostly electronic gadgets I don't understand and can't afford.

But I have to confess, I am looking forward to a return to those traditional Florida Christmases of the past, the ones where we all gathered around the room air conditioner in our red and green shorts and sang old favorites such as "I'm Dreaming of a Little Less Humidity" and washed everything down with cold margaritas.

Keyword: Otto Graphs, for more of Steve Otto's musings.

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