THE SONIC BOOMER
Did you miss it? Black Friday was Nov. 1.
I know, I know. It used to be the day after Thanksgiving, but now it’s the day after Halloween. Sort of fitting, really. With all the black of Halloween, what’s one more day?
But the “black” in Black Friday really means that retailers are finally able to get solidly “in the black” and stay there through the holidays, making up for slow sales the rest of the year, where they may have been “in the red.”
These days, with the new smooshed-together holiday that I like to call “HalloThanksMas,” nobody can wait. As a retailer, I certainly have a vested interest in pushing up Christmas shopping ever closer to July, but it’s more than that.
The end of the year is a happy time of year.
Halloween is happy because it’s non-denominational, which means that everybody gets to play. It’s fanciful and inventive and seems to get bigger and more dramatic every year. I love it.
Thanksgiving means family, and no matter what sort of weirdoes you have hanging off the twigs of your family tree, you have to admit that it’s at least entertaining to see them once a year.
Christmas isn’t for everyone but, with the entire country swathed in red and green for weeks — even months — the non-Christian end-of-year holidays have also begun to vie for attention. And more is more.
Sometimes I wonder if I opened my antiques store simply because I love to decorate. And, of course, shop. Some of the happiest days of my life are spent at auctions, bidding high on “the unusual” stuff and filling in with the more commonplace.
The back room of my store (ahhhhh, the back room) is my toybox. It’s filled to the rafters with tubs of holiday merchandise, and unloading those tubs is when I really get to kick it into high gear.
The front area of my store is reserved for holiday displays — it gets everyone in the mood, including me. When a holiday like Christmas is approaching, I clear it out and start at the ceiling. I hang as much as I can up there. People don’t expect that, and it gives a wonderful, cluttered feel, which is especially good for holidays like Christmas, the clutteriest of all holidays. I hang stars and angels and flying Santa Clauses and ornaments, and then dangle their price tags down even further, so far that they bop you in the head and scream, “I’m affordable! Buy me!” Sometimes it works.
Then I like to style each haberdashery cabinet or baker’s rack in a different theme — rustic, plaid, glittery silver, antique gold, pastel or (of course!) red-and-green. I cram as many ornaments, trees, ceramics, snow globes, books and gifts in each area as will fit.
Close to the floor are pillows piled alongside 1950s tablecloths, vintage lap robes and dishtowels. Along the counter are my “smalls” — bowls and bowls of tiny ornaments, holiday cookie cutters, jingle bells, gift tags, anything you didn’t realize you needed until you saw how cute it was.
I start planning this layout in August. Customers start asking for it in October. I’d leave it up year-round if I didn’t have to make room for Valentine’s Day. The point is, Black Friday just had to be moved up… for the sheer fun of it.
