Happy Boxing Day
For those of you unfamiliar with the holiday, No, it has nothing to do with float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. Rather, it is the first weekday after Christmas when Christmas gifts are bestowed on the service people, e.g., the postal delivery person, formerly known as the mailman. This holiday is celebrated — to the extent that it is these days — in Britain, Canada, and a few other ex-Empirettes.
In the United States, it is frequently the day that the megastores announce whether or not they made their Christmas sales projections, or if they got their ears boxed, as apparently happened this year. Seems as though despite a full weekend of shopping on the day before Christmas — which should normally augur well — that folks didn’t and the tills clanged less enthusiastically than the prayerful retailers would have liked.
The Christmas rush is a big part of their annual take; for most stores it is about a quarter of their revenues, but many expect to ring up half their yearly sales to Christmas buyers. December is Tums time for many of them, as they fight the urge to discount their merchandise in advance of Christmas, rather than waiting for the post-Christmas feeding frenzy. If they discount too soon, they narrow their margins. If they don’t discount soon enough, there are no margins.
This year, with Thanksgiving early, the shopping season was lengthy, giving the strategizers on both sides of the register too much time to think. As the shopping window began to close, some stores stayed open all night, though it’s hard to imagine that together with the price cuts there was enough money coming in to justify the expenses. Most likely they thought that there was some value in the hype. Certainly there is a psychological aspect to the whole obscene scene — move over, Jesus, I saw that Piss-’n-Puke doll first — but for the most part, it’s pretty much still a crap shoot when your success depends on soaking a huge number of people for a fairly small profit.
Ultimately this year it seems that the game was called on account of the weather. Snow, ice, and or nasty forms of inclemency seem to have kept home a lot of folks who would have done their Christmas shopping during that last fatal weekend. At least, that’s the speculation. I don’t entirely buy it; if you "need" to buy gifts, the deadline is before Christmas. Are they gonna mollify the weeping nose-runners with Don’t worry, children, we’ll find even bigger bargains next week?
Frankly, I don’t have a lot of sympathy for these annual dances to wrest long-earned wages from people who haven’t the sense not to squander their meager earnings on so much junk. Of course it’s their fault for letting their children watch television, where most of the hooking is actually done, and in the end, they will likely have to forego something truly worthwhile in order to produce the pile the of insta-shred where once were hopes and squeezes. Such are the smaller adventures in capitalism.
Feeling much superior, Linda and I determined that we didn’t, in fact, need anything this year, and even when we tried to think of things we might want came up blank. I mean, I really don’t need my own plane...this year. Okay, it’s true, Linda did receive a crossword puzzle dictionary from Mr.Cat and a Roy Orbison CD from Buster — or was it the other way around? — and my father says that he was having shipped to us a Smithfield ham. So we be quite content, thinking outside the e’er-wrapped box.
And that’s SetonnoteS...I’m Tony Seton.