'Tis the Season to See Turkeys

To everything there is a season, says Ecclesiates. But that was before Corporate America got its hands on Christmas. Nowadays, the ho-ho-holiday marketing and spirit-stoking starts so early, you could be forgiven if you forgot there's this little old holiday about a month earlier called Thanksgiving. Besides the grocery stores, what businesses bother to decorate for Thanksgiving? Many department stores began serenading shoppers with Christmas carols a couple of weeks ago.

But one corner of Fairfax, Va. has the Thanksgiving holiday spirit well on display. Come up to the intersection of Route 50 and Jermantown Road, and a trio of plump, 7-foot-tall turkeys wearing pilgrim hats nod in the breeze and shake their red wattles in greeting at you from the lawn of the Jermantown Shell station. Stop at the light, and you just want to hop out of your car and run over and give these fat, cartoony gobblers a big hug.

The inflatable gaggle went up shortly after a motley crew of ghosties and ghoulies and jack-o-lanterns that celebrated the spooky fun of Halloween came down.

Now this is a business that knows its seasons!

Owner Charles "Chick" Beaulieu first started decorating his station for Christmas 21 years ago and the tableaux and the holidays they celebrate have expanded ever since. Christmas commands the most elaborate lighting and decorations, but the station also marks Thanksgiving, Halloween, Valentine's Day and the Fourth of July.

Chick started decorating his franchise for Christmas for his own holiday amusement and for his then young children. Today it's still about the children. "It's for the kids; that's what it's about," he says, describing how families will pull into the station or come from the hotel on the opposite corner to snap photos of their children amidst the displays. And it's for their parents, too. "Everyone's kind of upset right now about gas prices and the economy. This gives them a little smile."

The displays also set the station apart from others in town, and many people from all over the area know which Shell station you mean when you mention the decorations. Plus, customers as well as family, friends, and colleagues get in on the fun by helping Chick find new and unique items to add to the displays. He changes some of them up every year so that area residents always look forward to seeing what's new and different, and he strives to get props that no one else in the area will have yet.

But Chick wouldn't recommend decorations as a way to increase business. For one thing, people who pull in eager to snap photos of the displays sometimes block access to the station's pumps. For another, the city has not been overly enthusiatic about his displays, particularly the more elaborate efforts, and has scolded him on occasion for overstepping signage rules and other ordinances. He used to use large light bulbs that "looked really pretty, but they really made the meter spin!"

Given the cost of purchasing new decorations and the labor that goes into setting them up -- Chick predicts it'll take three days to set up this year's Christmas tableau -- how many businesses would expend such resources on something not guaranteed to yield a measureable percentage increase in revenues? And how many would do it not just once, but several times a year?

But Chick sums up the why in one succinct phrase: "Customers love it."

This year's Christmas display at the Jermantown Shell will start going up on Friday, Nov. 30. We'll post an update with photos of the Christmasy delights in early December.