Cha-Chingle Bells! The Motley Yule Returns

For most reporters, weather stories are the only assignments that are more dreaded than holiday stories. But I always enjoyed the challenge of finding quirky holiday angles. In the Thanksgiving day edition of the Washington Post 18 years ago, I wrote about the violent demise of a rafter of pardoned presidential turkeys. ("There were feathers everywhere," said the farmhand who had cared for the birds at Fairfax County's unfortunately named Frying Pan Park).

A year later, I took advantage of a newly established Internet link to ask U.S. researchers stationed at the South Pole how they planned to celebrate "a very white Christmas." ("These are lonely days at the South Pole," I wrote in the Christmas eve edition of the Raleigh News & Observer. "While the eyes of the world turn to the north, where Santa's busy packing his sleigh, the crew members at a remote U.S. research base at the other end of the globe toil like elves in anonymity.")

My enjoyment of holiday stories was one reason why I so enthusiastically agreed to help my wife Christine write this intentionally short-lived blog about the business of the winter holidays a few years back. And it's also why I have thought about resurrecting the blog every year since.

Well, now that retailers are embracing social media to provide a continuous stream of holiday deals to their customers, I figure I can go the same direction with the Motley Yule, which I've just relaunched as a Twitter feed.

Follow along between now and Christmas 2011: @MotleyYule.

And happy holidays!

'Tis Not the Season

A wall of Valentine's Day candy greeted me at the grocery store the other day. I started to think through a possible item for this blog on how it is we have come to celebrate a couple of early Christian martyrs and earlier fertility rituals with candy and racy greeting cards. But then I realized that this would be scope creep for a blog whose focus was and should remain Christmas.

I had similar a thought in line at the Starbucks near my office, which has been serving Decaf Christmas Blend all week -- no doubt to deplete its stock before the first flowers of spring begin to bud. Does the Christmas season ever really end?

With such musings in mind, Christine and I will put this blog on ice -- and possibly return later this year, when the red coffee cups of the winter holidays, decorated with snowflakes, make their inevitable return. Perhaps in mid October.

Until then, Merry Christmas.

(Candy Heart made at http://www.cryptogram.com/hearts/)

Fah who for-aze! Dah who dor-aze!

Having dedicated this blog to documenting a bit of the commercial hubbub around the Christmas season, it seems appropriate to welcome the actual holiday this year with a few words from Dr. Seuss' "How the Grinch Stole Christmas!" -- the 1966 TV version of which we watched this very afternoon with our nephews....

"He puzzled three hours till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before! 'Maybe Christmas,' he thought, 'doesn't come from a store. Maybe Christmas... perhaps... means a little bit more!'"

Merry Christmas.

Lights, Camera. . .

Speaking of extreme holiday makeovers, washingtonpost.com's Whitney Shefte fast-forwards through one Sterling, Va., couple's four-hour decorating spree in a minute and a half.

An Expanding Market: Inflatable Holiday Decorations

Sales of bigger-than-life inflatable Christmas decorations are growing.... and growing, and growing. A Dec. 20 Wall Street Journal article on "over-the-top" holiday lawn displays noted that inflatables were the fastest-growing category of seasonal decorations, with $500 million in sales last year. The Journal said that was up from $100 million in 2003, based on data from market researchers Mintel International.

One major contributor to the inflatable outdoor decoration industry is Charles "Chick" Beaulieu, the owner of a Fairfax, Va., Shell station whose holiday displays we wrote about back before Thanksgiving. The Motley Yule praised Chick then for actually decorating for Thanksgiving when many other business were already decking the halls for a different holiday.

But that does not mean that Chick does not go all out for Christmas too, as he has for 21 years. These two images will give you some idea of what Chick has in store for drivers passing his gas station at Route 50 and Jermantown Road these days....






Last week's Wall Street Journal story mentioned that the increasing popularity of inflatable decorations like these has inspired a wave of vandalism and thievery. Indeed newspaper crime reports across the country seem to be filled with items about such crimes -- from Wichita Falls, Texas, to Queen Creek, Ariz., to Colerain Township, Ohio, to Forest Acres, Wis.

Unpopular as these decorations are with some, columnist Robert Paul Reyes may be alone in thinking that "going medieval" on a big inflatable Frosty the Snowman is understandable, if not justifiable. But Reyes makes his bias on the subject perfectly clear in the kicker of his column. "Merry Christmas to all my readers," he writes, "except those with inflatable decorations."

Toys for Spots

Christine talked me out of buying gingerbread men-shaped dog treats for Belle, my sister-in-law's puppy. Chris just doesn't get into the whole gift-giving thing for pets. But now that one of our favorite cat-sitters dropped off a new kitty toy, carefully wrapped in shiny red paper with a card signed by "Auntie Clarissa," I'm feeling guilty about having not picked up something for the poor poochie. Not anything like the items in the photo here, heaven knows. But something.

Apparently I'm not the only one who has such feelings. A story in Saturday's Washington Post took an in-depth look at the business of holiday gifts for pets. "Responding to what they see as the growing humanization of pets, retailers are finding that there's great appeal in the kinds of gifts for pets that were once the sole domain of their owners, such as Christmas stockings, cashmere sweaters and educational toys," wrote staff writer Ylan Q. Mui.

The Post story cited a consumer survey by the American Pet Products Manufacturers Association, which found that about half of all dog and cat owners buy Christmas gifts for their beloved critters. Bob Vetere, the association's president, told the newspaper that empty nesters and dual-income couples with no children have driven most of the growth in spending on pet products, including holiday presents.

More from APPMA's summary of its 2007-2008 National Pet Owners Survey:

"The Survey shows more than one-half of all pet owners report having purchased a gift for their pets in the past 12 months, with Christmas remaining as the most popular gift giving holiday. Pet owners also shell out the big bucks on Easter, Halloween, Valentine’s Day and Hanukkah. According to The Survey, dog owners are likely to buy up to seven gifts per year, as owners of other pets purchase about four gifts per year. Regardless of species, on average more than $10 is spent on each gift."

For the record, Santa will not neglect our little puppy-in-law on Tuesday morning. Christine's sister bought Belle a new rope toy for Christmas. Meanwhile, I've found a recipe for homemade gingerbread dog treats. And I'm sure Belle would think a homemade present was more meaningful than a store-bought gift anyway.

'The Charlie Browniest'

As Lucy Van Pelt famously told Charlie Brown, "We all know that Christmas is a big commercial racket. It's run by a big eastern syndicate, you know."

Well, it turns out that syndicate actually might be on the other coast, in Burbank. The Disney-ABC Television Group there currently has the broadcast rights to "A Charlie Brown Christmas" -- the beloved TV special that first aired on CBS 42 years ago tonight. And after all this time, the special continues to do big business.

A brief in the Dec. 10 Business Week (2nd item) notes that the 2006 broadcast on ABC drew 21 million viewers and $8.7 million in advertising -- or a primo $218,000 for a 30-second spot.

Business Week also points out that the soundtrack with Vince Guaraldi's music for the special has sold 2 million-plus copies. That should please the program's creators, given how little CBS liked the music when the program was first produced, as recounted in a NPR story last year (streaming audio linked top left).

Fun fact: At one point Linus is seen knocking over a can with his blanket. In the original broadcast, this was a can of Coca-Cola, the program's original sponsor. There also was a Coke sign in the skating rink, but those references were edited out in subsequent versions to make room for more traditional advertising.