Best job ever: August’s Christmas

Customer expectation was high. It had to be a scene worthy of “Miracle on 34th Street” or the Red Ryder rifle’s “A Christmas Story”. The day after Thanksgiving opened the Christmas shopping season. The competition was fierce between Houston’s department stores like Foley’s, Sakowitz, and Neiman Marcus. Christmas decorations were elaborate, enchanted, and instantly appeared overnight. Corporate management would waltz through: a smile signaling success. Display crews nervously waited the verdict.

While most know about backstage crews for ballet companies or stage shows, few realize major department stores have their own behind-the-scenes manic creative crews.

It’s the best job ever: working Display (with the accent on the “dis“).

If you’ve got to earn money for grad school, might as well have fun.

Not for the weak. Single-handedly hauling 8-10 foot wooden ladders through store aisles without touching anything (always wood which won’t skate when you are on top). Muscling full-sized dressed mannequins, notorious for dropping a hand, onto shoulder-high platforms. Balancing delicately on ledges or counters pinning and tucking details.

Creativity – or quirkiness- required.

One major part of the job is coming up with an attractive way to show off odd utilitarian items – like socks. Once created a Gold Toe men’s sock display with plexiglass cubes and river rock that brough tears to the company reps’ eyes. He ran off, got a camera, and made pictures for corporate. Our store manager beamed. Our crew chuckled. We knew that rep was going make some other display crew’s lives miserable demanding they be just as creative. Huge competition between stores. (And we hated each other. Constantly on alert for snooping crews from other stores.)

All part of the job which started hours before shoppers arrived, and often meant working overnight and on weekends while everyone else was home.

All to create the magic.

Effortlessly.

That’s the trick. The talent and skill.

That illusion of instant Christmas was the most difficult, but the most fun.

While others baked at the beach, we blared “Jingle Bell Rock” and brushed off snow in August. It wasn’t trendy face glitter we wore – just a shiny dusting from constructing. The “Ho Ho Ho’s” sounded increasingly manic as the year’s Christmas design plan came to life. (Coffee, more coffee!).

Other store personnel gave us wide berth.

Trees, once decorated, were stashed in stairwells – a claustrophobic vertical glittery forest. Whispers of “the Fire Marshall is coming” sent us into a frenzy. We moved like chess pieces around the store, trees in arms, sliding from place to place as he checked one passage, then moved to another. Annoyed, we’d exclaim, “Hey, what’s the deal? If there’s a fire, grab a tree on your way down the stairs and out.”

As Thanksgiving approached, garlands and ornaments were carefully stashed for quick access in cabinets or counters on the floor. We snarled warnings – not veiled at all – if “sales associates” even thought about moving decorations aside or crushing them. There would be “words” but not many because everyone knew Display ruled this time of year.

Display was responsible for the magic.

One day just basic store design as usual, the next it was like the Snow Queen scattered enchanted snow. Overnight. Instantly, it was a Christmas wonderland designed to awe. Exhausted, we gloried in the “oh’s” and “ah’s” of delight from customers and store personnel.

Perhaps someplace in some store, there are overnight appearances of Christmas on the scale of a Hollywood extravaganza, but not many. Those days of shoppers eager to simply gaze on enchanting elaborate Christmas store displays and windows have been eclipsed. Instead it’s now “Black Friday” shopping the day after Thanksgiving. With the stores “decorated” with piles of cardboard boxed “specials” and rumpled stampeding customers slugging it out.

Display crews possibly bemoan the loss of style, grace, and elegance, but maybe they enjoy the Beach Boys singing more seasonally appropriate songs in August. It’s been a while, but when fall leaves suggest construction paper and football games to others, all I can feel is an itching for red velvet ribbon and the urge to look over my shoulder for the Fire Marshall.

Merry with the season,

Phil, the Philosopher Mouse of the Hedge.

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