Customs: No, You’re Not Dreaming; It’s Already Christmastime

Ann McGeath, a clerk in Dallas’ big new Sanger-Harris department store, was trimming a display Christmas tree one afternoon when she felt a tug on her skirt. “Lady,” said a four-year-old boy, his tiny face knotted with perplexity, “Lady, it’s not even Halloween yet.” It wasn’t, either. Sanger-Harris, together with many other U.S. depart ment stores, installed its early-bird Christmas Shop in October this year, replete with cards, creches, plastic Christmas trees, tinsel and wrappings. The U.S. shopper is not imagining things. Christmas does come a little earlier each year.

“From a national standpoint, everyone is purchasing display items a lot earlier and asking for earlier deliveries,” reports Merle Hayward, an executive of the Silvestri Art Manufacturing Co., the U.S.’s largest Christmas-and general-display firm, and a 1966 study by the National Retail Merchants comes to the same conclusion. By last week all five major Manhattan department stores had their holiday toylands open for trade, and their Christmas boutiques were stuffed with wrappings, gifts, cards and decorations. Such cities as Portland, Ore., may still wait until the day after Thanksgiving to trim their streets, but Elmsford, N.Y., has its holiday wattage in place.

In Detroit, Mayor Jerry Cavanagh lost his battle with the city’s retailers, and this year the annual “Detroit Aglow” ceremony will light off on Nov. 21 instead of Nov. 28. In Chicago, Montgomery Ward sent out its holiday catalogues three weeks earlier this year than last, Marshall Field & Co. will have its Christmas trees up a week earlier, and along Michigan Avenue, the stores of the Greater North Michigan Avenue Assn. have put up their decorations two weeks earlier than last year.

Everything on Wheels. In Allentown, Pa., where Hess’s department store has its Christmas decorations up, Santa is already lifting the small fry on his knee. Apparently, the earlier the better. Sales Promotion Manager Wayne Holben says that November sales now account for 46% of the Christmas business.

“People who buy earlier give more thought to their gifts,” he explains. “The closer it gets to Christmas, the more frenzied their buying becomes.”

To cash in early on the $400 million men’s cosmetics boom (bolstered largely by women shopping for their menfolk at Christmas), Revlon, Inc., last week uncorked its brand-new, 18-item Braggi collection, including cologne “designed for the individualist,” and a nightcap facial massage “to relieve a look of worry and fatigue.” Mary Lindsay, wife of New York’s mayor, confides: “There is nothing that has wheels or that flies that John Jr. hasn’t marked in the F.A.O. Schwarz Christmas catalogue.”

Empty Flasks & Score Pad. “Christmas doesn’t only seem to come earlier every year,” argues a saleslady at Robinson’s in Los Angeles. “It actually does. If people want to get their packages overseas or get cards to Europe without spending 500 for each of them, they’ve got to buy early.” Not only do more internationally minded Americans have more friends abroad than ever be fore, they now also have plently of relatives in Viet Nam.

For servicemen overseas, stores have been doing a brisk business in gifts ranging from toilet kits to packages of fruit, cheese and nuts. Detroit’s Hudson’s has been advertising a $9.95 “fun kit” for use at the rest-and-recreation areas that contains a case of poker chips, checkers, cards, dice, two empty 12-oz. flasks, a drink mixer, two jiggers, a bottle opener and a score pad. The U.S. Post Office no longer guarantees parcel post delivery by Christmas Day but a present airmailed before Dec. 10 should still reach Viet Nam with Donder and Blitzen.