Christmas came early to Joyce Zerges’ house this year.
Oct. 26, to be precise.
From the custom-built tree in the living room that displays her collection of Christopher Radko ornaments to the downstairs storeroom filled with bins labeled “Tree Top Stars” and “Small Italian Angels,” it’s clear Zerges enjoys dressing up her elegant Stone Mountain home for the holidays. But that’s not the real reason that Pat Whitford, a decorator from M.C. Twinklin’s Christmas shop in Lilburn, was there five days before Halloween, carefully placing a 3-foot-tall “Angel Topper” on another tree in the family room.
It was the only opening Whitford had on her schedule until nearly the second week in December.
“She called and said, ‘What do you have left?’” Whitford said. “And I said, ‘OK, I have this day.’”
It’s metro Atlanta’s latest holiday tradition: getting a super early start on things.
What’s that? You thought you still had a whole week left just to get ready for Thanksgiving?
Ho, ho, ho. Many of us already are close to being bypassed by some of the season’s more celebratory trappings. Christmas itself still hasn’t budged from Dec. 25. But for a variety of reasons, some of the more beloved events or rituals associated with it — or at least the race to claim one’s rightful place in them — continue to creep farther and farther up on the calendar.
“We started taking holiday reservations on Oct. 1, but people were already calling in August and September,” said Jason Sanders, food and beverage director at the Ritz-Carlton Buckhead, where several Christmas-themed events sold out in a single day for the first time this year. “You can tell people are thinking about it earlier.”
The result, increasingly, is a holiday mashup of Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas — “Hallowgivingmas”? — that this year saw the Gracias Choir perform its “Christmas Cantata” at the Atlanta Civic Center on Oct. 13. It’s also creating a hypervigilant populace that seems determined not to let the proverbial Christmas tree truck pass it by — even if said truck pulls into town when it’s still shorts-and-flip-flop weather outside.
“We were laughing in line with some of the other parents, you know, ‘Here it is, a Tuesday at 10 a.m. on Veterans Day, and we’re standing on line with our kids to see Santa,’” Mark Owens grinned as he and his wife, Gretchen, made their way out of Phipps Plaza after having 19-month-old Caroline’s photo taken with Santa Claus. Outside, it was sunny and on the way to 72 degrees. “We had to book up in July.”
Well, you don't have to, but try telling that to people who know this much-sought-after Santa's "only" there from Nov. 1 to Dec. 23 this year. Several years ago, the Phipps Santa's wranglers introduced pre-registration, beginning on July 1 (this is also the second year Santa's working on certain Mondays, normally his day off). Despite — or maybe because of — those changes, every slot was gone by Nov. 3 this year.
It’s not the only example of metro Atlanta having to adjust to the notion of Christmas coming early:
- Big John's Christmas Trees will open around the metro area this weekend and shut some of its locations down on Dec. 21 or 22. They used to start setting up the lots on Thanksgiving, said Jimbo Livaditis, whose father started the business in 1949. "But now people want to be up and ready by Thanksgiving," said Livaditis, who found himself visiting out-of-state tree farms earlier than ever this year, in mid-July.
- The Atlanta Ballet will perform "The Nutcracker" at the Fox Theatre 20 times this year, but good luck if you waited past Columbus Day to try to snag balcony tickets for opening night on Dec. 11. Every seat in the first and second dress circles and the gallery was sold on Oct. 13, along with half of the loge section.
- Whitford of M.C. Twinklin's decorated her first house on Oct. 20 this year. Between then and Dec. 5, 46 jobs were scheduled, including five on one day. Some customers have even gotten a jump on next year: Whitford's calendar shows nine jobs already booked for November 2015.
- At the Ritz-Carlton in Buckhead, reservations for "Tea With Santa" on the two Saturdays before Christmas completely sold out on Oct. 1, the first day they could be booked. "We've never sold out (any) 'Tea With Santa' on the first day before," Sanders, the food and beverage director, said two weeks before Thanksgiving. "At this point, we're already 200 reservations ahead of last year for Christmas (events). People are getting a jump on things."
Possible explanations range from a particular calendar quirk this year — Thanksgiving arrives so late in November, it almost can’t help overlapping with the December holidays and vice versa — to an overall improvement in the economy that’s made people especially eager to not hold back any longer.
During the recession, people tended to repair, rather than replace, their “permanent” trees, said M.C. Twinklin’s owner Cheryl Gaston. Not this year. Customers were waiting in the parking lot when Twinklin’s opened for the holiday season on Sept. 27; a little over two weeks later, the Lilburn store had already sold 37 new trees.
One expert even suggests that “Hallowgivingmas” may represent a more recent and rather clever coping mechanism for those whose lives have become increasingly hectic and overscheduled now.
"Mom and Dad are both working, they're driving car pools, so their time has become much more limited," said Marshall Duke, the Charles Howard Candler professor of psychology at Emory University, who studies family issues. "You can't plan to concentrate your shopping and decorating for each particular holiday in each particular period of time. I think it's become seasonal: When fall arrives, we have all the holidays to think about."
Critics say the “Christmas comes early” phenomenon robs us of much more than peace of mind or a chance at the best “Nutcracker” seats; it also steals away what used to be special about waiting all year for certain traditions to recur, traditions that now arrive a month or more early — or not at all, in the case of those elusive home decorating appointments.
But maybe it’s not so bad, Duke said. For instance, pre-registering in July for a post-Halloween photo session with Santa could eventually turn into a beloved tradition in and of itself.
“I don’t like the idea of making an appointment then,” Duke chuckled, “but I like the fact that within that situation the family has created a ritual and a tradition.
“I would guess that when those kids grow up, they’ll fondly remember that.”
