Saturday, September 26, 2009

Ho Ho Ho Hum

If you want to know why anything in the world is done, just follow the money.

I say this because yesterday was exactly three months until Christmas and the stores are now gearing up—if not already at full speed—for the season. The catalogs are rolling in, too. I'm not sure when the first one arrived this year, but last year I made a concerted effort to mark the date we received our first Christmas catalog. It was Sept. 7, right after Labor Day. I decided just for fun (apparently I'm easily amused) to see exactly how many catalogs we would get by Christmas Day, so I placed a basket by the door, and each time one arrived in the mail I tossed it in the basket. We ended up with more than 100. Probably half I had never heard of or asked for.

I can't blame retailers for this, of course. The first rule of any business is to make money; if you don't make money, you're not going to be in business very long. Christmas is not only retailers' most productive season, it's also their most profitable season. The day after Thanksgiving, after all, is known as Black Friday for a reason—that's the day retailers' bottom lines shift from being written in red ink to black ink. So there's really no reason why we should be surprised that they're pushing the season from three weeks before Christmas to three months before Christmas. As I said, just follow the money.

But it seems to me that we're losing something with this. Our innocence, perhaps? Or what's left of it. It used to be that Christmas didn't start until the day after Thanksgiving. There was a determined, set order to the end-of-the-year holidays—Halloween first, then Thanksgiving, then Christmas. There would be an excitement and mad rush for three weeks. It was totally different from the rest of the year, and that made it special. Now that set order is all stirred together. It's stew. Gumbo. Yes, there's still the mob scene on the day after Thanksgiving. But even that is getting lost, as stores are now staying open all night or trying to beat the competition by opening earlier. I know one person who was up and at a particular store last year at 4:00 a.m. And when he got there, there was a line. To me, that's insanity.

That doesn't mean we have to break out the stockings and string lights yet, of course. My wife and I reached a friendly compromise after a series of debates as to when Christmas in our house is allowed to start. I insisted that it couldn't be until after Thanksgiving. She reluctantly agreed, but only if she could set the definition of "after Thanksgiving." I reluctantly agreed. As it turns out, after Thanksgiving starts the exact second the last person steps out the door after Thanksgiving dinner. The football games are still on. I'm packing the refrigerator with leftovers and the dishwasher with plates, and she's hauling up tub after tub of Christmas decorations from the basement. She then stays up all night decorating, and by Friday morning, when others are waiting in line outside department stores, it's full-blown Christmas in our house. By Saturday she's wrapping presents and putting them under the trees (yes, plural, one upstairs and one downstairs) because she's already done most of her shopping—over the course of the last three months.

Monday, September 21, 2009

Battle of the Bulge

Life, it seems to me, is an endless battle against beer bellies and man boobs. And the enemy has launched its annual full-scale, end-of-year offensive. I say this after visiting the grocery store over the weekend and driving my cart through aisle after aisle of Halloween candy. Although the holiday is still six weeks away, the first wave in what's become a three-month bombardment designed to make us all look like the late, great, appropriately named John Candy has begun. Fun-sized Snickers and M&Ms from Halloween are immediately followed by that weeklong gorge of heaping-helpings and leftovers known as Thanksgiving, which are immediately followed by Christmas cookies and chocolate-covered pretzels and other little tasties too tempting to turn down. If I were Oliver Stone, I'd say it's a conspiracy by the clothing manufacturers to get us to buy new, larger clothes. Or the health clubs in an effort to prey on our New Year's resolutions to trade in our rolls for something sportier.

I mentioned this today at work and someone asked if the enemy was within? Well, not if I can help it. My wife and I have agreed to fight a good fight and keep the enemy without. We aren't buying the Halloween candy that I like—chocolate-covered anything—so I'm not tempted by the leftovers. Instead we're buying the candy she likes—the ooey, gooey, chewy stuff that I'm not tempted by—and I'm taking any leftovers into work to fill up my candy jar with. That way we both escape.

We've also agreed to buy a smaller turkey this year so there's not as much left over. But there's still the matter of pumpkin pies (my favorite), Christmas cookies (my favorite) and cold-weather helpers like hot chocolate (my favorite). That's where I lose. Or gain, depending on your perspective. The weather isn't conducive to running the weight off. And the gym's hard to get to with studying and the day's activities. So what's a wide body to do? I've chosen to fight using the one item guaranteed to make anyone lose weight: a mirror. If I look in it and see John Candy, I'm breaking out the rice cakes and unbuttered popcorn. In the meantime, let the battle begin.

Monday, September 14, 2009

Success

Each morning I receive a leadership tip in my e-mail box. This one came this week. It's a quote from billionaire financier Warren Buffett:

Basically, when you get to my age, you’ll really measure your success in life by how many of the people you want to have love you actually do love you. I know people who have a lot of money, and they get testimonial dinners and they get hospital wings named after them. But the truth is that nobody in the world loves them. If you get to my age in life and nobody thinks well of you, I don’t care how big your bank account is, your life is a disaster. That’s the ultimate test of how you have lived your life. The trouble with love is that you can’t buy it. You can buy sex. You can buy testimonial dinners. You can buy pamphlets that say how wonderful you are. But the only way to get love is to be lovable. It’s very irritating if you have a lot of money. You’d like to think you could write a check: I’ll buy a million dollars’ worth of love. But it doesn’t work that way. The more you give love away, the more you get.

I've spent a lot of time pondering the whole notion of success and what it means, and it seems to me that Buffett's not only a brilliant in business but wise in life as well. This is one of the best definitions I've found.

Saturday, September 12, 2009

Moving Mom

I helped my mom move this weekend. She lives in retirement community and is downsizing from a one-bedroom apartment to a studio apartment. Not by choice, though. By no choice is more like it. Several months ago she got a letter from the company that administers her 401(k) informing her that because of the downturn in the stock market, the value of her portfolio dropped significantly and the only way they could continue making payments on her pension was to reduce the amount she received each month. So, like that, her monthly retirement checks were cut in half and making the rent was suddenly a struggle. The only way she could continue to stay in the retirement community, which she truly likes, was to move to a smaller place where the rent was cheaper.

As I stood in the empty apartment, looking at what was once her home, I felt a genuine sense of tragedy. Here's a woman who worked her entire life, struggled to make ends meet, finally got to a place where she was comfortable and happy, and is now forced to go somewhere she shouldn't be. Yes, unless your name is Gates or Buffett or Trump, most of our residential lives can be tracked on a bell curve—you start off small, get bigger and then go back to small. But by choice. And I guess that's what bothers me most about this. This wasn't by choice. Her life—mine? ours?—was and is in a large way controlled by a bunch of knuckleheads on Wall Street. Yes, yes, there are many others who share the responsibility for the market crash. But it still makes you want to start stuffing your mattress with money. And it also makes you wonder if all of those people who were approving bad loans or defaulting on their McMansions or overextending credit card limits ever thought about the people who would pay the price for their actions. People like my mom.

It's too late to do anything about that now, of course. We need to look forward. We also need to learn. And it seems to me, one of the lessons that we could all stand to learn from this economic mess we've gotten ourselves into is that we really are our brothers' and sisters' keepers. Our lives, whether we want to admit it or not, are a tightly woven web. Everything we do is connected. It's a lesson my mom taught me a long time ago, and one I need reminded of periodically as well. Standing in her old apartment, I was reminded. As for Mom, her view of the matter, of course, is better than mine. She's approaching the whole move positively and thinks the new place will be great. If she's there, it will be.