Christmas in July : Stocking Fund-Raisers Requires Getting Into Holiday Spirit Early
There were only 151 shopping days left until Christmas.
So naturally Grace Carvajal and her friends were hurrying when they went on a holiday gift-shopping spree Monday.
Never mind that the temperature outside was in the mid-90s and the smoggy air was causing an outbreak of health advisories east of Los Angeles. It was still beginning to look a lot like Christmas.
“We have so much to do,” the 54-year-old Glendale woman said as she admired the hand-carved decorations on a gaily lit Christmas tree standing next to a winter wonderland in downtown Los Angeles.
It was Christmas in July for Carvajal and others who run holiday boutiques each year as charity fund-raisers. Summer is the time for wrapping up holiday gift-buying so there is time before the holidays to wrap up the gifts.
Carvajal’s “Christmas Cottage” boutique in late November will raise money for a new children’s day-care center at the Glendale Adventist Medical Center. The boutique has raised $15,000 for medical equipment the past two years, hospital executive Laura Thompson said. This year, organizers hope for a $10,000 profit.
But it will take the sale of thousands of Christmas wreaths, sleigh bells and Santa Clauses to do that.
Visions of sugar plums and much, much more were dancing through the heads of Carvajal, Margaret Kaufman and Betty Glenn as they made their way through the L.A. Mart, a downtown wholesale center that sells exclusively to retailers.
They bought a dozen hand-carved doves. Then they picked three Christmas tree skirts with matching stockings. Twenty-five wooden tree ornaments were next. Then came a set of carved wooden figures representing each of the 12 days of Christmas. Then three hand-whittled Scandinavian Santas. And two-dozen Santa Claus houses.
The three spent about $2,000 during Monday’s three-hour excursion. The buying started about three months ago; by the end of August, they will have made more than half a dozen such Christmas buying trips. Others assigned to buy children’s gifts for the boutique will have done the same.
Only when the final Christmas tree is decorated and the last of 50 Christmas wreaths is assembled and put on display at the Christmas Cottage sale will the 30 women who run the boutique rush out to do their own holiday shopping. That will be in December, when others are just starting their gift-buying.
The idea of an extended holiday is fine with Carvajal.
“Even though it’s July, you can’t help but get in the Christmas spirit when you do this,” she said. “I wish Christmas could be six months a year.”
Glenn’s jaw dropped when she heard that.
“Oh, Gracie! You don’t mean it,” she said. “It takes me a couple of months to even think about Christmas after doing this.”
When Monday’s shopping was over, the three returned to their windowless, stuffy hospital basement for an afternoon of wreath-making as they waited for their toys and gifts to arrive. Deliverymen from Federal Express and United Parcel Service--not St. Nick--would be doing the honors.
The women were sweltering over hot glue guns as they positioned decorative pieces of holly and garlands of ribbon on three-foot-wide twig wreaths. They laughed at their predicament.
There was no need for a chimney for Santa to come down, they said. They would gladly settle for an air conditioning duct.
