Pomp and Protest : Holidays: As visions of Santas danced in children’s heads, parents busily filled shopping carts with last-minute tinsel and ornaments at Stats, a Christmas super-store.
Waiting until the last minute to Christmas shop is tough enough. But spending one of the season’s last big shopping days buying ornaments, tinsel and icicles for your Christmas tree can be a back breaker.
Just ask Carol Thompson. On Saturday she maneuvered a cart loaded with decorations through aisles jammed with fanciful Santas, make-believe snowmen--and hundreds of other shoppers like herself.
She was at Stats, a 25,000-square-foot holiday decoration supply store in Pasadena, where early-bird shoppers began observing Christmas last July. That’s when workers began filling sales racks with more than 10,000 Yuletide items.
Thompson had a good excuse for buying her decorations late, though.
“We got our tree two weeks ago. But then my husband fell off the roof when he was putting up the outside lights and fractured his back,” the Glendora woman explained.
David Thompson, 53, has improved enough to return to work, But he is wearing a back brace and cannot climb into the garage rafters to retrieve boxes of tree decorations stored there.
“I’m not about to climb up there myself and fall. So I’m buying all new decorations,” Thompson said with a broad grin. “I don’t need lights--I’m going to use the ones he was going to put on the roof until he fell.”
She wasn’t the only good-natured shopper, either. Festive garlands of holly, jingling bells and a million tiny holiday lights twinkling across the football field-size store were spreading cheer on the most frantic of shopping days.
There was no elbowing or jousting over merchandise. There were no rude comments when aisle gridlock was caused by shoppers ogling extravagantly decorated artificial trees for sale at $6,950.
“This is a nice place to be,” said June Owens of Tujunga, who came to purchase a Nativity scene. “The ambience rubs off on people.”
Bonnie Hoshino of Glendale and her daughter, Heather, stopped in for outdoor holiday lights--and to enjoy the sights. “This is the Disneyland of Christmas,” 19-year-old Heather said.
Children in the crowd agreed.
Laura Meyers, 8, of Pasadena, led her 7-year-old brother David to a bewhiskered, red-suited doll. “This isn’t Santa Claus. It’s Father Christmas. He’s like Santa, except that he wears a long robe,” she said.
Tyler Beach, 7, of Santa Monica, held up her 3-year-old sister, Ivy, to give her a close look at a reindeer figure. “It’s Rudolph’s girlfriend. Look. See, she’s got a red nose and she’s wearing a skirt,” Tyler explained.
Said the girls’ mother, Lelia Beach: “This place is so festive. I just thought they should see it.”
On the other side of the store, Andrew Probandt, 6, of La Canada Flintridge, giggled over a wood Nutcracker figure decorated as a golfer as his 8-year-old sister Katie stood nearby. She was admiring an animated “sleeping” Santa doll that made snoring sounds as its huge stomach moved up and down.
Their 5-year-old twin brothers Philip and Alex reached for a pair of wintry snow globes--those water-filled glass balls that become blizzard scenes when they’re shaken. It left their mom, Carolyn Probandt, shaken: “Oh, please don’t touch,” she said. “Please don’t.”
Stats’ five outlets attract busloads of children on school field trips each December, said Brian Shirk, an assistant store manager.
But with less than a week to go before the big day, Shirk said he’s almost Christmased out.
“The only decorations I’ll have at home are a string of lights and a wreath and maybe a poinsettia plant,” he said.
