Too soon?

[Penny Trains]

So I'm sitting there looking at the 6 foot tree in my bedroom that I finished bedecking in all it's holiday finery yesterday morning and started wondering if I may be nuts.

How soon is too soon?  Is October 12th too early to already have a Christmas tree set-up and fully decorated?  Perhaps a few notes on the subject will help you help me decide whether or not I'm goofy in the head.

This particular tree lives in the center of a 4 by 6 foot plywood on carpet layout with ovals of O31 RealTrax and Flyer S-gauge tinplate track.  It's one of 2 large trees I decorate every year, the other being a 7 1/2 foot tree in the family room (with 10,000 lights and 5,000 ornaments, rough guess....).  That one features Standard Gauge and G-scale in a 5 by 14 space.  The bedroom layout spends 9 months of the year as a tropical garden with accoutrements and structures representing Thailand.  During the other 3 months, it's all Plasticville and very post-war oriented.  Based on it's location in the room, the tree has to be installed before I can finish building Plasticville below it.  And even then I have to lay accross tracks and get cramps in my back to wire up all the lighting under a tree with 14 inch ground clearance.

Between dissassembly of the Thai layout, cleaning that third of the bedroom from floor to ceiling, cleaning the track and the luan boards they're screwed onto, installation of terminal strips and the electrical grid for the town, and placing all of the Plasticville structures that lie outside the track ovals, it's been about 2 weeks in construction so far.  It took 2 days to set-up the tree.  I expect to be finished with the rest of Plasticville within a few days since all of the infrastructure is ready to go.  That should give me a finish date for the first of the 2 layouts by October 17th.  After that, I can look foreward to cleaning the rest of the bedroom and finishing up projects for the Standard/G layout.  Then, on or about the 7th of November I'll start prepping for the other tree and layout.  All and all I should get about 2 weeks or so off between layout building. (There are 5 more trees in the 12 inch to 4 foot range scattered about the house too)

So, is it too soon?  Since I need all of this assembled by Thanksgiving to have it all up long enough to make my efforts worthwhile, I'd say no.  I've organized the work and I proceed in a way that doesn't overload me with work to the point that I begin to hate it.  But in the broader sense, is it too soon to think about Christmas?   What about displaying Christmas trees?

I worked in retail for 16 years and many of those years had me in charge of seasonal departments in major chain stores.  (Builder's Square, Hills, Ames, Michaels)  I was one of the lucky few that was assigned the task of marking down and/or packing up the lawn furniture and setting the shelves for ornaments and lights.  Early in the process when you're just moving shelves and laying out your peg-hooks you don't get much notice.  But when you start stocking those shelves with glass balls and twinkle lights the customers give you all kinds of moans and groans.  Believe me, I've heard them all.  But you know what?  The loudest groaners are usually the ones who walk down those aisles you're working on and start buying things you haven't even had the chance to display yet!

Few stores take the risk of displaying their holiday wares in August anymore, but what about October?  Should Halloween be a pleasant memory before the first strand of tinsel makes it's appearance?  Remember when workers went into closed stores after their Thanksgiving dinners and worked all night to set up those giant Christmas trees that so many stores used to have?  (In my town, it was the big tree inside the atrium at Sterling Lindner Davis in downtown Cleveland that caused the most fuss.)  Would it be easier to accept a October or even a September Christmas tree in a department store if it had a huge Lionel or American Flyer layout built around it?

Like I said, I worked in retail for 16 out of my 40 years and what I've learned is this:

It's not that it's too early.  It's that people don't like being reminded of all the money they're going to spend during the Christmas season!

I'd also be interrested in hearing about your memories of giant trees and holiday displays of the past!

Becky:  The Christmas Queen.

[Major]

Nope!  You are not too soon!  This is the time I begin erecting my holiday layout so it will be ready by Thanksgiving.  Plus being retired military we celebrated missed Holidays whenever  we came together again.  It has never been for me too early or too late to be in a Holiday mood!   I also leave the tree and train garden up until about the last week in January. 

Here in the Baltimore area we have one garden center that already has over 50 Christmas trees up and decorated. If you want the ceramic buildings for your layout you better buy them now or you will be sorry come November.  I was out in Hagerstown, MD over the weekend and saw a couple of homes with Christmas Trees in their living rooms all aglow and last night on an internet radio station I heard "I'll be Home for Christmas" playing.

My father like trains also, so he would set them up about four times a year but not at Christmas time.  It wasn't until I was in high school that I set the trains up under the tree at Christmas in addition to other times of the year!  However I have always had a train under my tree, and my sister now has one under hers.  I have fond memories of growing up in Chicago and seeing the store displays in the Loop at Marshall Fields, Carson Perie Scott, Wiebolts etc., but find that the current train displays at the Holidays here in the Baltimore area far exceed anything that was around when I was a kid back in the 50's.

So don't worry about being too soon. Enjoy the moment and have fun with friends and family!

 

 

[wallyworld]

Every Christmas when I was young, my grandmother would take me on the "L" in Chicago from Cicero to The Loop on State Street to Fields Department store to see the gigantic toy train layout. The variety and size of all the Christmas store window displays along State Street in Chicago was amazing..Fields had a several story Xmas tree in the center of the main floor. Wow. She would treat me to lunch at the Walnut Room. I really treasure these memories.,and am thankful I grew up when I did. The snow falling, the bustle of shoppers, the L roaring overhead..what a sensory delight. Big box stores are not even in the same ballpark. Thanks for asking us..now I am in the mood to begin my own display this year...around the tree ( of course) ..Too soon.?.I think it's in the eye of the beholder..in a sense it is crass and in another..what do we expect?

[vsmith]

Christmas? I havent even set up the Halloween layout yet

[cjmeyers]

Why not? Go for it, says I. My wife has a cousin who's a missionary in Equador who won't be home for Christmas and has already decorated her apartment for Christmas.

As for me, Christmas is October 15th this year, and I get to meet Santa,not at the North Pole, but in York PA.

Regards,

CJ Meyers
Member TCA

 

 

[rtraincollector]

For me the answer would be yes as wife and I have no children its just us. But to me it depends on what all you plan to do and your schedule so it really up to you to decide when you need to put it up.

So go for it is my answer.

[Major]

I'll be up at York tomorrow and Friday also.  You are right it is just like Christmas!!!

[Anonymous]

Becky,

             To me, it is never too soon to put together a Christmas layout.  I'd start right now if I could.

[balidas]

Never too early for the holidays. Just think if you lived in that town called Santa Claus, you'd be doing Christmas year round.

[smokymtguy]

Becky I too worked in retail 22 years in the Floral Industry.  I would always start making Christmas arangments the begining of August and store them in the back of the flower shop that I worked at so  cume the last couple of weeks of October the shop could be changed out for Christmas by the first of November.  I would alway here from customers you are working on christmas already?? 

I never had trains around the christmas tree growing up.  My dad  always said if he catches any trains under the tree he would take them away from me.  He was afraid of the tinsel falling on the tracks and shorting out the trains.  So no christmas trains.  We always had the track mounted to a 3X6 sheet of plywood that was layed on the floor across from the tree.  Just a loop of track with 3 switches on it, a few street lights and match box cars, and some very small wooden block houses on the board.  I never recieved anymore trains after the first 2 sets I had.   My parents figured the trains were just faze and I would grow out of it.  Not till I was in my late 20's did I start buying trains again.

Growing up I remember going downtown Akron, Ohio in the 60's to see the lights and the christmas windows of O'Neils and Poskley stores.  And then a trip to the toy departments of each store,  my parents could always find me if I was lost in the toys looking at the display layouts or watching the trains.  I remember some of the layouts the trains would be off the track and I wanted to get behind the rope that kept you away from the layout and put the trains back on the track that they could run again.

I have put trains around the tree in the past few years but with the dogs and cats in the house I always found someone sleeping under the tree and cars or engines rolled of the tracks so I just gave up.  I do have a layout in a spare bedroom the has a 4 foot silver tree on the layout year round now in the winter section of the layout.  So I can have christmas in the train room when ever I want.

 

[Penny Trains]

That's pretty funny!  My parents we're the opposite in that they hated tinsel!  And live trees!  We always had to have garlands on our hinky plastic tree.  Well I showed them!  My bedroom tree is covered with tinsel!  It's Martha Stewart brand plastic tinsel though, not the lead strips of yore so it doesn't short on the tracks.  For whatever reason, we always had the trains around the tree in the basement, not in the living room.  That meant they had to set-up 2 trees!  That "basement tree" is now the one I use in my bedroom and the old hinky dinky first generation plastic tree lives in the attic.  It got replaced by a much better tree!

I grew up in the 70's so a lot of the great downtown stores were on the decline by that time.  I do remember one trip when I was about 6 or 7, taking the Rapid downtown and going to the Twigbee shop.  I remember very little about the actual Twigbee store, but I do remember Santa's throne in a very red room and the keyhole door only kids could fit through.  I also remember the Fanny Farmer candy shop in the concourse below the Terminal Tower.  The big time for Cristmas in Cleveland was 1982 and right after when all those magnificent decorations were created for the "A Christmas Story" movie.  In 1991 I worked at the Twigbee shop in Tower City Center, but it was owned by the Mallard Bay Gift Co. at that time.  We also had "Bruce the Spruce" the talking Christmas tree.  And who could forget Mr. Jingeling!

Akron was something of a mythical place to me up until the late 80's.  It was the "city we passed" in our purple station wagon on the way to the big grocery shopping clubs in Canton like Fisher's and Edward's.  Remember them?  But, I do have both Cleveland Memories and Akron Memories on tape and they covered O'Neil's and Polsky's if only briefly.  Of course, my favorite part of that program is when they showed the Christmas windows at Higbee's and May's and everything from the Blue Comet 400E to the scale Hudson got TV time on PBS!

Aaaaahh...silver trees!  I have a 12 inch silver tree with pink ornaments on my desk that I use as a nightlite!

I always have fencing around my floor layouts.  I find the bright white plasticville pickets provide a good dividing line and help keep feet off the right of way!  Don't know how well that would work with pets though.  You could always electrify the fence!  lol

Becky

[Timboy]

Uh, well if it's accuracy we're looking for here then we should be very careful.

It's the HOLIDAY SEASON, BECKY.  lol

Timboy

[Phoebe Vet]

I have been meaning to take down last year's.  So you are telling me I can just save the work and relabel it?