By MARTA HEPLER DRAHOS
mdrahos@record-eagle.com
November 09, 2008 12:00 am On a balmy Halloween weekend James Smith's elaborate Christmas light display twinkled in the night sky, making travelers along Benzie Highway do double takes as they passed by. "My son puts them up," said Smith, owner of Smitty's Tree and Snow Removal in Benzonia. "A couple years ago he got cold putting them up and he said, 'I'm not doing this anymore. I'm putting them up early.'" Smith isn't the only one getting a head start on Christmas this year. Whether to beat the cold weather or the crowds, to enjoy the season longer or to help get it over with, many -- from shoppers to crafters to card writers -- are getting a jump on the holiday season before its traditional day-after-Thanksgiving start. "Because I make gifts, I start in August," said Lori Clark, a crafter who not only creates some of her gifts each year but the tags she puts on them. "If you don't start in summer, it's too late." This year Clark is making eight to 10 sets of handmade greeting cards, each complete with its own folder, to give to friends and family. The cards -- from birthday to thank you -- are constructed of card stock, then decorated with everything from "jewels" to notions to machine stitching. There's even a set in German for her daughter, a college student who will be spending the holiday in Germany this year with her boyfriend and his family. "A part of me doesn't like seeing all this Christmas stuff in stores so early, but there's another part of me that appreciates it because I need to start my projects," said Clark, who works on the cards from three big containers of craft supplies in the living room while her husband watches football. "I don't like to feel rushed on anything I do in life," she added. Ruth Ann LaMott started her Christmas shopping at the Dennos Museum Center's holiday sale, one of the area's earliest and largest arts and crafts shows. "I'm the oldest of seven children so we have a very extended family," said LaMott, who bought educational puzzles for her nieces and nephews and brooches for five of her friends. "We've taken to drawing names, which is great, but still. It isn't like I spend a lot of money, but I want to make them meaningful. When you're rushed at the last minute you tend to say, 'Well, this would work.' Plus I like supporting artists and the local economy and this lets me do that." Nearly 2,000 attended this year's sale, held Oct. 24-26 -- the best ever by over $5,000, according to Dennos Museum Center director Gene Jenneman. "It was a madhouse around here," he said. "We were stunned, given the economy." In fact, while shoppers spent less money per gift than usual, they shelled out about the same amount altogether for one-of-a-kind items by 49 area artists, said Dennos Museum Store Manager Terry Tarnow. "People were willing to spend the same amount of dollars they always did in the past," she said. "Only where before they'd take their $100 and buy two things for $50, they bought four things for $25 or five things for $20." Tarnow said she holds the sale the fourth weekend in October as much to get it over with as to take advantage of early Christmas shoppers. But early shoppers are what drives its success. "Is it to our advantage that we get out early? Probably," she said. For shoppers at The Candle Factory's Home Elements, "early" means September, said store employee Lisa Harris. That's when the store puts out its Christmas cards every year. "The snowbirds start asking for them in August because they're traveling south, and when they get down there they don't like the cards," Harris said. "They want wintry, Michigan cards, not flamingos." "We've gotten the comment, 'We like to write our Christmas cards on the beach,'" added store owner Marcia Teichman. Lauren Vaughn starts preparing for downtown Traverse City's big Christmas tree as early as the year before. The Traverse City parks and recreation superintendent keeps a list of overgrown trees people want to donate all year long and looks at each one personally to decide which is best for the prime Front and Cass location. "They plant this cute little blue spruce when it's three feet high, but when it gets to be 30 feet high and it blocks their view or their driveway they need it removed," said Vaughn, who currently has 10 or 15 trees on the list. Vaughn planned to take advantage of early November's balmy weather to view the trees, then fetch the winner a few weeks later in time for the traditional downtown lighting ceremony the Friday after Thanksgiving. The tree -- up to 40 feet tall -- will be hauled with a semi-truck and 40-foot flatbed trailer, lowered into a manhole and stabilized with sand and wedges, then decorated with lights using a crane. The whole process takes about three and a half days, he said. Now that's it up, James Smith plans to light his Benzonia display every night beginning this week and to keep the lights -- as many as 80 strings -- up until spring. "Last year we left them on a lot, sometimes all night," said Smith, whose electric bill shoots up from $100 to $400 a month. "Sometimes we turn them on in the winter when there's a storm, and it looks pretty. People see them when they go by and it makes them feel better. I know it makes me feel better." While Smith grew up in Clare near neighbors who tried to outdo each other during the holidays -- "They would have live sheep in corrals," he recalled -- Lee Smith credits her German heritage for her love of the season. "My favorite memory is going to church on Christmas Eve and coming out when it was snowing," said Smith, no relation to James. "When we got home we'd hang up stockings -- and it had to be the stockings you wore. I also made ornaments for the tree as a child, and I taught my children to make them, too." Now she works in a studio above her garage five months a year creating items to sell in her store, Country Christmas, the other seven. A former fruit stand, the shop is open Memorial Day through Dec. 23 and specializes in handmade items using found and vintage materials. Best sellers include driftwood Santa ornaments and chalkware Santa figures formed in antique chocolate molds. But Smith doesn't stop there. Some 20 to 40 vintage Santas decorate the rooms in her home year-round, while a Christmas tree in the dining room is decorated for everything from Easter to Thanksgiving. "Christmas never leaves for me," said Smith's son, James C. Smith. "Christmas is all year for my family."
—
Copyright © 1999-2008 cnhi, inc.