The Most Wonderful Time

No question about it -- retail stores push the seasons. Christmas starts showing its face in August, and everyone is more than ready to pack away The Holidays come New Year's Day.

That opens the door to my absolute favorite season of the retail year: Springtime in January. The crowds are gone. Business is slow. Our store explodes into a profusion of tulips, daffodils, hyacinth, forsythia, and flowering branches. It's all silk, of course, and my gardener's soul would rather be out playing in damp soil, barefoot, coaxing the tender shoots towards the sun. But when the sky is battleship gray, the arctic wind is knifing through your layers of clothing, and there's a grimy twelve inches of glacier between your boots and the cement-hard ground, "faux spring" is a delight.

Oh, and the "seasonal music" is gone too. My ears unclench. If you're in the store some evening, and you see a sales associate happily tidying floral stems and singing along to "Thunder Road", please stop by my happy place and say hello.