Christmas Comes to Idaho in August

They may already have been up for quite some time.  I didn’t notice them until I visited the Magic Valley Mall for the first time in a few months.  As I walked into Hobby Lobby I turned right and saw wreaths on display.  I snapped a picture and then rounded a corner.  It’s not only wreaths.  About one-fifth of the store is devoted to decorations, trees, and Christmas crafts.

There were some autumn decorations, but nothing I found suggested Halloween.

Too early?  That’s really up to the store, and Hobby Lobby is a big outfit and does consumer research.  There’s a market for decorations in summer, even if people simply want to put some things in storage until December.  Hobby Lobby also has a major post-Christmas clearance in late December and early January.

Walmart possibly has some decorations out.  I was there Monday and bought some cat treats and a new bathroom scale, but I didn’t wander into the garden center where the trees and decorations would be housed.

One friend reminded me that both stores sell very few decorations made in the United States.  My artificial tree was purchased in 1997, and the decorations were primarily gifts from my late mother.  I love the looks of decorations and trees, but haven’t taken mine out of the box in years.  Trees and cats aren’t a good combination.  You can come home at the end of a workday and find a toppled tree and ornaments scattered across the floor.  These are called kitty soccer balls.  Plus, he already claimed the bathroom scale when I took it out of the box.

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