40 Weeks Until Christmas

There are 40 weeks until Christmas, friends, and things are happening.

I spent some time in the Wrapping Department this week. It’s kind of a slow time of year for them.

This week was the final design meeting for the new wrap committee. I attended on behalf of Mrs. Claus and it was very interesting.

They have less than a week to finalize the new patterns, colors and symbols that will go on to new wrapping designs this year.

The latest trend? Well, I’d say it is the color purple.

It’s in everything this year – in wrap, in bags, in tissue paper, in ribbons and even in gift tags. Purple with silver and purple with gold.

I think it is insanely pretty.

Elf Harriet Bow, head of wrapping, told me she has seen purpose come and go at times over the years. She calls it a streaky color.

Red – from bright to dark maroon, is always in fashion. Same can be said of deep green. But other colors, like purple, tend to go in and out of fashion.

She said we’re going to see purple a lot more this year just about everywhere around the world. Harriet said that purple will be big in ornaments and tree decorating too – from lights to tree ribbons.

She isn’t part of the Decorating Trends Committee but she has a friend, Elf Giselle, who is. They do lunch a lot. Harriet said the light up purple ornaments are insane this year. Giselle brought some samples to lunch and the whole restaurant seemed to come to their table to ask where they could get the stuff she was showing.

Mrs. Claus didn’t go to the final design meeting because she felt she had made her feelings known too strongly the last time she attended. She told me, as she wrote a note to ask me to cover for her, that I could listen and nod but that her previous comments would pretty much say all that needed to be said.

So I went. And it was super fun. I didn’t really say anything other than “oooh!” and “aww!” but that was genuine on my part. I had not seen the new designs and I really like everything that I saw.

But I guess in their last meeting just before Valentine’s Day there was a big division in the meeting. Someone had shown some samples of designs in orange and I guess there were some pretty sharp things said.

Surprisingly, Elf Gloria, who is the Minister of Christmas Traditions, gave a report about the colors of Christmas to the committee at the first of the year. Orange, believe it or not, is actually considered a Christmas color. I guess that is what started all the controversy.

According to the big report that was shared there are 46 colors that are considered “Christmas colors”.

We don’t see anywhere near that many most years because red, green, gold, silver and white tend to dominate most design stuff.

So, I guess, with Elf Gloria’s report some elves went a little to literal with the alternative stuff and lots of designs were created using orange, brown, dirty green, bright pink and other colors most never associate with Christmas.

As the committee started to reject designs because of color there were many who argued, using Elf Gloria’s report, as justification.

According to Mrs. Claus I should be happy I missed those meetings.

Elf Harriet tells me these design reviews every year always tip on the crazy side. She thinks some elves need to be excused from the committee because they’ve served to long and are frankly a little bored. She wants to promote them to the sleigh department where they can work on new seat covers.

But, Elf Harriet tells me, Santa’s not big on making moves like that. In fact, the longer someone serves on a committee the longer they seem to stay. We have one guy who works on the Christmas stamps committee who has been there nearly 100 years. Seriously! They are having a big party just for him for his 100 years of service in stamps.

So you can see why we get locked into some traditions here at the North Pole. It’s serious stuff.

Coming up is another tradition – the annual Easter Egg roll at the North Pole.

That’s another tradition of many colors. Unlike the Christmas wrap stuff bright colors for the North Pole Easter eggs are definitely in style every year. After all, it’s hard to find eggs in deep snow and howling blizzards outside.

Toodles.