Dealing with Claus-trophobia

An old friend of mine, a dedicated and talented thrift store shopper, called the other night. “What on earth is wrong with us,” she asked. I hesitated, thinking we were going back over familiar terrain, rehashing personal and philosophical mistakes made from adolescence to middle age. I mean, we go way back. Over the years we’ve asked one another that question many times. (We still haven’t worked out the answer, but we do continue to add mistakes to talk about late at night…) But this time, she wasn’t pointing to us as individuals. She wanted to know just where our society had taken a wrong turn. One afternoon last week, my friend stopped by the biggest thrift store in the city where she lives. It’s an enormous complex, taking up several floors and almost a city block. While she shopped for colorful wool sweaters to be felted and cut into strips for the handcrafted items she makes, she noticed something around her. Everywhere she looked, she was surrounded by holiday clutter. Aisle after aisle and shelf after shelf were taken up by forlorn looking artificial trees and wreaths, some still decorated. She saw stacks of holly-themed dishes and hand towels. There were miniature ceramic cottages, boxes of ornaments and hundreds of cinnamon scented candles. It wasn’t just the endless variety of holiday detritus that caught her eye. It was the like-new condition of so much of what she saw. “It was overpowering,” she said. “I felt almost claustrophobic.” Pun intended. The next day, I walked into a big thrift store and looked around. And I had the same sensation. It was as if I was drowning in snowmen and glitter. That night, I called her. Much of it, we decided, had been given as gifts. The obligatory teacher gift or office party favor. The “What on earth do we give Grandma?” gifts. A lot had probably been purchased new to decorate homes for the holiday season, to pretty-up the place for a few weeks or for a party, but when it came time to store everything for the next year, had simply been discarded instead. Wrapping, boxing and storing was too much trouble, or took up too much precious space, so it had been given to the next charity organization to call for discards. The result is a mountain of holiday odds and ends: Angel cheese spreaders. Drummer Boy fireplace matches. Reindeer welcome mats and signs for the front door. Christmas has come and gone. I suspect there will be an onslaught of discards and donations in the next few weeks. A landslide of wintery home decor and accessories. And next year, again, re-sale stores will be jammed with too much cheer. Cheryl-Anne Millsap is a freelance columnist for The Spokesman-Review. She is the author of “Home Planet: A Life in Four Seasons,” and can be reached at catmillsap@gmail.com