My enthusiasm for the coming holidays is not what it should be. This is despite the fact that I went through the trouble of getting Christmas cards specially made to send off to family and friends. Plus I even purchased and mailed off a few presents. So in an effort to bring about a bit more joyfulness into my life this holiday season, yesterday I decided to tear myself away from the Sunday Times and my latest Chick lit book (Elegance) to visit London’s most famous department store Harrods. I assumed their store windows would be lavishly decorated in a Christmas theme and so might help put me in a more upbeat mood.
But upon arriving at the store, I could see that I was in for disappointment. I expected to see elaborate window decorations perhaps based on a fairytale, but that was not to be. To be sure, I walked around the entire store. But things didn’t change. It was all the same. Instead of finding beautifully decorated Christmas theme windows, instead I found anorexic models wearing the latest in high fashion. Now any other time of the year, I would have thought the windows nicely decorated. But for goodness sake, it’s Christmas. I expected more, particularly from such a high end department store like Harrods.
Remembering that Harvey Nichols also had there flagship store on Knightsbridge Street, I went there to see if the window displays were any better. Things only got worse. They had some weird outer space display that made no reference to Christmas whatsoever. So was left completely disappointed and unlike earlier at Harrods, I didn’t even bother going into the store.
So now here it is Monday and I’m still on a quest to find department store windows decorated in a Christmas theme like the ones I’ve come to expect at Macy’s in New York and Marshall Field’s in Chicago. My work colleagues tell me that the department store Selfridges and Liberty might be more what I had in mind. But I’m not feeling too optimistic. Thinking I might just have to settle for looking at the photos online. The Cinderella display at Marshall Field’s this year looks amazing.