At Christmas time we spent a feverish ten days struggling with Christmas cards and calendars, which are tiresome things to sell but good business while the season lasts. It used to interest me to see the brutal cynicism with which Christian sentiment is exploited. The touts from the Christmas card firms used to come round with their catalogues as early as June. A phrase from one of their invoices sticks in my memory. It was: "2 doz. Infant Jesus with rabbits."--George Orwell, "Bookshop Memories" (1936)
On Wednesday, at the China Internet Information Center's website, I read that "wall calendars, which used to be decent seasons gift to a friend, have unceremoniously receded from the city's consumer market. The Yantai Daily has reported that Xinhua Bookstores in the city's urban area have stopped selling them completely. Wall calendars are no longer considered a must in [peoples'] daily life as many new digital devices can do the work better and easier."
That news certainly hasn't reached bookstores in Vermont, where customers still seem to care about paper calendars--big time.
How big?
"But I get the same one every year and you always used to carry it!"
That big.
"Where are your calendars?" customers often ask when they first enter the bookshop this time of year. For many of them, it is the gift of first, as well as last, resort. And customers seldom arrive at the checkout counter with just one. Multiple buys are the rule.
For booksellers, dealing with calendar inventory is a year-round affair. Orwell's "good business while the season lasts" has evolved into a season that never ends. Bookstores started ordering their 2008 calendars last spring while still selling the 2007s. They blew out most of their remaining 2007 stock during mid-year sales--Memorial Day Weekend, perhaps--just weeks before deliveries of the 2008 models began rolling in.
Despite the fact that a bookstore may carry dozens of variations on theme, size, and function--wall and engagement and page-a-day calendars; Zen Gardens and Great Fish of North America and Snowboarding and John Deere Tractor and Fruit Crate Labels and Modigliani and Bad President calendars--at least one customer a day will be disappointed that we don't carry the specific one they're looking for.
In Vermont, we also offer suitably regional options by artists Sabra Field and Wolf Kahn and Woody Jackson (his is actually a "cowlendar"); and traditional scenic versions like the Vermont Life and Covered Bridges of Vermont calendars. Ours is a state of time as well as a state of mind.
Is it all worth it? Is it really so important? Is there still a role for paper calendars in a digitized world?
Well, how many calendars did you receive as gifts last year? How many did you give? How many did you buy for yourself after you re-gifted the ones that came your way? How many times did you replace the perfect engagement calendar you bought in October with a better one you saw in January, and then again with one that was on sale in March?
How many calendars did you sell last year? What role do these "tiresome things" play in your bookstore's bottom line?
The biggest challenge when writing about calendars is to avoid sounding like Andy Rooney, whining in a cranky, gravelly voice, "Remember when calendars were something the insurance guy or the fuel company left at your house; something you hung in an obscure corner of the kitchen and scribbled on all year long? Whatever happened . . . ?"
Maybe it's Orwell's memory of the "2 doz. Infant Jesus with rabbits" or just a bad case of holiday season dysfunction disorder, but I'm reminded of a black velvet painting I once noticed for sale at an impromptu gas station parking lot exhibition. Picture this: Santa Claus kneeling before the manger in Bethlehem, paying his jolly respects to the baby Jesus. Mary looked justifiably concerned for her son's welfare.
What a calendar that would have made.
Neither cynicism nor nostalgia is really the point, however. Paper calendars are still in the game. Will they ever be rendered obsolete by the digitized alternatives that are within such easy reach in our quiver of personal electronic devices?
Shouldn't they be obsolete already?
Perhaps, but for now calendar season just lasts and lasts.--Robert Gray (column archives available at Fresh Eyes Now)