Summary: I remember the first time I really thought about Christmas outside of that relatively narrow window between Thanksgiving and New Years Day. I was around eight years old, and it was sometime in August. Those of us who grew up with TV commercials in the New York market will surely remember the August TV ads for the now-defunct electronics store "Crazy Eddie's." The ads always went: "Crazy Eddie's Christmas Sale--in August! Crazy Eddie can't be beat, with prices so low he's practically GIVING it all away! Crazy Eddie: his prices are INSANE." If you didn't get the point, the man was wearing a Santa cap and would take a little Christmas tree and start waving it around wildly before finally throwing it over his shoulder into a giant pile of boom boxes. So...maybe it was Crazy Eddie who first got me thinking about what Santa might be up to in August. In any case, one day, I think in August, I asked my father something like, "What is Santa doing now?" He paused. "Santa?" he said. "Yes, Santa." "Doing now?" he said. "Yes." "Well," my father began, matter-of-factly, "at this point he's probably pretty much done with fabrication and assembly except for some end line testing for the electronics. But he'll need to get that wrapped up pretty soon...." "...Mostly, he's probably confirming routing and scheduling with his different distribution centers and trying to get them squared away for return flow..."
