OK, let’s start this off with a little excitement –
Every year, usually in mid-to-late third quarter, I look at hundreds of ticky-tacky Christmas items, as part of my job.
Specifically, I review new items that will potentially be imported by my employer, in the coming year. To ensure that there are no restrictions; and to determine how much we’ll pay in duty to import them.
If you’ve not already decided that this is going to be too boring, read on.
Christmas items, or “Trim-a Tree” items, are a huge deal for retailers.
They stock up during the summer months, and dance around like they have to pee really bad, in greedy anticipation for the day when they can change their seasonal areas out and get to sellin’ Christmas stuff.
It is what it is. I don’t judge.
I’m an enabler, after all.
Anyhow, this product category being such a big deal, you KNOW that there’s going to be thorough rulings in place, defining what a Christmas tree light string is, as opposed to one that technically might not go on a Christmas tree.
More importantly to this story, there is a very comprehensive list of what an item needs to have or to BE, to be considered a “Holiday festive” item, and therefore import-able at 0% duty.
We like 0% duty.
A handful of years ago, the most recent, most detailed version of “Classification of Festive Articles” guidelines was released.
And in it, was an at-the-time insignificant item.
Sprigs of Holly are classifiable as a holiday festive article.
Next thing you know, you are seeing holly on everything! Everything that the rulings determined were NOT, by themselves, festive articles, that is.
Snowmen or their likeness are not considered a holiday festive item. It’s simply a winter item, apparently, unrelated to Christmas.
But... But we don’t want to pay duty to import that big-ass inflatable snowman that sits in your front yard!
No problem.
Just slap a sprig of holly on his hat.
Viola – now it’s CHRISTMAS snowman.
Ditto the big-ass lawn penguin and his polar bear buddies.
And ditto that creepy looking giraffe that’s not actually strangling on the holiday light string, but “playing with” it, according to the product description….
A monument to animal cruelty?
No! It’s a holiday festive item! See? Someone stuck holly on the giraffe’s head!
Honestly, I found myself a little irritated by the whole development. It seemed a circumvention of the rulings put forth, just to save a few cents, at the expense of… ugly-ing up Christmas a bit more. I
t was slightly offensive to me both professionally, and aesthetically.
I mention this because of what happened to me the other night, as I walked my dog around the neighborhood.
I started seeing sprigs of holly everywhere.
I wasn’t seeing Frosty the Snowman in the neighbor’s yard. I was seeing a tiny weed on a top hat.
It wasn’t a cute inflatable penguin, it was a tiny leaf and a couple of berries on a stocking cap…
It wasn’t a giraffe strangling on….er… playing with a holiday light string. It was a giraffe with a tiny scrap of shrubbery stuck on its forehead…
I simply couldn't help myself.
Yeah, maybe I DO need a vacation.
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