Roslyn Car­ring­ton

Each year, from No­vem­ber, Tri­nis can step out of the swel­ter­ing heat, away from palm trees and blind­ing sun­shine, and in­to a win­ter won­der­land of snow­drifts, sparkling stars, and of course, San­ta. We don't even have to buy an air­plane tick­et; we just dri­ve to any mall, walk through those great glass doors, and voilà, we're at the North Pole.

As com­pe­ti­tion gets stiffer, malls work hard­er for our at­ten­tion, and for Christ­mas shop­pers, one of the biggest draws isn't the bar­gains to be found or the presents to "ooh" and "ah" over; it's those glo­ri­ous, glit­ter­ing dec­o­ra­tions that swoop down from high ceil­ings and float along each pas­sage­way, ig­nit­ing a lit­tle fire that's been hid­den in our hearts since we were chil­dren. Tri­nis love Christ­mas, and Christ­mas means dec­o­ra­tions.

Sarah Ra­goonath, PRO of Gulf City Mall, ex­plains, "The dec­o­ra­tions bring the Christ­mas spir­it in­to the shop­ping ex­pe­ri­ence. A lot of peo­ple come just to see them, and for the kids, it's...'Wow!' That's why we go all out for our shop­pers." And with Bri­an Mc­Far­lane's Mi­das touch, the gold­en am­bi­ence of new­ly re­designed Gulf City Mall is sure to please kids and their par­ents alike.

While mall ten­ants do kick in their share, the malls them­selves bear the brunt of the cost, which can run in­to mil­lions. Ra­goonath isn't aware of any study be­ing done to de­ter­mine the dol­lar-for-dol­lar re­turns on this in­vest­ment, but she's con­vinced that Christ­mas dec­o­ra­tions do en­cour­age pa­trons to open their wal­lets.

But what's with all the snow? Why do malls in a trop­i­cal coun­try keep go­ing for the fluffy white stuff year af­ter year? Wouldn't we en­joy Christ­mas in Paramin for a change? Imag­ine San­ta kick­ing it in surf­ing shorts, a meri­no stretched over his bel­ly, and a cool pair of shades perched on his sun­burned fore­head. A don­key cart loaded with toys, or an over­sized wheel­bar­row drawn by lappe and quenk...

Roger My­ers, who's done the Christ­mas de­signs for Trinci­ty and Long Cir­cu­lar Malls for the past ten years, says that's just not what the Tri­ni pub­lic wants. He's vis­it­ed mega-malls abroad to see how they're do­ing, and while for­eign de­sign­ers go for fresh­er, out-of-the-box ideas, he's learned that Tri­nis are tra­di­tion­al­ists at heart. "I go to malls in the States and see black or pink Christ­mas trees. They do all sorts of crazy things, but peo­ple here would say 'that's not Christ­mas'."

We Tri­nis love the sto­ries and im­ages we grew up with, and de­vi­at­ing far from that can be a huge risk. Cus­tomers who are dis­ap­point­ed in or puz­zled by a de­sign sim­ply don't spend as much, and for the malls, that whole 'not spend­ing' thing is bad.

In spite of the lim­i­ta­tions of lo­cal tastes (Christ­mas trees, San­ta, hol­ly, poin­set­tia and snow) the pres­sure is al­ways on to come up with some­thing orig­i­nal and stun­ning. My­ers isn't wor­ried. "I have con­cepts for the next sev­er­al years," he says. For 2010, his cen­tre­piece at Long Cir­cu­lar Mall fea­tures San­ta re­lax­ing in his re­clin­er in front a fire­place af­ter a long day on the job, tick­ing off his naughty-or-nice list, and bask­ing in the gold­en warmth of the fire­place while snow­drifts pile up on his roof like melt­ed marsh­mal­low. A fa­mil­iar im­age to us all, one that awak­ens our best ear­ly mem­o­ries.

"You keep it child­like," My­ers says. "Keep it sim­ple." Smart, be­cause if you speak to the child with­in, the adult on the out­side re­sponds with a re­sound­ing 'kach­ing!'.

As fan­ci­ful as the fi­nal prod­uct is, dec­o­rat­ing for Christ­mas is se­ri­ous busi­ness. Plan­ning starts in Jan­u­ary, when the de­sign­er takes his pro­pos­al to the client. Once it's ap­proved, it's a one-year race to dead­line. The sourc­ing of ma­te­ri­als can take as much as three or four months. Many ma­te­ri­als have to be im­port­ed, as they sim­ply aren't avail­able here. Set pieces are then con­struct­ed, trans­port­ed, as­sem­bled, and put on dis­play.

This is where it gets hard. Though women are con­stant­ly in­vad­ing tra­di­tion­al­ly male do­mains, the mall de­sign­ers' clique re­mains large­ly male, part­ly be­cause of the huge strength it takes to lift and mount items of this size, and al­so be­cause, like elves, they labour through the night, leav­ing at dawn af­ter work­ing their mag­ic. Many fe­males aren't com­fort­able trav­el­ling at those hours.

When it comes to the aes­thet­ic, though, a fem­i­nine ap­peal is nev­er far from a de­sign­er's mind, since the chil­dren in­flu­ence the women, and the women con­trol the purse strings.

So for those who en­joy a good mall-crawl, ea­ger to find out "What Mc­Far­lane come with this year", the stores are your play­ground. Take the kids, let them hug San­ta , and shame­less­ly steal ideas for your own home d&ea­cute;cor. Most of all, have fun, be­cause we on­ly see snow in T&T once a year, and come Jan­u­ary, it will all melt away.