I knew when I saw the boys working in the window, there was going to be trouble.
The calendar had just turned, and the march towards Christmas was on. Yet it wasn’t. Because the window at Scott’s Hardware in Renfrew was still decidedly not Christmasy in appearance, which was pretty odd because Scott’s has an iconic Christmas window, one known far and wide, a fixture along Renfrew’s main drag.
But on this day, nothing. Except the two employees, Connor and Jackson, rifling through some boxes in the window, Connor holding up a forlorn Santa who didn’t look as happy as the one at the mall.
“Jeff, what’s up with the window?” was the best I could come up with as I passed by on my Saturday morning walk. Jeff Scott is the owner of the place, the guy who’s been setting up a fabulous chunk of Christmas in his store window for years. I guess I just figured he’d know what I was asking about, and I was right, he did.
He told me that he felt a little tired this time out, that maybe he didn’t have it in him to put up the beautiful display that I’ve seen at this location for the thirty plus years that I’ve lived in this place. I still remember my first Christmas in Renfrew, and part of that memory was the window at Scott’s. It just gave you that ultimate warm feeling of what Christmas is all about. It was wonderful.
And now he’s talking about not putting it up at all.
Credit to Cons and Jacks. Those dudes do more than just rock their afternoons away in that giant rocking chair in the front window. These guys have heart, they have pluck, and they have whatever it is that leads to Connor holding up the deflated Santa recently pulled from his non-seasonal storage bin.
I pointed to the guys. “Is anybody gonna tell them?” I asked. Those dudes looked so sad standing there in the window, with bits and pieces of Christmas scattered all around them in seeming disarray. It looked like one of those Christmas stories where a scrooge-like guy had come through and stolen all the joy out of the children’s hearts. Like, it was sad, man. Really sad. I felt for them. I felt for us.
Jeff told me that the guys had asked him about it and that he had dealt them the heavy news, that there’d be no Christmas this year, and that it had crushed them. Jeff The Grinch, making the children cry sort of thing, although it did appear they were keeping their emotions in check. They are grown men, after all. Heroic that they could keep it all in like they did.
It looked to me that they were having some difficulty letting go of the annual tradition, going through the boxes in a wave of nostalgia perhaps, the way young men do.
Jeff told me that the two of them insisted upon the window display, even if they had to do it themselves, so he said that he’d let them go to it.
Now, to be completely honest, I don’t Jackson very well but Connor was once in my class, and if the window display was dependant in any way on what I thought Connor’s creativity might be, my fear was that downtown Renfrew might be in for a bit of a jolt by day’s end. I mean great guy and everything, can’t say a bad thing about him, but I wouldn’t ever let him near my coloured pencils.
So off I go, lamenting what I assumed to be a holiday disaster in the making, Scott’s Hardware going from the top of the mountain to Side Show Bob on the Simpsons.
Sunday dawns, and off I go into the new day, actually forgetting all about it until I got downtown, where I started to get a little nervous, because that window is a big deal for a lot of people. It was once captured in a piece on CTV which aired across the country and was actually picked up by broadcasters in the United States. Bus loads of Japanese tourists would stop by to have their pictures taken in front of it.
Okay, so that last part about the bus was made up, but still.
And I came upon the Christmas story of all Christmas stories. The window was nothing short of fabulous! And there was Santa, prouder than all giddy-up, sitting in his rightful place overseeing the splendour and majesty of the Scott’s Hardware Christmas window display, as good as its ever been. It was a freaking Hallmark moment. Disney couldn’t write it up better.
Yesterday, Scott’s Hardware was awarded the Mayor’s Award for the best Christmas window display along Renfrew’s downtown strip, Raglan Street. On hand for the presentation was mayor Tom Sidney, freshly arrived from a John Fetterman look-alike contest, congratulating Jeff for the window at Scott’s.
And also there were the guys, Jackson and Connor. The guys who saved Christmas.
I feel terrible for selling these dudes short. I wouldn’t have given them a snowball’s chance if I can fire in a winter metaphor there. Never in a lifetime would I have thought that these two guys, fine young men as they are, would be able to pull off the magic.
But they did. So kudos to them and kudos to Jeff for letting them try, and then succeed marvellously. It’s a feel-good Christmas story all on its own. A really good one.
Congratulations to Scott’s hardware on their award-winning Christmas display.
Cue the bus with the Japanese tourists.
NEWSMAGRENFREW 