Times change?

When we lived in Portland some years ago a highlight of my Christmas season was the Christmas Bazaar at the Expo Center. There were close to 1000 booths of beautiful handmade Christmas crafts – it is from these that my extensive Santa collection came. The workmanship was incredible, the variety amazing, and unbelievable creativity was displayed everywhere you looked. We’d go home with bags of stuff – it was all too much to resist. There were wreaths, ornaments, wooden toys, fudge, Christmas sweaters and table runners, angels, santas, and snowmen. People worked in wood, fabric, metal sculpture, yarn – you name it. If it was creative – it was there. What a joy.

Then we moved away. We sought a substitute fair in California and Kentucky but there just wasn’t a match. Portland was the BIG one. Alas. But now we are back within a few hours drive and could go again. I was so excited about it.

Mark got a bunch of cash from the ATM yesterday in preparation. We even debated whether we should take the truck so as to have more room for The Goods we were likely to bring home and then decided we’d better exercise some restraint considering our smaller house and already critical storage situation. Even so, he chided me for not bringing the checkbook “just in case.” We got up early and off we went – for the three and half hour drive to Portland.

The parking fees had gone from $4 years ago to $7 now; admission from $3 to $6.50. “But still,” we thought.

Times change. Into each life a little rain must fall. Disappointments build character. Um…

The fair has completely changed. Gone were the handmade crafts – entirely! In their place were isles and isles of ‘merchandise’ such as you might see from the Dollar Store or WalMart or even Cost Plus World Market. We could have bought imitation designer sunglasses (buy one pair of Gucci sunglasses for $20 and you get 2 more pairs free!) or a rubber broom or a telescoping flagpole – and those were the ‘upper end’ products. Hardly anything even had a Christmas theme, although you might have considered a bunch of the stuff to be ‘gag gifts’ for the office holiday party. There were potato peeler demonstrations, t-shirts with dirty ditties, and tons (in total weight – the only way to assign a value in this case) of Plastic Stuff.

What were they thinking? What happened? We started walking at a brisk pace up one isle and down the next just to get some exercise so it wouldn’t be a complete loss. Finally, just as we were about to turn toward the exit, we spotted a single booth with some quality crafts. Rushing over, in desperate hope of an answer, we started talking to the woman sitting quietly amid the chaos, drawing a ribbon of fabric into a ruffle as she worked on her crafts. And she confirmed that the crafters had mostly given up amid the increasing pressure from the more ‘commercial’ booths. Who wants their quality things lined up between sports bobble heads and Tupperware demonstrations? And no, she didn’t know where the rest of them had gone. Maybe they all just gave up.

It was a sad start to the holiday; a long drive there and back for, literally, nothing. So tonight I am unpacking boxes of Christmas decorations and marveling over all those wonderful treasures I acquired during the good days of craft fairs to make up for it.

The end of an era, I guess.