At Christine Day's house, Christmas is a bit like boot camp. Each year, the Lululemon CEO sticks to the same strict schedule. Day, her husband, Pat, and their three kids (aged 22, 21 and 9) kick off the holiday season on American Thanksgiving (the fourth Thursday in November) by watching the Chevy Chase classic Christmas Vacation. The next weekend, they cut down their own trees (noble firs only), including one just for the kids. "One year," she says, "we couldn't get a 20-foot tree, so we did four trees instead." That's followed by four days--yes, four days--of decorating.
The weekend after that, they make Christmas cookies. And on Christmas Eve, they attend a special service. As for the big day itself, they start by opening presents, then have the relatives over for dinner and a gift exchange (now that the Days have moved from Washington to a condo in Vancouver, they'll have to modify the sleeping arrangements--family will stay at the Westin next door, "but the dinner and games are on," says Day).
On Jan. 1, the season officially ends--Day takes down all the decorations and puts them away until the following year. "It's bad luck otherwise," she says, as she wanders through her penthouse unloading ornaments from various cupboards and closets. Why? "I don't know," she says with a grin. "That's what my mom always told me."
Day swears her zeal has nothing to do with how important the holiday shopping season is to the retail industry where she has worked for the past two decades--first, at Starbucks, where she rose to president of the Asia-Pacific group, and now at yoga-clothing chain Lululemon, which she joined in January, 2008. For her, Christmas is a season rich in family tradition that she says helps keep her grounded.
By the time Day left home at 18, she and her four siblings (she's the second-oldest) had lived in 19 different houses. They started in Northern Ireland, where Day was born, then moved to Vancouver, then back to Ireland. There were stops in California and Washington state, too. "As a child, the sense of permanence was Christmas and the ornaments coming out," she says. "During our moves, the thing my mom was always most worried about was the box of ornaments."
Day's husband knew how much importance she put on Christmas when he asked her out on their first date in 1983: He took her ornament shopping in Ellensburg, Washington, where they both attended university. They got married two years later. They still have five of the ornaments they bought that day, including two glass hearts and a miniature version of 'Twas the Night Before Christmas (one of the wooden drummer boys was eaten by a cat), and they hang them at the top of the tree each year.
Pat says his wife has "ornament radar," hunting through airport gift shops and tourist boutiques wherever she is travelling. Not just any ornament will do, though. Day has very strict criteria. First, they must have a Christmas theme, meaning the ornament has to have a Santa or an elf on it. They have to be gold, green or red, and must be unique. "I wouldn't blink at spending $100 on an ornament if it fits my criteria," says Day. "Each one is something special that somebody looks at. For me, it's about a sense of discovery when you look at the tree."
Day pulls out some of her favourites: cartoon-like characters she bought for her kids this year, reindeer candlesticks, a train set, a snow globe, and the Christmas books she keeps to record memories of the holidays. Her ultimate ornament is a classic Santa she bought from a gift shop in Vegas.
As for lights, white ones are forbidden--multicoloured only, except for purple, pink or orange, which aren't considered Christmas colours. Blinking lights are never found on a Day tree, either. And the strings must be woven into the branches so they don't show.
When she moved to Vancouver, Day had to scale back on her Christmas decorations. In Bellevue, Washington, just outside Starbucks' home base of Seattle, she lived in a 7,000-square-foot house with a 500-square-foot room dedicated to storing all of her Christmas stuff. Since moving into her 2,800-square-foot condo, she's had to put much of her precious collection in storage.
Still, Day plans to have at least two trees this year, and possibly a larger one on the deck overlooking Stanley Park and the North Shore Mountains. "We'll have to do some adaptive strategies," says Day.
Staff at Lululemon don't have to worry about Day's hobby spilling over into her work--she says she keeps the Christmas celebrations strictly confined to her personal time and space. That said, she will be using her Lululemon corporate discount to buy a few gifts for her family. "For my sisters? Absolutely--are you kidding?"
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