Even in the age of Amazon, local businesses uphold holiday window shopping traditions.

By the time mid-November rolls around in the retail world, most businesses along a city’s main street can be placed in one of three buckets: those with no winter holiday decorations, those that have already completed their all-out window displays, and those that have yet to remove their pumpkins.

For many local shop owners, the holiday window decorations are a priority, since a dowdy appearance among the late fall glitz of ornaments and colorful lights on Main Street, USA is not good for business. Some designs require significant planning and strategy. Others, like Linda Persall’s brimming display at Carmel’s Big Little Boxes, are the result of a freestyle burst of holiday creativity.

Regardless of strategy, there appears to be a set of principles many shop owners lean on in determining display quality.

Carrig’s home furnishings shop has earned some local renown over the years for their holiday window displays along Ocean Avenue in Carmel. Owner Sheree Smith plans her displays months in advance and likes to switch up themes each year. A staple is her team of dozens of small elf toys, which she likes to move around the store, sometimes daily and sometimes placed in precarious positions. For Smith, a main inspiration is keeping the holiday spirit alive for children.

“One night I was leaving the store and I saw a little girl with her family, peeking through the window. She stops me and says, ‘Ma’am, do you know your elves move at night?’” Smith says. “It means so much to have little kids look in and feel the magic of the holidays. That’s what you try to capture. It’s important to have things like that.”

Patricia Loftus, who works at The Quill along Lighthouse Avenue in Pacific Grove, says the holiday display in her family-run stationery shop has been up since at least the start of November.

Smith and Loftus both lament the lost potential of this year’s designs, and cast blame on 2021’s very own Grinch: the supply chain. Even Smith, who orders holiday supplies in March, received a fraction of what she expected. Everything in her windows is for sale, so maintaining the holiday display as items sell will be a challenge.

But both continue with the tradition, largely inspired by the joy these creations bring. And if the display can get someone to stop in the store, all the better.