By Bill Taylor

The Santa Claus Parade is over and done with for another year, but jolly old St. Nicholas and his clones have still hardly had time to get comfortable on their thrones in the shopping malls. All the same, there’s already no room at the inn—or the parking lots, anyway. As seen from a helicopter in the early afternoon on Monday (here’s a larger shot), Yorkdale Mall doesn’t have an unoccupied spot, just a gaggle of aisle-crawlers cruising and waiting for someone to leave.
With thirty-seven shopping days until Christmas, this would seem to augur well for the retail trade, fiscal downturn or not. Eat, drink, shop till you drop, and be merry. And forget the credit-card bills until after the first of the New Year. As an aside, someone at George’s Trains on Mount Pleasant Road told us once that the model-railway business was almost recession-proof. No matter how bad the economy got, he said, the train buffs would be there as usual to buy their toys. (Not, of course, that they’re really toys, they’re finely detailed scale models. We all know that.)
Photo by Bill Taylor/Torontoist