The second Christmas

In Cairo the Christmas windows stay up into January, and the reason is a calendar most regional plans do not carry. The second Christmas is on the seventh.

So walk a shopping street here in the first week of the year and you can read a company's structure off its display. The window that still has the tree in it belongs to a business run from Cairo, or run by somebody who has lived here. The window cleared on the twenty-sixth belongs to a business run from a regional office, on a calendar with one Christmas in it, where the festive period has an end date that was set in a spreadsheet in October.

Nobody here is offended by the tree that stayed up. That is not how it works. What happens is quieter and lasts longer. The customer notices the way you notice that somebody remembered your name, and the staff notice first, because they are the ones being asked when the decorations are coming down.

This market has a long memory for who was present and a short one for what was said. A brand can buy the whole city's attention for a week. It cannot buy back the impression it makes by finishing its festive season before the week that matters here has started.

I see the same tell in every market I work across, in different clothes. It is never the campaign. It is the date somebody chose to stop.

A display is a small thing to get right, and the smallness is the point. Nobody thought it was worth faking.