It’s the holiday season, and I want to rush out and go shopping in one of those districts with bundled-up carolers, towering Christmas trees and miles of sparkling lights that wrap around buildings. …

Wait a minute. Miles of Christmas lights and bundled-up carolers? I must be thinking of some old Jimmy Stewart movie.

Here in Los Angeles, you simply don’t see much in the way of over-the-chimney-top Christmas decorations in shopping districts. You’ve got a better chance of getting a speeding ticket on the 405 freeway at rush hour than getting in the holiday spirit by shopping at most anyplace here.

Where are the display windows overflowing with holiday scenes? The strings of lights outlining every angle of every building? The holiday music piped in?

If the best a shopping district can do is stretch a few strands of lights over a street, that’s lame. If a shopping center’s primary display is a lonely Christmas tree beside some oversize fake packages, it makes me feel sad, not glad. And after a minute, it makes me kind of mad. I find myself thinking: Do they really expect me to spend a lot of money here when all they can do is prop up the same plywood Santa they’ve used the last umpteen years? I mean, if the shopping center is going to insult me that way, I feel penurious, not generous.

Oh, sure, a few places do a great job. Americana at Brand and the Grove (both Caruso Affiliated shopping malls) are festive in a well-manicured way, right down to the manufactured snow. But alas, the underdecorated shopping districts in Los Angeles outnumber the good ones 10 to 1.

There’s no real mystery here. All a shopping district has to do is decorate to excess and hire some carolers and a sober Santa. In other words, spend some marketing money to make their district friendly and fun for the holidays. The Country Club Plaza shopping center in my hometown of Kansas City, Mo., pops to mind as a festive example.

Now I’m sure there’s some study showing that the more lavishly a shopping district is decorated, the more money people will spend. But I’m not going to bother looking it up, and it’s not because I’m lazy. Well, OK, maybe a little. Buy the decoration-to-spending link is so obvious that it doesn’t need to be established.

I mean, I can look to myself as an example. I’m a guy who wears shirts thin at the elbows because the thought of going into a retail store fills me with dread. But put me in a shopping district festooned with lights and brimming with holiday cheer, and I’m a changed man. I start thinking of gifts for everyone. I max out my credit cards and I might even buy myself a new shirt. I might have to rent a U-Haul just to transport everything back home.

I find myself saying something like: “An 8-foot statue of the Nutcracker? Hey, that’d make a great gift for my Uncle Fred. I just need to find out where he lives. Or if he’s still alive. But sure, I’ll take it!”

Charles Crumpley is editor of the Business Journal. He can be reached at [email protected].