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DianneDuranteWriter.com is dedicated to art that’s inspiring, thought-provoking, skillfully executed, and/or breathtakingly beautiful. Once a year, I stretch that to include fabulous events, decorations, clothing, and jewelry on display during the holiday season. Capitalist Christmas pics from previous years are here. 

This year all the photos are from Florida. Where else could you see elves on water skis? All photos in this post are copyright (c) Dianne L. Durante 2025.

Gardens Mall, Palm Beach Gardens

This very upscale mall impressed me not just for the decorations and the stores, but for the fact that there are so many seating areas. Usually mall management seems to expect you to shop, shop, and keep on shopping.

Tampa Bay Outlets

It’s always amusing to see a Christmas tree next to this southern architecture and palm trees.

Countryside Mall, Clearwater

Channel your inner princess! In this store (AB2B), there is no other option.

And then there’s these, which flabbergasted me.

Fortunately I have Grok at hand to tell me: “These are Kurt Geiger London Eagle Fluff Slippers (in fuchsia pink/combination color). The design represents the brand’s iconic eagle motif – Kurt Geiger’s signature symbol. The bright pink faux fur body is paired with multicolored 3D metallic leather cut-outs forming stylized wings and tail feathers, along with crystal embellishments and a small eagle head detail at the front.” Per the company’s website, a mere $98.

Dunedin

Dunedin is on the west coast of Florida, near Clearwater but a bit less crowded, because it doesn’t have world-class beaches. This stylized and perforated Christmas display is from the window of Casa Tina, a Mexican restaurant.

After walking several blocks in Dunedin, I realized that each of the old-fashioned lamp-posts on Main Street was decorated by the nearest business. Here are a few of them. The second is in front of a candy store, the fourth in front of an Asian restaurant, the fifth in front of a wine store.

This batch is from a bar, a home decor store (there is apparently a law that Florida decor be ocean-themed), a church (angels on high, manger below), and – my favorite – Casa Tina Mexican restaurant.

Land o’Lakes, Tiki Cove

In Florida, elves water ski.

How many carbs do you suppose you need to keep up your body temp normal when splashing through water that’s barely 60 degrees? Brrrrr.

What Christmas means to me

Ayn Rand, 1976:

A national holiday, in this country, cannot have an exclusively religious meaning. The secular meaning of the Christmas holiday is wider than the tenets of any particular religion: it is good will toward men—a frame of mind which is not the exclusive property (though it is supposed to be part, but is a largely unobserved part) of the Christian religion.

The charming aspect of Christmas is the fact that it expresses good will in a cheerful, happy, benevolent, non-sacrificial way. One says: “Merry Christmas”—not “Weep and Repent.” And the good will is expressed in a material, earthly form—by giving presents to one’s friends, or by sending them cards in token of remembrance . . . .

The best aspect of Christmas is the aspect usually decried by the mystics: the fact that Christmas has been commercialized. The gift-buying . . . stimulates an enormous outpouring of ingenuity in the creation of products devoted to a single purpose: to give men pleasure. And the street decorations put up by department stores and other institutions—the Christmas trees, the winking lights, the glittering colors—provide the city with a spectacular display, which only “commercial greed” could afford to give us. One would have to be terribly depressed to resist the wonderful gaiety of that spectacle.—Ayn Rand, The Objectivist Calendar, Dec. 1976, quoted in the Ayn Rand Lexicon

More

• For Capitalist Christmas albums from 2016 and later, see here. The albums for earlier years are on Facebook: 2015, 2014, 2013 (part 1 and part 2),  2011, and 2010. I somehow missed 2012.
• For my current work-in-progress, Timeline 1800-1899, see my Substack page. The Books and Essays page on this site is the best place to see what I’m working on and what I’ve recently completed.