With the holidays on the horizon, retailers are breaking out their holiday swag to make sure shoppers are in the holiday spirit (and spending their holiday cash). Here in our building, a giant Christmas tree completed with faux presents was erected in no time flat in the lobby. Along with physical stores, online retailers are in the holiday spirit as well. Sites like Old Navy, Gap and HGTV are all decked out in new holiday-themed decor.

While retailers are getting in the spirit, their goal is to sell more stuff–after all, according to The New Yorker "The Christmas shopping season can account for as much as forty per cent of a retail store’s annual revenue and as much as three-quarters of its annual profit."

With stakes that high, it's no wonder retailers are pulling out all the stops to get people into their stores and onto their sites. Daily for a week now I've been receiving emails from Bed Bath and Beyond about free shipping in time for Christmas and my mailbox is flooded with "Hurry to receive your stuff before Christmas Eve!" fliers. Let's take a look a some sites that are getting into the spirit of the season without dipping into the egg nog too much.

The Good {or at least not bad}

Taking a look at Gap and Old Navy's new design, I'd have to say that they're doing it the right way. Old Navy takes the route of bright festive colors with a repeating snowflake background, a bright, pinkish red page background and festive new graphics. All in all, aside from perhaps being a tad hard on the eyes with the red and green contrast, Old Navy site is still super functional. Going to the page, you can instantly see that Old Navy is the perfect place for you to buy gifts for loved ones (with prices as low as ten bucks!). Plenty of call-to-actions on the page get you clicking around to buy more stuff. Old Navy knows what they're doing.

Their sister company, Gap, also has a good grip on holiday design. Going for a more understated look, Gap is keeping it simple with a subtle wintery background and a slight color change of their logo from the traditional blue to a festive red hue. Instead of getting overly festive with graphics, Gap's approach is to use pictures to show off their winter wardrobes–after all, in some parts of the country, it actually gets below 67 degrees in mid December. Gap's picture collage proclaims SALE! from the mountain tops, enticing would-be customers to browse through the sale options.

So overall, Old Navy and Gap have a good grip on holiday spirit without going overboard. Neither changed up their site very much, they just added some colorful graphics, new pictures and a new background. But are some sites perhaps a little too much in the Christmas spirit? Let's take a look see.

The Ugly

*Ahem* Wow. While I appreciate their enthusiasm, I may also be temporarily blinded. The yellow text on the strikingly bright red background, while "festive" to some, does not make your would-be customer want to stay on your site any longer than absolutely necessary, if at all. Once you get to this site, you're not really led to do anything. There's some text on the front page about Christmas, if you can sift through all the ads on the homepage. The menu bar on the left hand side of the page is daunting, and festively colored in red and purple with that yellow text.

So here's what we've learned:

• An integration of some festive colors, photographs or graphics, in moderation, is a good thing
• Customers are still on your site to shop or gather information–make sure they can easily find it
• Call-to-actions are still a must, especially if you're promoting a short lived holiday sale
• Yellow text on a red background is bad