Many of these songs were written during the immediate postwar period of optimism, cultural unity, and thriving Main Street economics. It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas mentions all the classic signs of the holiday—the carols, the bells, the snow—but the first thing it portrays is “the five and ten (variety store) glistening once again with candy canes and silver lanes aglow.” The song then conveys the excitement of Christmas as toys appear “in every store.”Yes, with the kids making their list and checking it twice. "Some of that was still in place in the last days of The America That Worked(TM), it being a family ritual, come early December, for everyone to scrub up, spiff up, and head Downtown to do the Christmas shopping, and enjoy a meal at the Boston Store restaurant." Mom, Dad, grandparents, siblings, schoolteacher, school gift exchange, check, check, check.
It’s clear that the role of these local shops and their front window displays goes far beyond shopping. They not only provide all the toys needed for presents and gifts (the entire third verse of the song) but are an essential part—if not the most central aspect—of the holiday ambiance.
Today, however, we’ve lost this unique part of the season. Whether it’s the constant sale of toys at our big retailers, or the year-round availability of holiday products through the internet, there is nothing actually special about shopping at Christmas. And it’s not just the experience we’ve lost—there is now less joy in the products that we buy. Every gift from a big-box store is tainted with the knowledge that it is one of a million copies, while “artisan” gifts brought from small shops are so profligate with campiness (organic blueberry goat’s milk soap) that buying them becomes a smug competition in who can spend the most money on the oddest item.When an American Conservative writer uses a "buy local" talking point, dear reader, you know there's an E-T-T-S moment at hand. "Do we want our children to associate Christmas with spending hours at the mall or lazily clicking through Amazon? Or do we want them to realize that our physical structures can be part of their heritage and have a lasting impact for generations?"
The very layout of the typical auto-centric American suburb also quietly kills the spirit of Christmas. Everything leading up to the holiday has become stressful and hectic, while still being glum and uninspired. The mall and the big-box stores feel even more depressing around the holidays, as you walk through an expanse of parked cars in the cold and snow. There’s no reward for your misery: Target and Wal-Mart still feel the same when you get inside, except that they’re probably more crowded. You’ve been here a thousand times before and you’ll be back next Tuesday to return the gifts you didn’t want and pick up toilet paper. This cheerless shopping experience is underpinned by the knowledge that your dollars are not staying in the community but are being vacuumed out to Wall Street.
Unfortunately, the era of the department-store sponsored Christmas parade (sometimes involving a train) is gone, apart from Macy's in New York City, the national telecast of which has deteriorated into celebrity newscasters interviewing celebrity entertainers while all the sisters and cousins and aunts of the kids marching in the parade strain for a glimpse of their high school's colors or a few bars of the parade songs.
2 comments:
The American retail industry is suffering from a lack of creative marketing talent of the showmanship variety....a good historical example of which was the Rich's Department Store Pink Pig (a thing that ran on rails....well, on one rail)
http://www.aboutnorthgeorgia.com/ang/Macy%27s_Pink_Pig
Yes, that's yet another department store with a monorail in its toy department. Milwaukee's Boston Store had one (when the store was eight stories, and the toy department up on eight) for a few years. It might have come over from a store in Portland, Oregon. There was also such a monorail at Leonard's in Fort Worth, perhaps the only department store to set up its own trolley line to bring customers in from a remote parking lot.
The Pink Big, I see, was a supported monorail.
The three I mentioned were all suspended. I think Boston Store just hid its away in a corner, covered with a tarp and the lights turned off, when they scaled back the toy department in the summer.
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