It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas,
Everywhere you go,
Take a look in the five-and-ten, glistening once again,
With candy canes and silver lanes aglow.

– Robert Meredith Willson

My favorite “five and ten” was Woolworth’s. It, like so many familiar places Downriver, used to transform at this time of year into a Christmas wonderland. Cotton snow trimmed the display cases, sometimes accented with sparkly silver dust that clung to our wool mittens much better than it did to the cotton snow. Woolworth’s was where Mom and Dad bought our Christmas staples – spare colored bulbs, replacement bubble lights, and pounds and pounds of lead tinsel to hang on our Christmas tree. It’s amazing that our generation ever amounted to anything, considering the amount of lead we must have absorbed through our fingertips each Yuletide season.

While the transformation of Woolworth’s was dramatic; it was the transformation of the most unlikely places that I remember – and miss – the most.

The National Supermarket was, most of the year, my least favorite destination. After Thanksgiving, however, my pals and I begged to go along with our parents on grocery shopping trips. We wandered along the dairy and frozen food cases, with our necks stretched and contorted as we stared upward in awe at the array of toys by long-gone American toymakers like Deluxe, Topper and Ideal displayed high above us on the supermarket top shelves. Jimmy Jets, Playmobiles, Battlewagons and Secret Sam Spy Cases topped our Christmas lists.

Even Clay’s Sinclair Station reflected a little North Pole décor with its evergreen rope hung in the windows and wound around the sign pole out front, accented by red bows and berries. And, in addition to S&H Green Stamps, Dad used to get a free Christmas ornament with every fill-up between Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve. I remember driving home, cradling one of those little glass treasures in my palms and thinking such a beautiful piece of artistry must have come directly from Santa’s workshop.

Woolworth’s is a retail history footnote, the only toys in supermarkets now are related to gourmet cooking, and “Holiday Countdown” instant lottery tickets are the most festive item we’ll find at our local gas stations.

A lot has changed about Christmastime Downriver since those magical seasons of our childhoods. But some things – the really important ones – maybe not so much as it seems.

My family and I will be bringing down Christmas decorations from the attic soon, and I know that at the very bottom of a boxed marked “ornaments,” wrapped in tissue paper and an old yellowed sheet of newspaper, is a small, faded glass ornament that I held in my hands on a drive home from Clay’s more than 50 years ago. It long ago lost all its sparkles and its shine, but when I hang it on my tree, it’ll be looking a lot like Christmas – in my home and in my heart.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!