Local Opinion: The joy of the big department store at Christmas

Ever notice at this time of year when shopping drives many of us nuts, in an era in which experts have said department stores are dead or dying (for reasons beyond the explosion of online commerce and any fears of going to American downtowns or suburban malls), so many of the movies we watch for the 270th time involve the magic or just joy of the big department store at Christmas?

I thought about just how many of these films involve department stores. Most famously perhaps is 1947’s “Miracle on 34th Street,” which probably was the first to center on holiday department store life with its battle between Macy’s and Gimbels and which emporium could sell toys or X-ray machines for less. Then there is 1983’s “A Christmas Story” and the Santaland of Cleveland’s Higbee’s (which stood in for Hammond, Indiana’s Goldblatt’s). Seventeen years after its closure, Gimbels came back to life in 2003’s “Elf.” Then there are more obscure specimens like 1967’s “Fitzwilly,” featuring Dick Van Dyke as a debonair thief robbing none other than … Gimbels.

Recently, I was talking to the twenty-something child of a friend who, without intending to make me feel 2,000 years old, does so with enormous charm and rather admirable curiosity about life in the last quarter or so of the 20th century. This curiosity extends to the marvel that once was known as the major department store at Christmas.

This person has fuzzy, but mostly happy, early childhood memories of attending a few breakfasts with Santa at several big stores but confessed that the department store sparkle they see in the movies they love to watch over and over (and more) never seems quite real. I said, well, no movie meant to entertain or engender teary holiday feelings is going to show much of the reality of store life. If reality were a requirement in movies, few romantic comedies or war pictures would ever get made.

But I asked this young person if many people would want to watch movies based on people looking like hell while sitting in pajamas and ordering stuff off of devices that they may or not need, want, or find fitting. And would people really want to watch films about delivery people bringing boxes to back doors or apartment offices. Wait. Yes, I know movies have been made about romance and, oh, other matters occurring between delivery people and package recipients. Though not all of them are intended for anything resembling a family audience.

I then told this individual about some of my own Christmas department store shopping memories, the likes of which nearly everyone more than age 50 or so can claim for themselves. I said I used to like real sales, not the Black Fridays that occur all year long. Or sales associates who truly knew a good deal about the merchandise their department sold. Or just the sheer ease that someone like my now 90-year-old mother tells me about every year when she recounts getting on a bus and riding 20 minutes with some neighbors to a smaller branch of (yes, Gimbels) in my Milwaukee hometown and getting toys for we kids, Yardley cologne for my father, and something for herself, wrapped in complimentary packaging, in one beautifully decorated store in about one hour. My friend’s child just quietly said, oh, that actually sounds kind of pleasant. I said, you know, sometimes it really was pleasant. Sometimes you were just completely beat up from tramping between crowded, hot floors and you would relinquish all your purchases for escape and a soda, or a cold cocktail when older.

When asked if I thought department stores could ever recapture (or even just capture) the wonders we see in the movies, I said I wasn’t hopeful. If such stores and experiences could return, it will (like so many other things in this world) depend on younger generations to decide if such should happen. Though I did say that at that moment, I’d give a lot to be able to shop in the downtown Milwaukee Gimbels store at Christmas one more time.

This young friend said they thought they would like to come along with me.