Retail rewind

"When you think about it, department stores are kind of like museums.” — American artist Andy Warhol (1928-1987)

One of the great things about the emergence and growth of the internet is its ability to tie together like-minded, if far-flung, people from across the expanses of the worldwide web around common interests.

Turns out there are 28,000 of us out there that are members of Department Stores. Remembered, a private group nostalgic for the old grand department stores of yore. Meanwhile, there are 32,000 of us who are members of another private nostalgia group, Remembering Retail. And here I thought I was the only sentimentalist for the late great national, regional and local department and five-and-dime stores that I frequented from my youth into adulthood, particularly during the Christmas shopping season.

As Warhol presciently noted in an earlier era, department stores have indeed become something of retailing history museums in this current age of clip-and-buy online e-commerce delivered to your door and the survival-of-the-fittest great retailing apocalypse that has whittled the once burgeoning ranks of department stores to but a handful of survivors, nationally and regionally.

I got to thinking about this after I ran into our local Walmart the other day, where the holiday season decor consisted of a single ginormous red cardboard “bow” suspended from the ceiling as you enter the store. 

How far things have fallen. 

When I was a kid, making a special trip the day after Thanksgiving to see the artistic Christmas-trimmed display windows at the flagship Gimbels in downtown Milwaukee, or the suburban Marshall Field & Company store at Mayfair in Wauwatosa, was a festive outing inspiring wide-eyed wonder and appreciative oooh’s and aaaah’s. 

Field’s was the ultimate destination during the Christmas shopping season. Walking through the stores was a veritable holiday wonderland — Santa and his elves at Cozy Cloud Cottage, the strolling holiday musicians dressed in Victorian top hats and tails, and dining in the Linden Room on the culinary delights of Field’s famous pot pie and Frango Mint ice cream pie in the shadow of the floor-to-ceiling “Great Tree.” And “Fielding” with Nana always meant choosing an ornament for my Christmas tree in the expansive Christmas shop, my selection carefully wrapped and packed in a stiff cardboard ornament box bearing the elegant cursive Marshall Field & Co. logo.

Even in Racine at Elmwood Plaza, “incredible bargain store” Goldblatt’s, which always struck me as something akin to the poor man’s Marshall Field’s, put significant effort into decorating for the holidays. Forty-plus years later, I still have my felt “Timmy the Gingerbread Boy” ornament from Goldblatts.

All the department stores anchoring the malls in Milwaukee back in the day decked their halls, including Sears, JCPenny, Boston Store and T.A. Chapman’s. As I recall, even the old five-and-dime variety stores like F.W. Woolworth, G.C. Murphy and W.T. Grant dressed up for the holidays. 

Grants, as its contribution to the holiday spirit, offered its shoppers their annual “A Very Merry Christmas” vinyl Christmas record album featuring the top artists during the series’ eight volume 1967-74 run. I still play them every Christmas, stirring memories of Christmases past, including fond recollections of Grants. Fifty years later, I still thrill at the singular joys of listening to Mahalia Jackson singing “O Little Town of Bethlehem.”

In my experience, that holiday spirit of wowing shoppers with holiday spirit in the run-up to Christmas has largely been lost, as retailers seemingly began to embrace the satirical lyrics of Stan Freberg’s Capital Records comedy single “Green Chri$tma$” with their front and center commerce emphasis on door-buster specials as stampeding crowds gathered and fisticuffs broke out over Cabbage Patch dolls.

As Scrooge noted, “Christmas has two s’s in it, and they’re both dollar signs … Wake up, Cratchet, it’s later than you think.”

Given the winnowing of the nation’s ranks of department stores as their holiday spirit shrinks like the Grinch’s heart, it might be later than they think.

At least I have my memories of the way things used to be.

Eric Johnson can be reached at eric@fyinorthwoods.com.