My Mother loved Christmas, more than any holiday, or birthdays, or other special occasions.  She spent her career in retail as a personnel manager at a J. C. Penney store and, in spite of the extra long hours including nights and weekends during the holidays, she would still come home, tired and exhausted, but full of excitement about helping people, solving problems, and reveling in the joy of the decorations and good cheer at work. Bless her.

     A number of years later when I first moved to Stamford, CT, I took a job as a holiday worker in the Lord & Taylor store there. I thought I would get an introduction to my new community, while also benefitting from the 20% store discount (which I did). Lord & Taylor had been one of my favorite stores ever since I had lived in New York City, and it long continued to be a favorite department store in Connecticut.  My stint at L&T was simply a seasonal job, but I have to admit that I really caught the holiday spirit there, even though I worked in the credit department and was tasked with picking up charge cards from over-extended customers down on the sales floor. Ah yes .. a challenge even for a former teacher accustomed to unruly students. But I will never forget the thrill of riding down the escalator in that store hearing Christmas music and being flanked by beautiful poinsettias and tiny white lights and experiencing the retail beauty of the season. And then I understood my Mother.

     During my years living in New York and Connecticut, our grand holiday tradition was not necessarily going to Radio City performances or the NewYork City ballet presentation of “The Nutcracker, “ though we did do those things. No, our biggest tradition became going into the City to see all the magnificent window displays of the major Fifth Avenue department stores.  This was high art and inspiration in itself, plus the thrill of the hustle and bustle of Fifth Avenue shoppers, the ringing bells of the Salvation Army, and the smell of roasting chestnuts from street vendors. My Mother used to take vacation time to be with us at Christmas (which wasn’t easy for her as a member of management), and she continued to come up for longer visits after her retirement. Her arrival at La Guardia (weather be damned) and these holiday excursions into the City became the cornerstones of making family Christmas memories for many years.

     Christmas first truly exploded for me when I was newly-married and living in New York City. My most vivid memories are not of shopping, but of looking. The great department store windows were so spectacular as to be a destination in themselves, as the barriers and line ropes for crowds around them indicated.  And so when my Mother started coming up to visit during the holidays, the Christmas windows became our prime destination as well. 

     We would start at Macy’s (not technically on 5th  Avenue but on Herald Square at 34th Street), not so much because of their windows, but because of Santa’s culinary workshop in the basement called The Cellar showcasing gourmet cookware and delectable, beautifully decorated holiday pastries and candies. Then we walked straight across 34th Street over to B. Altman & Co. (34th and 5th, from 1906), my absolute favorite New York department store until it went out of business in 1989.  (An aside: Once during my lunch hour shopping at Altman’s when I was working in the Empire State Building across the street, I tried on a pair of cashmere-lined leather gloves at the counter there. As I put them on and admired them, I turned my head and there was Elizabeth Taylor right next to me. She smiled and shook her head in approval. The gloves were beyond my budget, but I bought them anyway — and yes, she really did have violet eyes!) 

     Anyway, continuing the trip up 5th Avenue, it was only a short walk to Lord & Taylor’s flagship store (at 5th Avenue and 39th Street), then the nation’s oldest department dating from 1826. Sadly, L&T closed its doors forever after the holidays in 2019; I was there for its final clearance sale (and bought a cashmere sweater). They always had fanciful, mechanized holiday displays which caused crowds ten-deep to spill out into the street. 

     The farther up 5th Avenue we window-shoppers went, the more sophisticated the displays and the more exclusive the merchandise seemed to be. Sak’s Fifth Avenue (5th and 50th Street, 1924 – present) was right across the street from Rockefeller Center and proved the perfect vantage point for taking that long-shot photograph of those angels with gold trumpets heralding the walk to the skating rink from the street. Just a bit farther, Tiffany’s (at 5th and 57th, 1940 to present), bedazzled enough as it has always been with its own merchandise, hardly needed much else to make store windows glitter and shine. 

     Bergdorf Goodman (5th and 58th, 1928 to present), known for its high-fashion and somewhat avant guarde window designs, is located in the old Cornelius Vanderbilt mansion right next to the famous Plaza Hotel at 59th and Central Park South. This was always a convenient location for taking a rest, either for lunch or tea in the Palm Court at the Plaza or for a relaxing carriage ride around Central Park. Afterward, we might have enough energy to venture East on 59th Street over to Bloomingdales’ flagship store (1861 to present), which promised the most hip, most current, most design-forward window displays anywhere.

     The New York Times recently featured this year’s department store windows in the City (“Holiday Windows Aim to Delight and Wow,” 11/26/23). Reading the article made me smile at the memories, but also a little sad. So many of the grand dames of retail have disappeared that only four major stores appeared in the article: Bergdorf’s, Macy’s, Bloomingdales, and Sak’s. True to a long tradition of “wowing,” however, this year’s windows showcase hours of work and creativity and lots of innovative technology making possible a ten-story “wheel-of-fortune” installation over the facade of the Sak’s building, and an interactive music display at Macy’s that encourages viewers to play the piano by pressing a set of keys on the glass window. And, while its windows weren’t featured in The Times, Tiffany’s now has a new feature of it own: visitors can enjoy “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” in the Blue Box Cafe, the new restaurant operated by Michelin-starred Chef Daniel Boulud. Decorated in that famous Tiffany’s turquoise blue, the Cafe offers a reasonably-priced light menu of seasonal items for under $50. 

     Now that IS a window shopper’s delight!