MMC What Sears Meant to Christmas

[ElfBot]

The news has been decades in the making: iconic retailer Sears is closing its doors for good this year. The effect of their loss, like that of Toys R Us, will not matter one bit to consumers. But the loss of Sears to Christmas history is worthy of note. Once upon a time Sears was the yearly watch-word for Christmas shoppers and Santa dreamers coast to coast. Kids everywhere marked the day when the Sears Christmas Wishbook would show up in the mail. Generations took their children to Sears to have their pictures taken with Santa. It was the placeRead more

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[Storeytime]

Every time I see "A Christmas Story" in the opening scene, where the kids are looking through the store window at Higbee's, it reminds me of when I was a kid. We couldn't wait to go to Sears and see the electric trains and Santa. It was a big part of my Christmas as a kid.

 

[Jeff Westover]

To me the Sears Wishbook was part of my countdown to Christmas. I would flip its pages every day after it arrived, just pining for Christmas to come.

 

[ballcoach]

Jeff, I just loved that post. I thought it was such great writing and brought back a lot of memories for me.

 

[Jeff Westover]

Thanks, Coach!

 

[Clemency]

Wishbookweb has reprints of lots of vintage Christmas catalogs, from the 1930s, to the 1990s: http://www.wishbookweb.com/the-catalogs/

 

[Minta]

I can remember several years as a kid spending hours sitting at the table with the sears wishbook in front of me and a marker in my hand marking off what I wanted for Christmas.

 

[SnowflakeMom]

I can remember several years as a kid spending hours sitting at the table with the sears wishbook in front of me and a marker in my hand marking off what I wanted for Christmas.

Yes I remember doing this too!!

 

[GingerMel]

I remember sitting on the floor of my grandmother's living room on my stomach, flipping through the Sears catalog to pick out the toys I wanted...and just being mesmerized by all the things in that huge book. It's exactly the memory I thought of when I heard Sears is closing. I am not normally someone who waxes nostalgic about the things kids today won't experience but this was definitely one of those moments...I bet kids today have never experienced what it's like to sit in front of an actual catalog (certainly one as huge as that) and daydream about all the toys they'd like to have. We were pretty poor so I really wasn't going to get all of those toys but it was so fun to sit and imagine it/hope for it.

 

[Jeff Westover]

I remember sitting on the floor of my grandmother's living room on my stomach, flipping through the Sears catalog to pick out the toys I wanted...and just being mesmerized by all the things in that huge book. It's exactly the memory I thought of when I heard Sears is closing. I am not normally someone who waxes nostalgic about the things kids today won't experience but this was definitely one of those moments...I bet kids today have never experienced what it's like to sit in front of an actual catalog (certainly one as huge as that) and daydream about all the toys they'd like to have. We were pretty poor so I really wasn't going to get all of those toys but it was so fun to sit and imagine it/hope for it.

I can remember being 8 years old and having a dream where I had one a contest and my prize would be to pick one item from every page of the Wishbook and a big truck would then deliver it to my house.

It was such an awesome dream it then became my habit to actually go through the catalogue to decide which one item of the page I would take. I would work my way through the catalogue day by day leading up to Christmas and usually got through most of it by Christmas.

Some pages the decisions were tough, especially when it came to things like video games and tools. Other pages, like women's underwear, were a burden to me but in my mind I had to do it because those were the rules. I had to pick one item to every page.

 

[Christmasplease]

I adored the Wish Book! I would get mine at the end of August. I loved it, then my kids loved it. I remember when it started coming out later, and then when it became as thin as a magazine. I was so disappointed. I now wish I had kept even two of the Wish Books from the 1990's.

 

[GingerMel]

Jeff, that's exactly the kind of thing that I used to do!

 

[GhostOfChristmasPast]

We have lost our Sears store. They always had huge Christmas displays.