Published December 24, 2019
By VIRGINIA McNEIL SLEP
I have so many happy memories of Christmas when I was a girl: the excitement and anticipation… the fragrance of the fresh Christmas tree with all its colored lights and decorations… the fun of setting up our little manger… the wonderful fragrances from the kitchen… the suspense of wondering about the presents under the tree. But there was a lot that was different about Christmas way back then…
Imagine a world without the internet, without Amazon. Imagine doing your Christmas shopping with no malls… anywhere… no Target, no Walmart, no Marshalls, no TJ Maxx, no Toys R Us… There was Barbie, no Frozen, no Little Pony, no Legos… No point in looking for bargains on a flat screen TV… there were no color TVs (very few TVs at all)… no computers, no smartphones, no laptops or tablets or pads… no digital cameras… you get the idea.
(Or do you?)
What did we have? Well, unless we went into Boston on the train, we had Reading Square and downtown Wakefield. We had Woolworth’s and Grants in Reading and in Wakefield Center we had Newberry’s and Parke Snowe. There were a few clothing stores in each town, and a book store.
In addition, all stores everywhere closed at 5 p.m. on weekdays… and every store was closed on Sunday. Unless you had a car during the day, you did your shopping on Saturday. That was plenty. It was all we needed.
There were a lot of other differences in those days:
• About the only catalog we had back then was from Jordan Marsh in Boston, and I recall studying all the pictures of dolls very carefully, trying to choose the perfect doll to ask Santa to bring me. Sometimes he would… but sometimes he chose one I liked even better. Santa always brought me a wonderful doll.
• All of my dolls had wooden heads, wooden arms and legs, and a stuffed cloth body. Then they came out with dolls with eyes that opened and closed… and with little voice boxes that said, “Mama” when you tipped them back. And then they started making rubber dolls… dolls with soft bodies that felt just like real skin. Amazing!
• Wrapping paper didn’t come in large rolls. You bought wrapping paper at Woolworth’s in flat, folded squares. You didn’t need large sheets of wrapping paper, because most gifts tended to be small. There were no gift bags in those days… everything had to be wrapped. There were no pre-formed bows to stick on the gift. You used ribbon. And most people saved the used paper and ribbon to use again the next year. No thrifty Yankee would throw away perfectly good wrapping paper or ribbon. We didn’t worry about tearing the paper with the Scotch tape, because it hadn’t been invented yet.
• We used our own socks to leave under the tree for Santa to fill. There were no huge Christmas stockings back then… that would be cheating. Little kids got their little stockings filled… and big kids got bigger stockings filled… and that was just the way it was. I remember being so glad when I was a teenager and knee socks came into fashion. I could legitimately say, well, this really is my sock that I wear all the time. Mostly we got candy in our stockings, because there wasn’t room for much else.
• There was nothing made of plastic in those days. Toys were made of metal or wood. Erector Sets were metal. Tinker Toys and Lincoln Logs were wood; so were checkers and chess pieces.
• Games were made of cardboard… like Parcheesi… and Tiddly Winks and Pick-Up-Sticks.
• Candy canes came in only red and white, and were peppermint flavored. No root beer candy canes in those days! Ribbon candy was popular and delicious, and Grammie Eaton always seemed to have a dish of ribbon candy out for her guests at the Eaton Inn.
• Some presents stand out in my memory even today. We had a radio in the living room… a big brown cabinet that was fine if you were in the room, but you couldn’t take it anywhere else. So I remember clearly the year Santa brought a little white radio for my sister and me to have between our twin beds in our bedroom. That allowed us to lie in bed on Saturday morning and listen to all the children’s programs.
• Mom always saw to it that I got at least one book for Christmas. She knew exactly what I loved to read, and I spent so many happy Christmas afternoons munching on candy from my stocking and reading my new book: Bambi or Black Beauty or Heidi, the Bobbsey Twins or Nancy Drew. In fourth grade, I got a book of Longfellow’s poems. I still have it, and wouldn’t trade it for the world. (Thanks, Mom, for knowing that your 9-year-old daughter was ready for such a grown-up book.)
• And I clearly recall the year the people at Dad’s office gave him a gold ball point pen. We had never seen anything like it. The ink was already inside! Just amazing! What would they ever think of next?
Christmas shopping these days is often a very different experience from decades ago… and many Christmas presents of today don’t bear much resemblance to the presents of my childhood. I can only hope that for today’s children, they carry as much magic and love as the Christmas presents of my childhood did.