Reading a really good newspaper

K-Mart and Sears

Malls 

Coffee shops and diners at those malls, where you could get a fantastic grilled cheese and a pickle.

Good old-fashioned department stores like Lord and Taylor, Kaufmanns, etc.

Shopping in general.

The original Pizza Hut with the original pan pizza and jukeboxes, those textured red plastic cups and the salad bar.

Going to a movie theater to see a movie that is not based on a comic strip, a superhero, not CGI, not animated, not a sequel or a remake and not going deaf because the surround sound is too damn loud.

Downtowns with restaurants, clothing stores, gift shops, office supply and sporting goods stores, locally owned drugstores, etc.

Special catalogs at holiday time like the Sears and JC Penney Christmas catalogs

Getting actual mail, not just bulk mail or bills

Well made and properly fitting clothing.

Leather shoes

Big, fat Bonne Bell Lip Smackers

Shoe departments in which you could sit down and have a salesperson help to make sure your shoes fit properly. 

The smell of roasting peanuts and tomato sauce in the fall air.

High quality network television programs and series- MASH, Thirtysomething, ER, Cheers, St. Elsewhere, Hill Street Blues, NYPD Blue.  Every time I start to enjoy a series and develop a fondness for the characters on network TV these days, the show is cancelled.

But at this time of year, the thing I miss most is the way Christmas used to be. I’m not sure why, but for some reason this particular holiday season is missing something.  I don’t know if it’s because my kids are grown and as a result the holiday activities we did when they were little have gone by the wayside.  Or if it’s because so many family members are now gone. Or if our culture and society has morphed into a soulless, vacuous black hole of internet scrolling. But something has shifted and it’s making me feel wistful and a little empty. 

Many years ago, before Black Friday shopping was even called Black Friday, we would go Christmas shopping the day after Thanksgiving.  Shopping used to be so civilized. Many stores had coat checks so you wouldn’t have to walk around overheated. Shopping sans a heavy winter coat is so much more comfortable. There were always long lines at the registers but people were generally in jovial moods so it didn’t matter that you had to wait. Christmas music would be playing on the speakers but you weren’t sick of it because it was only played at actual Christmas time, starting AFTER Thanksgiving, not in October. When I was a little girl we trekked into Buffalo to the Seneca Mall to shop.  The concourse would be lushly decorated with garlands and lights hanging from the ceiling and there would be a giant Christmas tree by the fireplace in the center of the mall.  My mom always selected a beautiful dress from L.L. Berger department store for my grandmother and I got to choose coordinating jewelry;  a necklace or a brooch to go along with it.  What a fantastic store. L.L. Berger was.  It was owned by a Buffalo family back when local and regional department stores still existed, and it carried expensive, good quality merchandise. The shoe department was fantastic and as a little girl I was fascinated by the extensive and exotic-to-me makeup and fragrance displays.   Other Buffalo area department stores were Sattler’s which had a fantastic toy department, Jenss,  Hengerer’s and Adam, Meldrum and Anderson, or  AM&A’s.  The downtown Buffalo AM&A’s store was fantastic.  It was a real treat to go into the city to shop.  The heyday of the downtown store was well before my time though.  The AM&A’s I remember best was at the Eastern Hills Mall in Amherst when the mall was new, about fifty years ago.  That was the chi chi mall at the time.  That and the Boulevard Mall.  Both are essentially dead now.   

The Seneca Mall was a shorter drive up the Thruway though from where we lived so that was where we shopped most often.  Hengerer’s had a fantastic restaurant on the second floor that overlooked the mall concourse and had a view of the fountains. You could have lunch while watching all the people milling about below with their shopping bags.  I loved people watching. Eventually Hengerer’s became Sibley’s, and then Kaufmanns, and then the mall closed and was demolished. There’s just a sad parcel of empty land surrounded by an ugly wooden fence where it once stood.

Because my mom was from Erie, PA we also spent literally thousands of hours at the Millcreek Mall.  This was a larger mall than the Seneca Mall and had more department stores: Halle Brothers, Kaufmann’s, Carlisle’s, The Boston Store, as well as Sears and JC Penney. All the stores offered complimentary Christmas gift wrapping and each store was so beautiful during the holidays.  Sparkling lights everywhere, garlands, Christmas trees.  And you could always get special gift boxes and specially themed holiday products at the makeup and fragrance counters. We always had lunch at the TickTock Room on the second floor of Kaufmann’s.  The name was in reference to the clock on the corner of Fifth Avenue at Kaufmann’s flagship store in Pittsburgh. The restaurant was a place of calm and quiet, a respite from the hustle and bustle of Christmas shopping out in the store.  It had low lighting and banquette seating along one wall.  And of course there were all sorts of clocks as decoration. The chicken salad was always fantastic! And I always ordered a pot of tea. Loved the little silver teapot.  Really nice restaurants would provide you with a variety of teas to choose from. Shopping used to be such a pleasure, something to look forward to. 

When I was growing up I was the official Christmas gift wrapper in my family. I supposed my mom was relieved to have me take over that responsibility.  I didn’t mind. I loved wrapping gifts; choosing the paper and a coordinating ribbon or bow. It was fun. No wonder one of my absolute favorite jobs ever was in the Christmas wrapping department at Sidey’s, a locally owned department store. Sidey’s was where you went to get nice things in the D & F area. 

We were set up in the back of the store in housewares, with its beautiful displays of crystal and china and silverware. Christmas trees were set up  with pretty ornaments for sale.  I loved that job. Large industrial sized rolls of beautiful glistening wrapping paper were hung from rollers on the wall. I can still hear the sound of the paper as we ripped it along the steel cutting edge.  The paper also had a distinct smell. We’d lay a fresh sheet on the large counter and proceed to wrap all manner of lovely gifts: pajamas, robes, giftware, sweaters.  I loved making sharp creases and clean folds around the boxes.  There was something so satisfying about creating a beautifully packaged gift with shiny paper and curling ribbons. All department that I can remember stores offered gift wrapping at Christmas time years ago.  Another local shop that offered resplendent gift wrapping was the tiny gift shop Luweibdeh owned by the fantastically colorful character “Boo” Rowland. Her gift shop was a wonder of ceramic and porcelain dishware, crystal, candle sticks, cards, ornaments, scarves, handbags.  Too much to recount.  She wrapped gifts with the most outrageously gorgeous bows! In fact when we were married and received wedding gifts from her shop I saved the bows from the packages they were so pretty.  At Christmas time she offered small glasses of sherry to her customers. The shop was in a darling little outbuilding behind her brick Victorian home on a grape vineyard on the outskirts of town. It was a sad day when she had to close the shop due to declining health.  Shopping at Luweibdeh was a wonderful holiday tradition.

Another thing I reminisce about and miss is the crazy amount of cookies that my mom and grandma would bake in the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Hermits, cut-outs, peanut blossoms, Russian tea cakes, also called Mexican wedding cakes, thumbprints and I’m sure others I can’t remember.  We’d head down to Erie in our station wagon to pick up my grandma and her poodle Charlie and bring them to our house to stay for a week or two. My grandma would bring her tins of supplies and cookie cutters and other things for the cookie baking marathon. They’d bake all day and when I got home from school the house would smell so good and there would be dozens of cookies cooling on trays and racks on the dining room table. What a bounty of goodness I had when I was a kid. One time on the way home when we had picked up my grandma we stopped at the Delhurst Country Store in the North East and ended up bringing home a kitten.  My two brothers and I, my mom and grandma, the dog, and a kitty in a box.  My mom sure had patience.  

I also miss Christmas visiting.  For about twenty or so years we had Christmas day brunch and/or Christmas eve with close family friends who were both educators like my parents and whose kids were about the same age that we were. My mom and Mrs. M. met while they were both teaching at a local middle school well before they both had children and they became fast friends. They started the tradition when it was too difficult to travel back and forth to family with little ones and lasted until most of us kids were well out of college. Those Christmas meals were always fantastic and rich and lavish.   Mrs M’s father owned an Italian import store so there were always Italian goodies like that fantastic nougat candy with almonds and panettone that, as a kid, I wasn’t too fond of but as I got older I grew to love. When we got together there were always lively conversations about books and authors, magazine articles, politics, government, social issues. Sometimes there were disagreements and differences of opinion, but the conversations were always rousing and interesting.  I really miss having conversations about important things, about the world at large, with like-minded friends.  

Usually on the day after Christmas we would head into Erie to spend the day with my mom’s family, at my grandma’s house when I was little,  and then eventually my aunt and uncle’s house when they became the family matriarch and patriarch after my grandma died a few days after Christmas in 1977. More Christmas cookies! And buckeyes! And whiskey sours, Brandy Alexanders or melon balls when I was old enough to drink. And so much food.  The amount of people they were able to entertain in that tiny post WWII built house was amazing. My mom and my kiddos continued visiting my aunt every Christmas, at her lovely little apartment in her retirement community.  She still always had lots of Christmas cookies and pretty Christmas decorations that my children loved to look at.  Both my aunt and mom are gone now.

I’m going to stop now. There are many more things I could, and may, write about that I miss but I don’t want to sound maudlin.  Just ruminating on my long-lost youth as one does this time of year when the weather is lousy and the days are short. Going to go decorate some cut-out cookies now and will probably end up eating them all by myself!  Cheers to anyone reading this. Hoping you get through the holidays with love and hope and some good memories. Because I’m sure in the future there’s going to be something about these crazy times we’re living in that will ultimately be missed too.