Christmast Wish Lists

A recent CNN headline read: Is this the last Christmas for Sears? 

I’m old enough to remember when Sears was the world’s largest and most important retailer, but Sears has been struggling for quite some time. When Sears and Kmart merged in 2005, the new company grew to 3,500 US stores with 300,000 employees. By 2018, the company filed for bankruptcy. As of December 2022, there are only 15 full-line Sears stores still in operation. 

The demise of Sears makes my heart hurt.

The retailer’s failure tarnishes the pleasant memories I have from my childhood. When we were kids, sometime around Halloween, our mail carrier would drop the Sears Holiday Wish Book through the mail slot of our front door. For my family of eight, there was a collective gasp and a rush to nab the thick catalogue for the first look. 

Back in the old days, Sears sold everything to everyone: toys, clothes, shoes, housewares, tools, and appliances. Besides operating retail stores where it influenced fashion, Sears offered innovative concepts like catalogue phone ordering, parcel pickup/returns, and layaways–novel concepts for that era. As part of the burgeoning middle class, families like mine flocked to Sears as an alternative to our local ‘Mom ‘n Pop’ stores. The desire to be ‘in vogue’ and hold onto newly acquired middle class status was at the heart of Sears popularity in the 60s and 70s.

The appearance of Sears’ Holiday Wish Book signaled the start of the holiday season, and it meant it was time to dream, to hope, and to desire something new and special. And while we may have glanced through the JC Penney’s mailer, the Sears catalogue played the major role in the formulation of my family’s Christmas lists.

Figuring out what to put on our holiday wish list was a process. First there was the ‘overwhelm.’ Once we recovered from awe and wonder over the Wish Book’s extensive offerings, we dogeared pages, and then we got serious about writing out our final lists. My mother had a hard fast rule: the Sears Wish Book could not leave her desk in the kitchen. So, when my five siblings and I took turns with ‘the book,’ we slid onto the stool at Mom’s desk armed with looseleaf paper and a pencil. 

That’s when the next set of challenges commenced.

Mom’s desk was the family control center, and it held one of our household’s two rotary dial telephones. The block-length curly cord of that phone constantly became entangled with everyone and everything in proximity to mom’s desk. So, completing the list became the ultimate exercise in focus. 

As the rotary phone jangled and our siblings ran in and out of the kitchen hollering for something, we struggled to fill looseleaf sheets with item descriptions, product codes, and catalogue page numbers. In the margins, five-point stars and appeals of “PLEASE! PLEASE!” indicated how badly we thought we needed an item.  

If you weren’t the first user of the Wish Book, the sections on toys or clothes would undoubtedly be decorated with suspicious smudges. The stains signaled which sibling had perused ‘the book’ last. Dark brown, the shade of chocolate pudding, meant one of my two brothers had been flipping the pages while consuming Mom’s signature afterschool snack. A strawberry, sticky residue signaled that my younger sister had consumed a lollipop or Jolly Rancher while jotting down her wishes. 

Regardless of who perused the book last and left their calling card, the result was the same. My mother was left with a monumental task. First, she scrutinized our imagined desires and weighed those against a very tight household budget. Secondly, in between caring for my younger siblings and her roles of washer woman, car pooler, and short-order cook, she navigated the eternally busy Sears order call-in lines. Back then company websites and online ordering options did not exist. All this on top of making these calls with all six of us out of earshot.

Undoubtedly, when it was my mother’s turn to place the budget-buster catalogue orders, she discovered our longed-for items were out of stock, on back order, or discontinued. No wonder the cocktail hour began at five o’clock and included a dry vermouth Manhattan for Mom and a Scotch on the rocks for my dad.

So, while the bankers, debtors, real estate brokers, and financiers are clamoring about Sears exit from the retail marketplace, many Boomers like me are lamenting. And as I relive the memories of Christmas list making with the Sear’s Wish Books, I wonder whether there’s a decent copy floating around on E-bay. I’d love to show my grandkids what life was like when I was a kid. Perhaps too I should search for a rotary phone. Both objects play significant roles in the memories of crafting childhood wish lists. 

What stories from your childhood might you share with your kids and grandkids this holiday season?

FOLLOW ME HERE

On January 9th, Julie will be guest on the Florida Writer’s Podcast with host Alison Nissen.

Don’t miss a blog post!

Receive my blog posts directly to your inbox. 

Available on Amazon!