My dearly beloved friends,

Christmas spilled into American public life in the 1830s, transforming like Starscreamer from a household and church celebration to a communal, national celebration. The streets filled with cheer and mirth. By the 1850s and 1860s, the commercial, public Christmas was in full swing and many stores depended on their Christmas profits.

One such store was Macy’s, established in 1858 by a Quaker. In 1862, Macy’s became the first store to feature Santa Claus. The holiday buying surge was so great at Macy’s, the store for the first time extended Christmas Eve hours, remaining open through midnight. Macy’s upped the ante twelve years after hijacking Santa, becoming the first store to have Christmas window displays. By 1883, the store displays were so intricate, it required 200 employees to set them up in early December. There were hundreds of mechanical toys, even some steam powered ones, that attracted huge crowds. Its flagship Manhattan storefront Christmas displays continue today, attracting as many as 10,000 viewers every hour.

I have many fond memories of Macy’s, including the original in Manhattan. I also have enjoyed visiting the two Macy’s, formerly Marshall Field’s, in Chicago and feasting on the famed Frangos. The Watertower Macy’s is the filming location of that horrible, adulterous scene with that scumbag Clark Griswold. But my most vivid memories come from the Macy’s in Esplanade Mall and by the Superdome, both of which are now closed. Thankfully, I was never approached by Mike Yenni at either. I got my first rayon shirts and first suit, a bespoke woolen Hugo Boss, at Macy’s.

INTERLUDE: Silver Bells

TulaneLSU's Top 10 Decorations Macy's:

10. Holy Family carving

My Advent resolution for this coming year is to learn wood carving. I’ve mastered wood furniture making and framing, at least at an amateur level, but carving evades me. I’ve grown up with avuncular Roy Underhill as my teacher, but I’ve feared destroying a timeless piece of wood, cultivated for decades or centuries in a forest, with my lubberly claws. Do you ever see cut rings of huge, fallen oaks on the side of the road and think, “It’s such a shame that beautiful wood is headed to a landfill”? Some of that wood existed when pirates roamed freely outside New Orleans. To turn it into a work of art that lasts for centuries more, what a gift to the world that would be.

What better imagery to make from that wood than the Holy Family? Here with see a cheap rendition of the Holy Family, again made in China. It has a pleasant appeal to the eyes, but the fingers tell you that it’s resin. Can you imagine being so talented with your hands to make something similar that you could pass on to a child or friend? That’s the sort of legacy of which the world needs a whole lot more.

9. Santa rug

Martha Stewart has outdone herself with this beautiful rug. Would you really let people trample with their shoes on this rug? I can see displaying it under a North Pole sign that says, “Please remove shoes before walking on.” This is secular Santa at his finest: jolly and red-pinned (did you know the original secular Santa actually wore a brown suit?), towing presents in a sleigh with candy cane runners and reindeer saddle. I’m not sure why there’s a Christmas tree in his sack. There’s no hint of the St. Nicholas of history: the Turkish ascetic monk with mitre and staff, certainly with no excess vittles on frame.

8. Holy Family ornament

For affordable tree ornaments, I would recommend Hobby Lobby’s Robert Stanley and Macy’s Holiday Lane lines.This Holiday Lane example is an inspired painted glass with a gold cap of a much more prodigious brand like Jay Strongwater.

One of the many things I have learned on this Adventure is how greatly the different stores differ between decoration themes. The stores targeting the Second Estate have far more religious imagery than do more proletariat stores like Walmart, Lowe’s, Penney’s, and Target. It surprised me, as Christianity seems to have largely lost the American lower class. Cheap commercialism, pornography, gluttony, licentious behavior, alcohol and drug use, and other degrading habits and vices have proliferated. These behaviors have resulted in -- or perhaps are the results of -- the lower class turning away from Christianity, which have resulted in the proliferation of profane Christmas decorations. The secularization of the American lower class is quite worrisome, as any Kantian would appreciate, for social structure.

7. Black Santa

I was unaware until recently that a hot topic of disagreement is black Santa. Very little real research has been done on this figure. Most articles available online either argue that St. Nicholas was black -- he wasn’t; he was born in modern day Turkey and likely had olive skin. Or they state that black Santa is a product of the Civil Rights Movement, first appearing in the 1950s.

The black Santa, however, existed in New Orleans as far back as 1912 with a Times Picayune mention of him near Christmas of that year. The Civil Rights Movement through the Southern Christian Leadership Council attempted in the 1960s to bring black Santa to shopping malls, but in both the North and the South, these attempts were defeated. The black Santa went underground and was largely absent from American culture until the 1990s, when black culture became a much more visible part of the American culture. I can remember one of my first photos with Santa was with the black Santa who brought so much joy to the children in Gentilly Woods Shopping Center in the mid-90s. Do you remember him?

Over the last decade, living black Santas have appeared throughout malls, but more significantly, the black Santa has become the inspiration for ornaments and decorations galore. Nearly every store I visited had representations of black Santa, be it in Walmart’s dancing Santas to these cute Macy’s figures. I see this trend continuing, and I’m glad for it.

200 years ago Clement Moore reimagined Santa, desiring to bring to life a magical figure for his children, the original recipients of the poem that birthed the modern Santa. The black Santa does the same today, giving life to a Santa to whom others can better relate. We will know black Santa has truly made it when Coca Cola uses him in its commercials.

Black angels, incidentally, seem to have skyrocketed in popularity, ascending alongside black Santas. Note buttocksinclarse’s beautiful tree topped by one.

This post was edited on 12/12/19 at 8:19 pm