DV Journal

We are used to mourning people when they die. We have ceremonies and rituals. We bring food [if you’re Italian you bring a deli.] We send Mass cards and flowers. We erect memorial headstones for remembrance. We weep, and we embrace. And we write obituaries. It’s very cathartic.

But what do we have when history dies? What rituals exist to mourn the passing of an inanimate object, which, through lived experience and affection, becomes an animate creature? What ceremonies help us grieve the loss of our secular temples, places that hold our invisible footprints accumulated over decades of familiarity?

When I heard that Macy’s was closing its store in Center City, I felt a visceral pain in my stomach. It felt, literally, as if I’d been punched. This was gut-wrenching news. To anyone under 40, this may seem a grossly exaggerated reaction to the termination of a lease. To these Philadelphians, who are used to shopping online and don’t understand the concept of “window shopping,” the idea that a giant conglomerate is shedding a few urban locations is no big deal.

They don’t get it. They were born at a time when the internet was already sending its toxic roots into our community marketplaces, making it easier, cheaper and less annoying to purchase the things we needed, and the things we didn’t, by removing the middleman. Stores started to become unnecessary. Brick and mortar was passé. I blame Amazon for much of it, but the laziness of the American shopper is also part of the problem. Jeff Bezos thrives only because of his contented clients.

But I predate that psychology. I was born at the end of the department store heyday when you could still walk into a stand-alone edifice and browse. This was even before the malls which I once blamed for ruining the shopping experience and for which I now feel affection. At least there were real stores in Springfield, Granite Run, King of Prussia, Deptford, Neshaminy and Cherry Hill, not “www.whateveryouwant.com.”

I am devastated that Macy’s is cutting the last link Philadelphia has with the first and greatest department store in the country: Wanamaker’s. I can almost forgive it for bowing to market pressures and closing the grande dame of East Market Street. Rents are high, foot traffic is non-existent since COVID. People work from home, and I’m sure that petty crimes and losses to retail theft are on the rise. I get it. It’s not personal. It’s a business decision.

But I feel as if a limb is being cut off. I feel as if my mother, who worked in the bookkeeping department, is being reduced in memory by an infinitely small measure. I feel as if my father’s ghost, which accompanied me when I sat at the Eagle and paused to take a break from my daily rush, is removed. I feel as if my grandmother, who would have lunch with me in the Crystal Tea Room, will be harder to conjure in my childhood dreams. I feel as if John Facenda, whose voice as rich and comforting as mink and narrated the light show of 30 of my Christmases, is saying in Heaven, “Goodbye Frosty, Goodbye. And goodbye, Philly.”

Perhaps, this will seem melodramatic to many who say, “It’s just a store and it hadn’t been Wanamaker’s in decades.” Those people will never understand, and they’re not worth my time. This is for the ones who do. This is my attempt at an obituary for all of us who mourn.

Let’s gather together, and weep for what we’ve lost. I’ll meet you at the Eagle.

One of my earliest memories of Christmas is boarding the Market Frankford El at 52nd Street to go to Wanamaker’s.  I was either 4 or 5, bundled up in a coat with a tiny brown muff and a fluffy fur hat as my elegant accessories. I remember thinking that this was an adventure, a train that soared above the streets and took me to a magical place where the store windows beckoned with toys and treats.

I’m sure we eventually stopped at Lits Brothers and Strawbridge’s, but we were a Wanamaker’s family so my most vivid recollections revolve around that majestic castle of wonder on 13th Street, the solemn Eagle made of gold (convince me it’s not) and the organ, suspended like a benevolent king over his retail kingdom.

Macy’s Christmas Light Show

And standing out amid the mists of memory, shimmering with twinkles and music and fountains of rainbow-tinted water was the Light Show.  If you say “Light Show” to a child of the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s, they will not think of the Comcast Center and its glitzy panorama of technological triumph.  They will not think of the Christmas Village at Dilworth Plaza, lovely and proletarian and marginally reminiscent of a European marketplace (an idea that evaporates completely at the sounds of Philadelphia, harsh and guttural and punctuated with expletives).

They will not think of exquisite Longwood Gardens with the canopy of crystal and the trees that imitate jewels, and they will not think of the tiny suburban towns that line their lampposts with ropes of white lights (never colored, always white) to achieve some fashionable ambiance.  They won’t even think of the Miracle on 13th Street, South Philly’s gift to the unsuspecting and the weary.

They-we-think of the wall at Wanamaker’s, which looks deceptively unexceptional during most of the year.  Sometimes, if you look up during the dog days of August when the sweat is dripping down your collar, you can just make out the phantom images in the wiring, barely visible against the dark background.  And yet you know it’s there, dozing gently through the summer and autumn months until, in December, the switch to our childhood is turned “ON” and the Light Show begins.

I was there last week, alone with hundreds of strangers but with my Mom Mom and Pop Pop at my shoulders, my mother and father by my side, and all the loved ones who have left me here to move ahead without them, hovering in the ether.  I was a child again, in my muff and fluffy hat, looking up in wonder as what they’ve called “The Largest Christmas Card in History” came to life.  Rudolph, Frosty, the Sugar Plumb Fairy, the Snowflakes, the trains and the clocks and the music came back in waves of blessing.  I was 4 again.  And although the voice that narrated the stories and the traditions wasn’t the deep rich bass of John Facenda, enveloping me in warmth and confidence that Santa was real, Julie Andrews did almost as good a job keeping the magic alive.

I looked around at the children, eyes turned up to the wall that seemed so much bigger when I was a child, and I hoped that they were suspended in the same mystical magical bubble that carried me along in 1965.  From their expressions, I am pretty certain that they were, as were their parents and their grandparents, who had abandoned the worries and cares of the 21st century and settled back-for a brief moment-into the glory of the recent past.

It’s called Macy’s now, and the dancing waters are gone, and the cheerful voices have changed, and I’m no longer a child waving goodbye to Frosty, as the images fade away.  I am much closer to the end of life than the beginning, and I no longer ride the El out of fear and sadness for what it’s become.  I no longer walk, fearless, down the streets of the city with my hand in the hand of my grandmother, certain that she will fight off the lions and dangers, and take me to Santa, and help make my wishes come true.

But I still stand, in awe, before that wall of light, and thank God that it still has the power to make me feel Christmas, in my bones and in my flawed Philly heart.

Please follow DVJournal on social media: Twitter@DVJournal or Facebook.com/DelawareValleyJournal