Black Friday

Watching the craziness on the news last night reminded me, as it often does, of the early days of the event. Back when only a few stores had early bird sales -- my mom and my sister and I hurtling through the dark night down miles of highway and into unknown areas of the relatively unknown city. One favorite was the Gold Circle store. (Do they still have those anywhere?) I don't remember which location we went to. Somewhere in Cincinnati. And it seems, not unreasonably, that the store was up on a hill. I could be wrong about that. It was cold, it was dark, it was fun. The secrets of Christmas seemed to ooze through the air, out of all that hurrying darkness.

Another tradition, swallowed up by the malls and the push to grab the sales, was the Day after Thanksgiving at McAlpins. We went to the one at Cherry Grove Plaza. (It was called a shopping center then; nowadays it would be a strip mall. The only thing new is the words.) There were early bird sales there, too, but they were later -- at least for us! We would have had to go home and get the rest of the family. The big deal at McAlpins that day was the parade and FREE Santa Claus pictures. Not free until noon, not free for the first two hundred customers -- FREE. All day long.

I'm not sure when the McAlpins thing started, but it continued until my own children were old enough to be taken for the free pictures. By then we were into the 90s and malls were taking over the shopping world. They weren't a new idea -- Beechmont Mall had already been around for ages, or so it seemed. But it was an idea that was taking over, and the shopping centers (strip malls of the day) were hurting. McAlpins decided to move into the newly built Eastgate Mall as one of the anchor stores. Eastgate Mall was on different roads and in a different part of the county, and a long way to go for many of the Cherry Grove people.
The first Christmas there, they did have the parade and the free pictures. One of my cherished memories is that of Santa Claus saying to my girls, "I'm glad to see you. You're here every year."
But that was to be the last year. The parade was too difficult for traffic flow, and my god, they couldn't give away free pictures! The mall's Santa would lose business, god forbid!

Now, Santa comes out of hiding before the Halloween costumes are marked down and hidden away. The malls are suffering and closing and losing their anchor stores -- the cost is too high. The sales are too low.
Shopping Centers have returned in their new guise with their new name, and they seem to be thriving. Or at least surviving.

I can't help but wonder if there isn't a connection between the sales troubles and the Santa Clauses. No mall Santa that I know of ever recognized the families that come year after year. Can it be that in troubled times, people would rather shop where they are seen as people instead of so many dollars worth of sales?