Magical, Vintage Christmas

(SBA) - “The heartbeat of the city, such was 4th and Pierce Street in Sioux City during the Christmas season long ago. Strains of "Please Come Home for Christmas" and "The Chipmunk Song" emitting from storefront speakers mixed with church bells, laughter, and Officer Bata's traffic whistle.

We visited Santa's workshop in Younker's front window and shopped all the downtown stores, but went quickly door to door as the weather ball seemed to be stuck on white this season. And so, December and 1962 slipped away, here in this land of plenty.” Lloyd Knudsen is a lifelong resident of Sioux City and paints his memories.

His reminisces of downtown during the Christmas season explain the accompanying painting, his feelings about the era in which he grew up, and how he misses those times. Officer Efren Bata “the Ambassador in Blue” was a fixture in the busy downtown streets before traffic signals were installed, with his whistle and demeanor creating calm out of chaos. The Weather Ball towered high over Badgerow Building. It would change colors according to the weather forecast but seemed to never budge off its white color. “White as snow – down the temperature will go.” And that it did in 1962, as shortly after Christmas the temperature broke records with a low of -26 degrees. It was a different time in the fifties, sixties, and seventies. All your Christmas shopping was downtown, there were no enclosed malls or places you could buy off the internet and have things delivered to your front door the next day. Indeed, there wasn’t even an internet! 

Children would spend hours poring over the Sears Roebuck or Mongomery Ward catalog’s trying to pick their favorite items for Santa’s list, and there was so much to choose from. Slinkys, Lite-Brites, Chatty Cathy, G.I. Joe, Wooly Bully, Red Ryder B.B. guns and Easy Bake Ovens were among the most desirable toys on every child’s list. In many homes, those toys were wrapped and placed under freshly cut trees rich with the fragrance of pine, decorated with metal icicles and glittering tinsel. Some homes featured a new shiny silver aluminum tree lit by a color wheel with mesmerizing changing hues. Even the cat would follow the rotating wheel with its eyes, watching with rapt attention. It was a magical time of year for children and adults alike. Patricia Miller now of Greybull, Wyoming fondly remembers those Christmas’s. “I have always thought of Christmas shopping in Sioux City when I was a kid, as the epitome of the holiday season - literally the song "Silver Bells" come to life! One year especially comes to mind when the whole family went downtown shopping one December evening. I graduated from high school in 1966, so my memories are from before that year. To me it was sheer magic with the decorated streets, the lights shining on the snow that crunched and squeaked underfoot, the Salvation Army bell ringers, all the shoppers hurrying thru the snowy streets laden down with packages. I always especially enjoyed the Younkers stores, which later merged with both Davidson's and Martins. In my childhood memory, they were huge inside with trees and decorations that reached to the very top of the store and the mezzanine in one of them where you could just stand and watch the whole scene in wonder as Christmas preparations went on below before your very eyes. Not a Christmas memory, but it was in the Younker’s store that I bought nylons for the very first time. There was a special hosiery counter and after you decided on the size and color, your nylons were carefully folded in tissue paper and presented to you in a flat box. Much more dramatic than grabbing a package off the rack at Walmart but I digress! Some of the very best parts of Christmas in Sioux City were the store windows. They may not have been as wonderful as I recall, but I remember one all done up like a white winter wonderland, with animated skaters and skiers, another like a real toy land with a large train set running under a Christmas tree and toys galore displayed all around. All of the store windows were spectacularly lighted and most had moving displays. 
And Santa, of course, sitting in one of the best windows of all. Christmas has not been the same since and I have never found anything to equal that of my childhood memories of Christmas shopping in Sioux City”. RuthEllen Christensen agrees. “I loved looking in the store window and seeing a real-life Santa and his elves! Santa’s chair was positioned in the huge glass window and there was at times a line for kids to sit on his lap. The elves were in the next huge window working and making sure the toys were ready for Santa to deliver. Downtown Sioux City was kind of a magical place to me as a little girl with all the lights, the stores. There is nothing like it today”. The arrival of Santa to the downtown was always a major event. Families would come from all over to see his appearance. Most times the street in front of Younker-Davidsons would be closed and thousands of people would throng the streets. Some years Santa would simply walk out the front door of one of the retailers, other times he would arrive on a sleigh or even on top of a fire truck. Joyce Walding Gastro said “I remember as a child in the early sixties coming to see Santa in the family car over the hill by the old YMCA and suddenly seeing all of the lighted decorations strung across the intersections and hear the bell ringers shaking their bells. And there were so many people! I can close my eyes and still see that sight in my mind.” It is always said that children’s minds are so impressionable, and what they see and experience when young will shape the adults that they will become. Carol Panaggio agrees. “One of my earliest memories of downtown Sioux City was probably when I was about 3 years old, about 1952 or 1953. I remember walking down the street with my grandpa, Martin Weinheart. He was a big guy, at least he seemed very tall & big to me. He held my hand while we walked, and it was cold & snowing. When I tired, he carried me. I remember it was just getting early dusk & all the stores were lit up for Christmas. It was so beautiful & magical. I can still see it all in my mind, even feel all the emotions, sights, & smells I experienced back then. I wish it was the same for children today. That was 70 years ago, but seems like only a few years. My how the years slip by so fast!” People of the fifties, sixties and seventies decades enjoyed their mental trip back into their childhood. “The store windows at Christmas were magical to us kids! Martins & Younkers had wonderful window displays. I feel lucky to have grown up in the fifties!” said Mary Gabrielson. Vicki Voss adds “I wish my kids could have experienced Christmas in the early ’60s. It was so beautiful with all the decorations and lights and the window displays were so amazing! 

Every time I see the movie ‘The Christmas Story’ it reminds me so much of Christmas when I was a child.” In that era Sioux City still had the feel of a small-town community. You might have even known who the manager of a store was, just as the manager knew his regular customers and did things for them. Joyce Myers Harding remembers going shopping not only at Christmas, but also through the year. “At Christmas Younkers windows were so festive and fascinating.

We shopped in their ‘bargain basement’ but Mom would take us through the upper floors so we could dream of more expensive things. We also shopped at Jack Robinson’s for my brothers’ school jeans. Mr. Robinson was so clever at remembering his customers by name year after year. After my parents made their purchase, he would send us to the Milwaukee hot dog shop for lunch and pay for our meal. My husband said he did the same thing for their family. Truly it was a different time.” Audrey Ercolini echoed those sentiments. “Marv Gulsrud was J. C. Penney’s manager back then. He said that if he wanted to feel bad, all he had to do was stand at the top of the stairs leading to the 2nd floor & watch people trudge up those stairs. Sioux City had no escalators. Marv also said he would retire if Penney’s ever stayed open on Sundays. I don’t know if he was still there when they started doing so or not. Yes, downtown had many stores & restaurants as well as banks & professional offices then and it was wonderful. The mall killed Christmas as well as downtown here just as it did in many other cities.” “I remember when the mall was built,” said Jackie Remer. “They were talking about it on television news and insisted the mall will not take anything away from downtown. Well, I never got the same feeling walking thru the mall at Christmas as I did as I walked downtown at Christmas with the snow gently falling, so many beautiful lights and decorations, the Christmas music playing outside…the window displays and standing with so many other people at the corner waiting for the street cop directing traffic to indicate that it was our turn to cross. That magic never transferred to the mall for me”. It wasn’t always about the shopping experience but also about traditions. Choosing one present to open on Christmas Eve, going to Christmas Eve services at church with the entire family, or hanging up the stockings in anticipation of what might be in them come morning, and then sneaking down the stairs early to check them. Knowing that the entire family would soon be together and enjoying being with them. Baking Christmas cookies. The traditional Christmas dinner. Opening presents early Christmas morning while still in pajamas. Linda Amman remembers “Our family would go to Younkers after Christmas and choosing a Christmas ornament. We'd take them home, put our name and year on the bottom, and hang it on the tree until we took the tree down. When each of us left home to start our family, we took our Christmas ornaments from all those years. It's a tradition all of us kept doing for our kids and grandchildren.” Anna Campbell had her own Christmas tradition. 

“Many years ago, the late 1950’s, I worked at the Harriet Ballou New Hope Center in Sioux City. At that time, it was a day care for children with disabilities, but also accepted those with intellectual disabilities on a full-time basis. Several of us made it a tradition to take these children downtown to see the sights and sounds of the holiday.

Just watching their faces as they took it all in, and to see the wonder and excitement in their eyes was a life altering experience for me, and one I will never forget.” Not all the shoppers lived in Sioux City, but came from all over the area. Gary W. Olsen recalls “We lived in a smaller town in southern Minnesota during my first 10 years of life. Every Christmas we would come to Sioux City where both sets of grandparents lived. Going downtown to shop with my parents at Martin's, Davidson's, Sportsman's and of course going to my favorite store Toyland to see the model train layout was a treat. All the people, activity and Christmas lights of downtown still frame warm memories of my traditional Christmas. It just isn’t the same.” Christmas will always be a special time for everyone, with each year creating new memories that will always be fondly remembered each in their own way. *These are special times The Magic of Christmas All the lights and decorations Put up in the anticipation Of the joyful celebration That’s on its way. * Excerpt from “The Magic of Christmas” by Celine Dion. Authors Note: A number of people were interviewed for this article, and so many of them used the term “magical” to describe their memories of Christmas in Sioux City those many years ago, that the word simply had to be part of the title.

ED NOTE: Brad Kellogg has spent most of his life in Wakefield, Nebraska, before retiring to Wisconsin. A passionate historian, he is an active member of several historical societies and a speaker and living history performer for Humanities Nebraska. Brad wrote human-interest stories for Living Here Magazine for four years and authored the book The Aisles of the Forgotten Graveyard. His work has also appeared in the Ponca Journal Leader, the Wakefield Republican, and Check the Oil, a magazine for automotive enthusiasts. Currently, he is under contract with Reedy Press to write Amazing Wisconsin, which is in progress.