By
Rachel Dworkin, Archivist
Black
Friday and Cyber Monday may be over, but we certainly haven’t seen the last of
this shopping season. It’s easy to wax
nostalgic about a bygone era when we weren’t bombarded by constant ads and
Christmas music in October but let’s be honest.
For the last 100 years, Christmas and commercialism have gone together
like chocolate and peanut butter. There
may be more media to saturate with advertisements and, yes, the carols are
starting earlier, but for as long as anyone reading this blog has been alive
the Christmas shopping season has been a force to be reckoned with.
While
Jerome’s certainly had the most whimsical ads, the S.F. Iszard Co. probably had
the best deals. I mean, hand embroidered
crepe kimonos from Japan for less than $2.98, talk about savings. Of course, advertising wasn’t the only trick
to getting people into downtown stores.
The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade in New York City began in 1924 as
clever bit of marketing. In 1957, the
Iszard’s family borrowed the idea. By
the second year alone they had over 5,000 people in attendance. The store would be closed during the parade,
but would be open for business as soon as Santa dismounted his float to hold
court in Iszard’s Toyland and officially kick off the Christmas shopping
season.
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Iszard’s Christmas
Parade, ca. 1960
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Once
they got the customers in the doors, Elmira’s downtown department stores worked
to bring the holiday cheer, or at least the holiday decoration.
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Iszard’s Department
Store, 1937
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Now,
it may seem to some like I’m favoring Iszard’s and Jerome’s over, say,
Rosenbaum’s, Gorton Coy and Elmira’s other fine former retailers and, well, I
am. After all, the Jerome and Iszard
families were kind enough to give us boxes of their stuff, so I might as well
use it.
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| Jerome’s holiday mailer, ca. 1950s |
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