[Image: City Sidewalk, 2013, JA Van Devender]
Location: Baltimore, MD.
Acts 21:4–5 (NKJV)
4 And finding disciples, we stayed there seven days. They told Paul through the Spirit not to go up to Jerusalem. 5 When we had come to the end of those days, we departed and went on our way; and they all accompanied us, with wives and children, till we were out of the city. And we knelt down on the shore and prayed.
Perhaps my favorite secular Christmas song is "Silver Bells". I can remember humming it as I walked along the streets of Hattiesburg, Ms., my newspapers in the bag hanging from my shoulder, during the Christmas seasons of the late 50's & early 60's. Hattiesburg during Christmas was one of the most congenial blends of relatively small town flavor and commercial appeal of any town in the country. It was large enough to "do it right" and small enough that all the faces were generally familiar.
There were no accursed malls in those days. The stores were "down-town." Fine Bros. was the up-scale somewhat "snooty" department store where the floor managers took a dim view of paper-boys asking the customers if they would like to purchase a paper (5 cents each... of which 1.5 cents was pure profit). In center town where Main Street intersected Pine, at that time the Diamond Shop occupied the very best position in the whole place. Its brightly lit windows were filled with sparkly stuff that was a million miles beyond my expectation of ever owning. A diamond ring in those days might cost several hundred dollars... imagine that! More accessible to my meager resources were the Ben Franklin and Woolworth five-and-dime store and, of course, my favorite, S. H. Kress. At the height of my newspaper career I was bringing in as much as $20 a week. In those stores I could find all I needed to put something "nice" under the tree for my mother or siblings.
But most of all... what I enjoyed walking those streets in the chilly December days, were the decorations. Streaming lights, garlanded with simulated ivy, stretched "all the way" across the intersecting streets, at intervals of about 30 yards. A large wreath with a silver, illuminated star hung right in the center of each. At night it was magic.
"City sidewalks... busy sidewalks... dressed in holiday style... in the air there's a feeling of Christmas."
There was community there. There was a significant Jewish community in Hattiesburg (it was "Fine Bros. after all) but I never heard a single complaint about the Christmas decorations. Of course their businesses boomed during that time and to complain would have been very detrimental to their profit. There were professing and practicing atheists in abundance, I am certain, but they didn't seem to mind the lights... or the nativity scene that stood on the court-house lawn. Salvation Army bells and suspended cast-iron tubs were on every block and did a healthy business from believers and non-believers alike. It wasn't exactly Norman Rockwell... but you know... it was pretty doggone close.
Now we have Malls.... confined spaces with crushing crowds... ugh. Now we have intimidating forces pressuring the social fabric to completely secularize the seasons... celebrate commerce... talk about having "holiday spirit"... tell everyone that it is the "season of love." What a pity. There's no magic. Santa Claus just doesn't hack it for today's jaded, over-stimulated kids. When's the last time you saw a 12 year old boy walking down a street, just looking at the sights, and simply being happy? Something precious has not quite been totally lost... but it not as easy to find as it once was.
I think, at root, that it has to do with imagination. A kid doesn't really have to have much to be happy. When he (or she) has been encouraged (through various social structures) to have a life of the mind, filled with all kinds of stories that are never seriously thought of as ever "coming true"... when they can look at a store window filled with things that are miles beyond their reach but can dream of what it would be like to be able to own such treasures... and then to look around them and see that the world not only allows for such dreams but provides opportunity for them to be pursued... then hope is present. In such a boy's mind, the material things are not, even at that young age, understood as an end in themselves... there is always a story that goes with them. "One of these days I will grow up and be a Navy Pilot and do some really neat things and find a beautiful girl to marry ... and, one of these, days, I will be able to buy one of those rings... "
I bought an engagement ring at the Diamond shop about 10 years later, back in another time, in another world, where dreams still came true.
City sidewalks ought to be filled with hopes and dreams. I doubt the days of the down-town department store will ever return. I sincerely wish that malls were plowed under and replaced with criss-crossing streets with local parking and sidewalks connecting smaller, more intimate stores. I would love it if the Christmas Spirit was again leavened by an underlying Christian consensus that never forgot that the holiday is first and foremost religious... and finds its warmth from that knowledge. I pray that one day people will know again what it is like for a ten year old kid to walk a city sidewalk... without fear... day or night... and simply lose himself in his dreams as the lights, the passing people and the shiny decorations point him toward the future with hope.
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