Downtown Memories
Nancy Edmonds Hanson
When you’re young, the best holiday season always seems to be the one that lies just ahead. Anticipation always adds sparkle to the dream of what may come next.
But as the decades pass, that breathless prospect fades. The glimmer passes onto memories of days gone by – the good old (holi)days.
In the stories we tell, downtown Fargo-Moorhead sparkled even brighter than the forest of light-bedecked trees that line sidewalks today. A visit to
Broadway lay near the center of the holiday season for families near and far.
For the children who are elders today, downtown was the ultimate Christmas shopping destination. Even before we were old enough to memorize Sears Christmas catalogs and lust for the toys advertised on Saturday morning TV, store windows there were filled with barely imaginable bounty. We tugged at our parents’ hands as we paraded down the street: “Look, Mom! Look, Dad! Do you think Santa will bring that?”
At the very center of the garland-bedecked zone was Herbst Department Store. Dubbing itself “The Christmas Store,” the three-story mercantile depicted the spirit of gift-giving from top to bottom. From the 1930s until its closure in 1982, Herbst seemed like Mecca to kids growing up in the region – the ample wares inside, perhaps, but most particularly its windows.
Animated bears and their fellow creatures performed in those windows. Beginning just as Thanksgiving dinner was put away, dozens of costumed ursine actors enacted holiday scenes on the other side of the glass. Today’s grandparents recall standing, mouths agape, studying the newly revealed tableaus.
Disneyland was no more than a distant promise for almost all of us, but no matter: We had the Herbst bears.
“My absolute favorite stores were Herbst with their Christmas window displays,” one woman mused. “Having lunch in that basement cafeteria … riding the escalator at FW Woolworth. Oh, the Toy Chest and Fanny Farmer and ….”
Friends remember strolling down the bright thoroughfare on early December evenings. One recalled the magic of that time: “The Christmas season really began when we drove here from Detroit Lakes.” (Or Hillsboro. Or Valley City. Or Casselton, Kindred, Glyndon … Fargo was the center of the Christmas universe.) Holiday music played faintly as her family strolled along the sidewalk. In memory, at least, soft snowflakes always frosted the festive shopping district. “It was,” she said wistfully, “simply magical.”
Another recalls holiday shopping a little differently: “I remember having to walk around downtown Fargo from DeLendrecie’s at one end to Sears at the other end when it was, like, 10 below. My mother was swearing the entire time.”
Perhaps the Christmas magic burns just a little brighter in memory. Or maybe not. One who was involved with downtown’s seasonal décor explained the reason wattage seemed brighter in days gone by. “Back then, the colored holiday lights were incandescent. Now they’ve been replaced by LEDs. No matter what you do, they just don’t sparkle as brightly.”
He may be right. But mundane reality can never quite explain the magic of our holiday memories. No matter what the “new, improved” version of holiday sparkle might deliver, nothing at all can rival the brilliant wattage of childhood memories.