A casual friend yesterday afternoon regaled us with humorous stories about how he and his wife plotted to go out shopping for their Christmas gift-giving at times when they hardly anticipated there would be the usual crowds flocking to the various shopping arenas. Those shopping arenas have become zones of consumer hysteria, with hordes of people desperately searching out bargains with which to finally complete what they obviously view as their obligations to friends and family members at this time of gift-giving.

They arise, our friend confided, early in the morning, so they reach those big box stores at half-past seven in the morning. And at that time of the morning there's hardly anyone but the sales staff around, so they can move about in comfort, make their leisurely selections long before the crowds show up. But they have been surprised, he said, to see on occasion very young children accompanying their parents on these early-morning shopping expeditions. Don't they know, he said puckishly, that children aren't allowed in at that time of day?
It's a special time for children, and in fact it should be viewed mostly as an enchanting, magical time for children. As it was for us when we were young, even though Christmas was not a holiday festival that Jews celebrated. Even as a child coming from a secular background I felt alienated from the holiday itself with its emphasis on a kind Jewish sage whose dreadful and untimely death we Jews were constantly reminded we were responsible for. I was hounded as a child by cries of "Christ killer" from some of my unforgiving peers in the school grounds.

But we also remember with immense fondness and appreciation the heady excitement we felt coursing through us, just as it must have for children whose parents clung to their faith, that this was indeed a magical time. We longed to be taken to those great old department stores that existed in Toronto away back in the 1940s, Eaton's and Simpson's, at Yonge and Queen streets, with their colourful, light-filled mechanized Christmas window displays of fashionable ladies, Santa's workshop complete with busy elves, and any number of enchanted scenes to transport a child with joy.

Inside the stores, we'd be taken up to the floor dedicated to Santa's Christmas, with beautiful winged fairies, clever little dwarfs, unicorns, miniature railways, and songs being played over and over, like "Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer", which set the child's mood, enraptured by the mechanical movement, the blazing light and colour, tiny lights strung everywhere, absolutely mesmerizing children. And Santa, he was there, in huge living colour, awaiting brave children who would sit on his lap and divulge what they would really, really, like for Christmas.

Neither my husband nor I ever sat in Santa's lap. But our children did. I'm not certain they loved it, but they did experience it. Now, it seems to us from a social remove and many years long gone and past, that Christmas is no longer a public spectacle for children, to enchant and teasingly bewilder them. The old Eaton's and Simpson's stores are gone. There is now the Eaton Centre in downtown Toronto, and displays there can be dazzling, like a crystal-laden tree, but the magic playground of automated fairies and elves and Santa is history.