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The Final Christmas for Sears?
How sad to consider that this may be the last Christmas ever for the store most associated with Christmas, Sears, nee’ Sears and Roebuck.
The ultimate symbol of American mercantilism, Sears began in the 19th century as a catalogue outlet, and by 1969 was the world’s largest retailer. In the 1970s, in a burst of optimism, the company built the Sears Tower in Chicago, until recently the tallest building in the Americas.
Sears marketed especially brilliantly in rural America, and the Sears catalogue was the source of much of Christmas giving. If you lived in the woods or on the prairie you might not be able to visit a Sears store, but through the catalogues and the United State Post Office Sears visited you.
Brands created by Sears include Kenmore, Diehard, Craftsman, J.C. Higgins, Allstate Insurance, and, for a decade or so, the Vincent Price Gallery of Fine Art. In the 1920s Sears built its own radio station, WLS (World’s Largest Store), which still broadcasts from Chicago although no longer owned by Sears.
J. C. Higgins was Sears’ sporting goods brand, and their firearms, contracted out to various makers, were the poor relatives of Winchester, Remington, and the other high-toned boys. With their plain finish and cheaper wooden stocks J. C. Higgins firearms were not the darlings of the Abercrombie & Fitch set; all that Sears’ plain-Jane firearms could do was put dinner on the table, reliably and without a show, generation after generation.
For reasons best known to the alligator-shoe boys with their master’s degrees in marketing, Sears discontinued the J. C. Higgins line in 1962. Those modest firearms now command premium prices by collectors and are worth more than the company that orphaned them.
In another unexpected act of self-destruction Sears recently sold off perhaps its most famous brand, Craftsman. Craftsman tools were, like J.C. Higgins, outsourced to various American manufacturers, were consistently high-quality, and were guaranteed for life. Now that the name has been sold and re-sold, and one cannot be sure where Craftsman tools are now made, we’d better hit the garage sales for the old ones.
For one small boy in the long ago, the most glorious aspect of Sears was the annual Christmas electric train display, and with his nose pressed against the class he watched the little trains, with all their lights and noises and signals and accessories, travel from one cotton-ball-snowy town to another on pressed-steel rails until, finally, his parents dragged him away.
An adult of course understands that Christmas is not about electric trains at Sears, but the little boy who lives on in the man is not entirely persuaded of that.
Goodbye, Sears and Roebuck, and thank you for those happy childhood memories.
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