We Love Santa

We got Daddy to take a much needed dissertation break and headed to Chicago’s Marshall Fields. Unfortunately, this is Marshall Fields last year on State Street, as Marshall Fields. It was sold to Macys and will be wearing the Macy logo next year.

Everyone who lives in Chicago and the nearby suburbs makes the big trip to the State Street store for an all day Christmas adventure. First, we are always struck by the size of Marshall Fields, it’s the 2nd largest dept. store, right behind Macys in New York City. As you move through the crowds of people you come to their window displays, beginning from one end of the block and wrapping around to the other. This year’s display was Cinderella, amazing as usual.

Once you are officially frozen and can’t handle the river of people, you head inside. Once inside removing the coats, gloves, hats, etc…. is a real pain, not to mention where to put it all. From there we head straight to Santa. Fortunately, we were there on a Tue and walked straight through Santa land and directly to Santa’s chair. This was our second year to visit the Marshall Fields Santa and had already felt as if we had some sort of tradition going, but this would be the last year with the Marshall Fields Santa and maybe our last year in Chicago. The kids did great. Pierson was not sure about a bearded man other than his dad, but did ok. He waited to have his breakdown after we got that first and only picture. Will seemed to be in awe of the bearded man. He just looked at him with amazement. He could hardly believe Santa had come all the way from the North Pole to see him. We could hardly believe what he had asked Santa to bring him. I think because he was so nervous he just started to ramble, saying something about a wagon (never talked about this before) and a variety of other unknown toys. Fortunately, the bearded man helped remedy this and asked Will to repeat the list to us so that mom and dad could remind Santa. Like those cheesy commercials, this was priceless. There is something truly magical about the city, even if it is freezing.

By the way, we had to put all those “wonderful” winter clothes back on and needless to say the people in the makeup department (next to the door) were not so pleased we were putting the clothes back on. Actually, I think everyone in Marshall Fields would have preferred we not put the coats, hats, glove, etc…. back on.