LEFT: Christmas at Wanamaker’s in 1927... RIGHT: ... and in the present day

For generations of Philadelphians, the holiday season is not complete without a visit to Macy’s Christmas Light Show. Held in the Grand Court since 1955, it attracts kids of all ages, who sit patiently still, necks craned, to watch the illuminated characters dance above the giant tree.

  President Taft greets crowds at the dedication of the new Wanamaker’s building on Wanamaker’s in 1910 December 30, 1911.

The store’s singular brand of spirited holiday revelry has been a tradition here since 1877, the year that Wanamaker’s, Philadelphia’s first department store, opened. Much has changed over the years (most notably, the store name), but music aficionado and retail showman John Wanamaker would be pleased that the original pipe organ is still being played a century after he installed it in his Market Street department store. No doubt he would approve of Macy’s continuation of the Christmas Light Show, too: He was, after all, “one of the inventors of Christmas as we know it,” according to Thomas Hine, author of books on shopping and popular culture such as Populuxe and I Want That! How We All Became Shoppers. “He was among those who made the holiday far more important to Americans than it had been before,” he says, by making his store “a center of the celebration” and publishing pamphlets of Christmas carols that are still sung today.

Macy’s spokesperson Deanna Williams, a Mount Airy native, remembers childhood bus trips to Wanamaker’s every Christmas, which included the light show, a visit with Santa, lunch, and shopping. Although she now lives in New York City, she still launches her holiday festivities at the store. Macy’s continuation of Wanamaker’s holiday traditions makes perfect sense to her. “They resonate so deeply with the people of Philadelphia, whatever the expense, it is worth it,” she says.

It is likely that Wanamaker would have shared that sentiment, despite his humble beginnings. The son of a brickmaker, Wanamaker had a cherubically round, boyish face. Wearing a hat and dressing habitually in a black suit with a black bow tie, he could easily have been taken for a Protestant minister. One might wonder why, in fact, such an actively religious man, one who founded a Presbyterian Sunday school, did not pursue an ecclesiastical calling. Was it a fierce ambition to make money, or was it, as he often argued, his conviction that storekeeping was also a way of serving humanity?

Regardless, this iconic Philadelphia businessman successfully accomplished both and, in the process, established Wanamaker’s as one of the world’s greatest department stores, in the same league as Chicago’s Marshall Field’s, London’s Harrods, and Paris’s Printemps.

In many ways, it was Wanamaker’s spiritual fervor that paved the way for his innovative retail theatrics. Wanamaker’s shops were filled with semi-sacred symbolism; it didn’t take much to mentally transform his Market Street department store into a cathedral. In the 150-foot-high Grand Court, the world’s largest playable pipe organ performed a leading role in blending the Wanamaker brand of religion and commerce. In the early and mid-20th century, the ambience was often enhanced by Gothic-style Christmas decorations.