CLEVELAND, Ohio - No matter how bright the spirit of Cleveland's future looks, the ghosts of Cleveland's Christmas past live on -- in our memories, photo albums and traditions.
For good reason.
No season inspires more nostalgia than Christmas. We look back and embrace our lost youth, our parents and siblings, the special foods, the fresh-cut tree, the holiday dinners, the toys we wanted - and the toys we received.
As a city, we look back, too, on shopping downtown and Mr. Jingeling and the Twigbee Shop and the Christmas Parade, on Bruce the Spruce and Hough Bakeries. Sometimes we even mourn something we're too young to have known - the luxurious stores and bustling crowds on the Public Square our grandparents told us about, for example. These are bittersweet memories of time gone by, when we, and Cleveland were different.
"I've written several books, but the one about 'Cleveland Christmas Memories' really struck a chord,'" says author Gail Ghetia Bellamy.
"I got such a huge response from Clevelanders. There were three areas of nostalgia that they most focused on, too: the first was Christmas itself, what they did in their homes and families. The second was downtown, the way it used to be when there were department stores down there. And the third area was food. Holiday memories are really linked to food, from what your grandmother made to Hough Bakery."
Shopping downtown tops any list of holiday memories when you talk to Clevelanders, past and present. Not far behind are Mr. Jingeling and the Twigbee Shop. But no name invokes more nostalgia than Higbee's. The Public Square department store doesn't make visions of sugarplums dance, though. Rather, it stirs visions of shopping for Mom and Dad at the Twigbee Shop and breakfast with Santa at the Silver Grille, and, of course, those magnificent windows.
For the second year in a row, the Horseshoe Casino in the former Higbee's building will pay tribute to the store with a retro holiday display, through Jan. 1.
For those who want to see the real deal, the Western Reserve Historical Society will be displaying Higbee's mechanical window characters from the 1950s and '60s in a winter wonderland walk-through.
"We'll have the mechanical characters that folks who would have been downtown shopping and window-gazing would have seen," says Lori Smith, education and public programs manager.
She says the exhibit has all-ages appeal, despite its nostalgic nature.
"With the folks who remember Higbee's, you get oohs and aaahs as soon as they hear the word 'Higbee's,' and that the figures are still operational.
"But what's really exciting is that many people who never saw these before but hear about them from older members of their family will be able to make this a part of a new Cleveland holiday tradition."
Making memories with new generations -- at Winterfest or Circlefest or GLOW at the Cleveland Botanical Garden -- while celebrating the ghosts of the past is the best kind of nostalgia, indeed.
Click through our photo gallery for a trip down candy-cane memory lane - and share your favorite Cleveland Christmas memories in the comments.