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INTRODUCTION

The famous Sears catalogs evoke memories of an important bygone era in U.S. history. In the fall of 1942, America was mainly rural. The crops were in, and winter winds were beginning to blow. Farmers were doing maintenance and preparing for a long winter. But, most of all, a broad anxiety pervaded the land.

The country was still recovering from the Great Depression, and now, hundreds of thousands of its sons and husbands were off to fight in World War II. Ears were glued to the news on the radio [tubes!]; television viewing was not yet widespread. For detailed reporting, a few local newspapers or gossip in the town was the only source. The Saturday Evening Post provided stories about life in other parts of the country.

One bit of hope was some recent progress in bringing electricity as well as newly invented appliances to millions of homes. On farms, the outhouse had been abandoned for running water and indoor plumbing. Many homes could open their Sears Big Book catalogs and purchase the new washing machines with electric-powered rollers to wring out clothes before they were hung on the clothesline. The Sears catalog had everything for the kitchen, from coal cook stoves to kitchen tables, kitchen sinks to all kinds of refrigerators, flooding to better windows, and towels to silverware. Women and men could buy all kinds of clothing from the catalog using post office delivery. In small towns, that was an important modern advance from the local cash and dry goods store, which sold only necessities, fabric, and a few ready-made clothes such as jeans.

The annual Sears Big Book, at about 1,300 pages, had almost everything. Comparing it to today's retail environment, it was a combination of Walmart, the Home Depot, auto parts stores, appliance stores, farm supply stores, and men's and women's clothing stores. Sears' genius was to create a nationwide network of warehouses supplying dozens of larger stores in cities. In turn, those stores fed an associated network of hundreds of small catalog outlet stores in small towns. An example of the network in northern Texas in 1940 would be Dallas and Sherman, a smaller town. Dallas [pop. 293,000] had a full Sears store. Going north 65 miles to Sherman [pop 17,000], there was a catalog outlet — no Sears stores or outlets in the many small towns with farms in between. My family lived in Van Alstyne, Texas [pop. 1,600]. Sherman did have a Montgomery Ward store with a nice assortment of clothes. For some towns these two locations were accessible on the interurban railroad. In addition, a few families had cars from the 1930s. But you could get everyday clothes in the mail from Sears; large items and appliances came on delivery vans. One wonders if retailers of today such as Amazon knew of the old Sears distribution network and mimicked its efficacy.

Surprisingly, the Sears Big Book had no toys. These were only offered in the Sears Wish Book, the smaller [214 pages] but more delightful Christmas catalogs. The first one hit American mailboxes in 1933, and it was called The Sears Christmas Book until it was renamed the Sears Wish Book in 1968. No more hardware — just gifts and toys. For children, this was the catalog: about forty pages of toys for boys and girls; there were more pages of board games and books. For women there were pages of greeting cards, wrapping paper, Christmas decorations, gifts, and some typical clothes and jewelry. For men, there was clothing and some of the watches originally made famous by Sears.

Unique to this Wish Book were gifts to mail to a serviceman wherever he was posted around the world — something from home as a gift of love to cheer him up and a token of support during his deprivations and hardships as a soldier.

In 1942, and for every year it was produced, the arrival of the Sears Christmas Book/Wish Book signaled the unofficial beginning of the holiday season. Millions of kids (and their parents!) excitedly thumbed through its pages as they prepared their own wish lists.

Now Sears has all but disappeared. The company stopped shipping catalogs more than a decade ago, and, as of 2019, bankruptcy looms for the chain. What happened? A lot. Just think how much life has changed in the last fifty-plus years: Most families had a car to go shopping. The 1950s Interstate Highway System led to vast regional shopping malls serving thousands of new suburbs offering dozens of chain stores specializing in choice and value. The invention of the television allowed advertising to promote these chain stores.

With shippers such as UPS and FedEx, millions of items purchased on the recently invented internet, with just a click of a finder, could be promptly and economically delivered to one's doorstep — often in the same day! All of these changes made Sears obsolete, now only a fading memory of their importance and popularity in the first half of the twentieth century.

Enjoy this bit of nostalgia. I know I did.

Ben B. Judd, Jr. New Haven, Connecticut, 2019

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Excerpted from "The 1942 Sears Christmas Book"
by .
Copyright © 2019 Ben B. Judd, Jr..
Excerpted by permission of Dover Publications, Inc..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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