Sears and Penney Christmas catalogs...echoes of the past.

One of the many endearing rituals of the Christmas season from long ago was the Christmas catalog.  My family had 2 different ones, Sears and JC Penney. We would go to the store to pick it up when they were printed.  We then spent months going over it with a finetooth comb.  Looking at all the pictures, reading the descriptions, revelling in the color pages, and making our christmas lists..   Although our focus was on toys, we also perused sporting goods, candy, decorations, etc. 

An advantage of being my age is to have been firsthand witness to how drastically this place has changed over the course of my lifetime.  The current world is unrecognizable to my younger self.