“I do not want to be the big looking glass of civilization but just the little pocket mirror of everyday life.” Peter Alterberg You wouldn’t think that peeling a clementine over the kitchen ...

The small town of Lauscha, deep in a fir tree forest in Germany’s Thuringian mountains, is the birthplace of glass Christmas tree ornaments. Entire families have been making them there since the ...

However, the Christmas season of 1980 marked the end of one staple of downtown shopping. The pioneer of the five-and-dime — F.W. Woolworth Co., or simply Woolworth’s — was closing for good.

The same is true for Bethlehem’s Betty Geppert. Christmas in the 1930s and ’40s was a time to take a dollar to the five-and-dimes to get all the presents she needed.

On Christmas Eve, 1974, the doors closed for good at the S.S. Kresge store at 133 W. Michigan Ave. It was a place where in its earliest days people could buy all of their Christmas gifts for just ...

Frank Woolworth opened his first five-and-dime store in Utica, New York, in 1879. ... candy by the pound — even a special room dedicated to Christmas goods open year-round.