Christmas has changed in many ways, but not the most important one

Christmas is so very different now than it once was.

I suppose that's probably true for everyone who lives a life of normal span. As a grandfather, I suppose I'm living through my third incarnation of Christmas, from child to parent to grandparent. Things have changed quite a bit over the last 60 years, particularly in the way we shop for gifts.

Those of us who were children in the 1950s will always remember trips to downtown shopping areas to see the window displays in department stores. One big difference between then and now was that the decorations didn't go up before Thanksgiving. The Christmas shopping season was basically four weeks, depending on what day Thanksgiving fell.

A Rikes window.

Those who know me or are regular readers know that I grew up outside Dayton, Ohio (at least till age 13), so we had access to two wonderful department stores. Rike's in Dayton had lovely displays, but the one that was really difficult to top was Lazarus in Columbus.

Decembers were colder back then, and walking down the street from window to window left us with cold ears and noses at the very least.

When we would go inside, the nicest surprise for children was that the size of the toy department would be about triple what it ordinarily was.

And of course there was Santa.

South Coast Plaza

By the '70s and '80s, the downtowns were dying in cities all across America. Shopping malls in the suburbs had become the center of commerce, and shopping became much more of a one-stop deal. Whether it's massive edifices like the Mall of America in Minnesota or upscale destinations like South Coast Plaza in Orange County, Calif., the mall was the place to be.

Then even that started changing. Many of the larger malls included large bookstores (Barnes & Noble or Borders) and/or major record stores (Virgin Records). But a fellow named Jeff Bezos came along. His Amazon.com came along in 1995, starting as just an online bookstore and eventually selling almost anything anyone would want to buy.

Meanwhile, bookstores, record stores and video stores are vanishing. Christmas shopping has become much more sedentary. A large part of the shopping I did this year involved little more than visiting websites, pointing and clicking. I purchase things online now that I couldn't have imagined just a few years ago, things like clothes and shoes.

Of course, Christmas is about a lot more than shopping. The earliest memories I have are of Crestline, Ohio, the small town where my mother was born. I think I was 4 or 5 years old. We went to Christmas Eve services at my grandmother's church and then went back to the one house I could never forget. I remember my stocking hanging on the staircase, and the first Christmas gift I remember was a Lionel train set under the tree when I was 4.

Somewhere in my mother's house are the 8mm films my dad used to shoot on Christmas morning. I'd love to get some of those transferred to DVDs, although the film folks shot in the '50s and '60s didn't have any sound with them. I don't remember a whole lot of specifics about gifts, but I do remember they were very happy times.

Pentagon City Mall

My parents were children of the Depression, and I think they were proud they had done well enough to give their five children nice Christmases.

I don't have a whole lot of Christmas memories of the '70s and '80s. The only one I remember from my first marriage was 1977, when we were living in Vienna and spent Christmas week in London.

I remember 1984, when I covered a hockey game in Buffalo on Dec. 23rd and then flew to Columbus on Christmas Eve for my grandfather's last Christmas, the last one I spent in Crestline.

And 1989, when I covered a college basketball game in San Diego on the 23rd and then flew from Los Angeles to Virginia the next day. It was my grandmother's 95th and final Christmas and my chance to say goodbye to her.

I have wonderful memories from the '90s, when I became a parent at age 42. Ever since then, I have seen Christmas through the eyes of my two wonderful children and in the last few years, through my two adorable grandchildren.

It has been many years since I have cared about what I got for Christmas. But rarely has a year gone by that I haven't thought about a gift I've gotten for someone.

I may not have known it when I was young, but Christmas really is much more about what we give than what we receive. Maybe that's why it's our best holiday, and that's the one thing about it that never changes.