Letters to the Editor | Jan. 1, 2026

The Wanamaker Light Show and Dickens Village are over for 2025 — and with renovation needing to be done on 13th and Market, it is uncertain when they will return. The void that it leaves in Philadelphia’s holiday season will not just be one less Christmas attraction — it just won’t feel like Christmas.

As a kid, it just wasn’t Christmas without a trip to Wanamaker’s to see that light show and Dickens Village, and, of course, the sweet sound of that organ. The smell of that incredible grand marble lobby is forever captured in my mind. And getting lost? That was a metaphysical impossibility — all I had to do was to make my way back to that giant Eagle provided by John Wanamaker himself, and one that seemed a mere 1,000 feet tall to my 8-year-old brain.

One hundred and fourteen years ago this week, President William Howard Taft dedicated Wanamaker’s grand flagship store. Wanamaker’s was a true first in American shopping. The first with tags for prices, the first offering a money-back guarantee, the first to be equipped with a pneumatic tube system in the building in order to transport money.

Wanamaker’s didn’t just make an indelible mark on Philadelphia’s holiday celebrations. It redefined American shopping. When Wanamaker couldn’t serve in the American Civil War, he opened a store instead. His original venture (Oak Hall) sat on the location of the old President’s House in Center City. When it was time for a new location, Wanamaker selected the old Pennsylvania Railroad Depot at 13th and Market.

So with such a significant part of our city’s history taking a hiatus for the near term, what will we Philadelphians do? Wait for it to return, of course.

Michael Thomas Leibrandt, Abington Township

Tatiana Schlossberg, the accomplished wife, mother, and middle child of Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, died at 35 years of age. It was the latest in a series of devastating heartbreaks for her mighty mother.

I am sure there are countless women of a certain age all over this country whose own hearts are aching for Caroline — the way we did as little girls when her daddy died. I recall the moms on our block on Long Island bursting out of their front doors, wailing in collective anguish at the news coming out of Dallas.

The other level of sadness is that thinking of young Caroline brings us back to a point in time in national politics and society when compassion crossed back and forth between party lines in the interest of the common good.

What is going on now in Washington also makes a person want to tear up — mostly because there is no known unifier to count on to lead us back to a functioning nation due to all the regrettable and preventable upheaval of the past year.

Mary Kay Owen, Downingtown

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