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Chicago's festivities featured electronics. Wieboldt's department store in the Loop set up an IBM computer to help harried shoppers make the right choice, processed more than 1,000 gift lists daily. The Greater North Michigan Avenue Association poured $20,000 into a glittering display surrounding the city's water tower; dubbed "Symphonic Starlight," 5,000 miniature Italian lights strung through the limbs of four barren trees flickered to the decibel output of Christmas music blared through a loudspeaker system. The "world's largest Christmas tree'' (actually 140 trees bound together, soaring 80 ft. into the air) blazed with almost 10,000 lights near the Loop, and Chicago motorists were stopped dead in their tracks by the new parking attendant in one of the Loop's lots: a big flannel Santa who jockeyed sedans and sports cars into place with fat finesse and much ho-hoing.
Perfumed Blasts. In Manhattan, Rockefeller Center's giant tree was hung with plate-sized gold medallions that shivered in the wind, like loose scales on an armadillo. Perfume spewed out from Fifth Avenue shop entrances; and city barbershops reported a heightened demand by men for "come-alive'' hair treatments. The district attorney's office, in a stunning show of holiday spirit, urged staff members to make all necessary arrests immediately, not to haul off anyone during Christmas week.
Around 3 billion letters and packages are expected to pass through the nation's post offices this week, most of which will be Christmas cards. Illinois' Governor Otto Kerner is avoiding the mailbox issue by sending his life-sized, 5½-ft. Santa Claus cards (each with a kit of tourist literature attached) via Greyhound bus to other Governors. Isidore Cohen, who owns the U.S.'s largest chain of greeting card stores, says happily: "We've got greetings now from one cat to another, from dog to dog, and greetings for the garbage man and the babysitter. The sky's the limit."
There are fewer Christmas records around than cards. As it has been ever since the dawn of Muzak, Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer remains one of the season's biggest noisemakers—along with White Christmas, which is now being sung by choirs with straight faces. But this year some of the worst singers in Christendom have made Christmas records, and compared with them, the old atrocities sound almost High Church. Santa Clans Is Coming to Town, by the Four Seasons, who are awful in any season, is currently the nation's bestselling Christmas record. Right behind it is Monster's Holiday, by Bobby Pickett and the Crypt Kickers, a screeching parody of The Night Before Christmas, in which Santa Claus pulls razors from his sack. For those who consider this too macabre, there is Merry Twist-mas, by the Marcels.
As always, a few gems turned up amid the commercial avalanche. Noel, sung by the Choir of Men and Boys of Manhattan's St. Thomas' Church (Mirrosonic), is a magnificent demonstration that carols are best when sung without pretense or tricky arrangement. Another is the New York Pro Musica's album of Medieval English Carols and Italian Dances (Decca); it is in such songs as the 400-year-old 'Nowel Singe We, Bothe Al and Som that the spirit of Christmas is best perceived and preserved.