The Christmas of 2007

2007 Tuesday, Christmas Day, 2007, dawned bright and blue with nary a cloud in the sky. The forecast called for warming temperatures, approaching 40 degrees. This was a welcome recovery from the weather of the just-passed weekend, which was miserable for travel or play. Saturday, December 22nd, was the busiest day of the holiday period at O'Hare International Airport. But a lot of people weren't going anywhere. The reason was the fog that delayed or caused the cancellation of flights.
That night, the weather got worse. Wind and rain pounded the Chicago area, downing tree limbs and power lines. Some gusts approached 70 mph. As Sunday dawned, the rain had stopped, but the winds stayed strong throughout the day.
Christmas shoppers were confronted by temperatures in the teens and windchills around zero degrees. Strong winds blew snow flurries horizontally. The winds made playing conditions excrutiatingly interesting at Soldier Field, where the Bears were hosting the Packers. Snaps were mishandled, punts were blocked, and the Bears manhandled Green Bay, 35-7, sweeping the season series and gaining some measure of satisfaction in what otherwise had been a disappointing season. Midway through the game, half the seats at Soldier Field appeared to be empty. Those were the seats in which fans would be sitting directly facing the wind. 2007's was a tough Christmas for some prominent Illinois politicians.

On the Friday before Christmas, federal prosecutors made public corruption allegations against Governor Rod Blagojevich. The governor wasn't charged with any crime--yet--but two convicted former political insiders had told prosecutors that Blagojevich had said he "could award contracts, legal work and investment banking to help with fundraising" in one instance, and "You stick with us and you will do very well for yourself" in another.

At the Cook County Board, President Todd Stroger was trying to live down another embarrassing incident. Stroger's well-paid director of media affairs, Andre Garner, had admitted to calling into a talk radio program and praising Stroger's budget proposals that would include a county sales tax increase. Garner had tried to disguise his voice, but it didn't work. It was a tough Christmas on two counts for Mayor Richard Daley. His son Patrick had just shipped out for Army duty in Afghanistan. That was just as disclosures were being made that Patrick and a cousin had been unnamed investors in a sewer inspection company that prospered with contract work from the city. The Mayor told reporters that he didn't know anything about it.

It was also a tough Christmas for Scott Skiles. On Christmas Eve, he was fired as head coach of the Bulls. The team was 9-16 and in last place in the NBA's Eastern Conference Central Division. Skiles had been the Bulls' coach the previous four seasons. On the Sunday night before Christmas, it was a tough broadcast for Channel 7's news team. During the 10 p.m. newscast, a mini-van crashed through the window of the street-level studio on State Street. Nobody was injured. Prosecutors would charge 25-year-old Gerald Richardson with felony criminal damage to property and say he did it because he wanted to be on TV. Relatives would say the Evanston man had been under a lot of emotional stress because of deaths in the family, and that his behavioral problems had gotten worse.

The high price of gasoline (around $3/gallon for unleaded regular) and the home mortgage crisis (large numbers of foreclosures and 10 straight months of declining prices for homes) made for wary shoppers and a tough Christmas for retailers. Data released by MasterCard Spending Pulse on the day after Christmas indicated holiday sales rose by a tepid 3.6% over 2006. Adjusted for gas purchases, that figure was only 2.4%. Meanwhile, an Associated Press analysis of data from the nation's largest credit card issuers found that the value of credit card accounts at least 30 days overdue was up 26% from a year earlier. The number of defaults on cards--when lenders give up hope of ever being paid--rose 18% from October, 2006, to a lost value of nearly $961 million.

It looked like it was going to be a tough Christmas for U.S. Army Sergeant Chris Williams. The 24-year-old Crown Point, Indiana, soldier had taken leave from his unit in Iraq in order to be home for the birth of his son, Gabriel. When the baby developed a lung infection and had to be put on a respirator, Williams requested an extension of his leave. At first, the Army said No. But when his company commander learned of Williams' plight, he extended the leave not once, but twice. As Christmas approached, little Gabriel was showing signs of improvement, and his Dad wouldn't have to report back to Iraq until January third.

It also looked like it was going to be a tough Christmas for Pastor Virgil Jones and his church at 79th and Maryland. During the week before Christmas, burglars stripped the church of just about everything: space heaters, a piano, and all the toys that had been collected for poor children in the neighborhood. As in similar stories in previous years, donors heard or read about the burglary and donations came pouring in. By the time Pastor Jones held a party for the children on Christmas Eve, he had five times as many toys to hand out as before the burglary. Two hundred donors had provided thousands of toys, and Pastor Jones told the Tribune "This robbery was a blessing in disguise."

Speaking of the Tribune, on the Thursday before Christmas, real estate billionaire Sam Zell closed his deal to buy the Tribune Company and take it private. "There's a new sheriff in town and the name of the game is excellence, relevance tied to revenue," Zell told a news conference in Tribune Tower. He was optimistic: "I'm sick and tired of listening to everyone talk about and commiserate over the end of newspapers. They ain't ended and they're not going to end. I think they have a great future."

A memorial service was held on the Saturday before Christmas for Rose Tani of Lombard. The 90-year-old mother of astronaut Daniel Tani had been killed three days before when her car was hit by a freight train. Dan Tani couldn't be there; he was orbiting the Earth aboard the International Space Station. A videotaped message from the astronaut was played at the memorial at the First Church of Lombard United Church of Christ. Dan Tani told his sister Christine that he had been comforted in space by emails from friends and family, but that he was frustrated about not being able to attend the memorial.

Under the Christmas tree, you might have found a GPS unit or--believe it or not--a turntable. The Global Positioning System industry was reporting quadruple the sales of 2006. One research company was reporting that they were outselling video game consoles and digital video cameras. At Abt Electronics, president Michael Abt was telling WBBM Newsradio that he was having trouble keeping in stock two popular models of Sony turntables. They were popular because they came equipped to allow the transfer of vinyl record collections onto CDs or I-pods.
Movies of the Season included Johnny Depp as "Sweeney Todd"; Nicolas Cage in "National Treasure Book of Secrets"; Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts and Philip Seymour Hoffman in "Charlie Wilson's War"; Will Smith in "I Am Legend"; the widely acclaimed "No Country for Old Men" and "The Kite Runner." Movies on TV on Christmas Eve included "It's a Wonderful Life" on NBC; the 1984 version of "A Christmas Carol" on AMC; "The Santa Clause 2" on the Disney Channel; "Polar Express" on the Family Channel; "A Christmas Story" on TBS; "The Bishop's Wife" on Turner Classic Movies; and "Casper's Haunted Christmas" on the Cartoon Channel. The Top Tunes on the Billboard Hot 100 list included: "Low," Flo Rida featuring T-Pain; "No One," Alicia Keys; "Apologize," Timbaland featuring OneRepublic; "Kiss Kiss," by Chris Brown featuring T-Pain; and "Clumsy," by Fergie.

On the Friday before Christmas, Gretchen McCarthy shared with the Chicago Tribune her memories of designing the window displays at Marshall Field's State Street store during the 1960s and 70s. She had been hired by Field's in the early 1960s, a few years after graduating from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and she said Field's was one of the best places for new artists to work at the time, even though it didn't pay much: "Field's had this mystique that was unique to the store. The building was beautiful and the store had everything. I could buy my daughter her Brownie suit, pick up a bottle of aspirin at the Field's pharmacy and even eat dinner at the Walnut Room." When she became a senior designer and was assigned to the Christmas displays, she and her colleagues would be given several weeks to come up with a theme for the Christmas windows. Their decision would be made by early Spring, the rest of the year would be devoted to producing the ornaments and figures for the windows, and all of it would be kept a secret until it was time for the unveiling of the displays. Echoing the kind of newspaper advertising Field's did back then, McCarthy noted that the windows weren't about commercialism: "The Christmas windows were unique because the store didn't use them to promote their merchandise...We were always allowed to be as creative as we wanted. That's really what made the windows pure magic."

McCarthy's daughter Megan recalled for the Tribune how her Mom used to take her to see her work when she was little. She now does the same with her son, even though the store is now Macy's, not Field's anymore. Gretchen McCarthy summed up her career: "It was always Christmas at Field's," she said.