PHILADELPHIA − A crowd waited outside Macy’s for the doors to open on a cloudy, foggy Tuesday morning a couple of weeks before Christmas.
Some were there to shop, but others, such as Bryan and Amanda Jones and their two children, were waiting for a show: The Holiday Light Show , a five-story high display with a tree and moving lights, narrated by famed actress Julie Andrews and set to standards like “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and “Frosty the Snowman.”
They also planned to walk through the Dickens Village at the Philadelphia flagship store, an animatronic-filled reenactment of “A Christmas Carol,” the classic tale of Ebenezer Scrooge and the ghosts who persuade him to change his misanthropic, miserly ways. And of course the children would get to meet Santa, perched on the third floor near the Dickens Village.
Bryan Jones remembered coming to the city as a child when he visited his cousin. The light show at John Wanamaker’s − now Macy’s − was a treasured destination, he said.