11
Dec/11

MACY’S HOLIDAY WINDOWS: BELIEVE

11
Dec/11

Virginia O’Hanlon seeks the truth about Santa Claus in Macy’s holiday window display (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Macy’s Herald Square
151 West 34th St. at Broadway
Through early January, free
212-494-4495
www.macys.com

A few weeks ago, a second-grade teacher at George W. Miller Elementary School in Nanuet, New York, had the gall to tell her students that there is no Santa Claus, setting off a panic in the community. In reporting the scandal, the New York Post spoke with Mary Blair, the granddaughter of Virginia O’Hanlon, the eight-year-old girl who famously wrote a letter to the New York Sun in 1897 asking if there really was a Santa Claus. Blair said, “The most real things in the world are things that you don’t see or touch, and they are the things that mean the most — love, kindness, and generosity.” The story of Virginia O’Hanlon and her family, her friend Ollie, newspaper editor Francis Pharcellus Church, and Kris Kringle is retold in Macy’s holiday window display, designed using animatronic dolls, LED screens, and laser-cut paper by Paul Olszewski and PRG Scenic Technologies. It’s all part of Macy’s holiday campaign, which is simply titled “Believe.” Other windows feature a series of gears, which seems to be a department-store theme this year, as the Saks’s projected display includes a gear countdown in between its light show.