Skip to main content

Chicago's Christmas Characters

Marshall Field & Company's State Street store decorated for the Christmas Holiday. Postcard publisher is unknown. 

        The Christmas characters known as the Cinnamon Bear, Uncle Mistletoe, and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer can all be traced back to Chicago department stores. 

The Cinnamon Bear radio program first aired in the weeks leading up to Christmas in 1937. The program was produced in Hollywood and aired around the country but was sponsored by Wieboldt’s department store in Chicago and the Oregon-based department store Lipman-Wolfe and Co. Wieboldt’s sold stuffed Cinnamon Bear toys for $2.98 a piece and gave out Cinnamon Bear buttons to children who visited the store to see Santa Claus.

               Cinnamon Bear’s official name was Paddy O’Cinnamon, and he spoke with an Irish brogue. The show consisted of 26 15-minutes episodes and told the story of how the bear helps lead a pair of twins to Maybe Land to search for a silver star. Cinnamon Bear also had a short run as a TV show in 1951, with twins Judy and Jim being played by child actors alongside a Cinnamon Bear hand puppet. The illustrated book The Cinnamon Bear in the Adventure of the Silver Star was published in 2007, and the story was also remade into a podcast released by Audible this year.

W.A. Wieboldt & Company Department Store on Milwaukee Ave. and Paulina St. in Chicago. Postcard publisher in unknown.  

Meanwhile, Chicago-based department store Montgomery Ward had been publishing books to give out for free to children visiting the store during the holiday season. In 1939, a catalog writer at the store by the name of Robert L. May submitted a manuscript about an outcast reindeer with a red nose who grows up to become a hero when he leads Santa’s sleigh. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer became that year’s book giveaway. The story was a hit, and Montgomery Ward gave away over two million copies of the book that year.

               Almost a decade after the book was first published, Montgomery Ward gave May the rights to the story. May collaborated with his brother-in-law Johnny Mark, a professional composer, to write a song to go along with the book. The song was picked up by Gene Autry and became a chart-topping hit in 1949. In 1964, the stop-motion animated special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer aired on TV, and it has become one of the longest-running Christmas TV specials in history.

Montgomery Ward & Company once had the largest department store building in the country; it was located on the Chicago River. Postcard publisher is unknown. 

To compete with Wieboldt's and Montgomery Ward, Marshall Field’s created the Uncle Mistletoe character to lift spirits and encourage sales during the Christmas season. Uncle Mistletoe was a jolly-looking, white-haired man with a black top hat, red coat, and a pair of wings which he would use to fly around the world to teach children about the importance of kindness. Uncle Mistletoe was first featured in the Marshall Field’s Christmas window display in 1946, and in 1948 the character Aunt Holly was created to accompany Uncle Mistletoe on his adventures. The pair became a merchandising bonanza, and Marshall Field’s sold Uncle Mistletoe and Aunt Holly toys, books, ornaments, and other products.

               While the Cinnamon Bear, Uncle Mistletoe, and Aunt Holly never came to enjoy the widespread fame of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, all of these characters were known to bring joy to both children and adults at Christmastime. 

Written by Emily Ruzich

Sources: 

Robin Amer, “In ‘Uncle Mistletoe, TV ephemera from Marshall Field’s golden age,” WBEZ (March 10, 2012), www.wbez.org/stories/in-uncle-mistletoe-tv-ephemera-from-marshall-fields-golden-age/ee872264-51d4-4dbe-9b75-082ec953a8ef.  

“The History of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” NPR Morning Edition (Dec. 25, 2015), www.npr.org/2015/12/25/461005670/the-history-of-rudolph-the-red-nosed-reindeer.

Leslie Goddard, “For Generations of Chicagoans, Marshall Field’s Meant Business, and Christmas,” Smithsonian (Dec. 19, 2016), www.smithsonianmag.com/history/ generations-chicagoans-marshall-fields-meant-businessand-christmas-180961499/.

Michelle Delgado, “The Magical Animation of ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,’” Smithsonian (Dec. 23, 2019), www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/magical-animation-rudolph-red-nosed-reindeer-180973841/.                         

Cinnamon Bear website, www.cinnamonbear.org.

Wikipedia, “The Cinnamon Bear,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cinnamon_Bear.

Wikipedia, “Wieboldt’s,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wieboldt%27s.


Comments

  1. There was a time limit when mobile gamblers didn’t get to experience the great world of SM카지노 live casinos. However, know-how has advanced tremendously since then, and gamblers who choose to play casino video games on their mobile units are now not out of the loop. In fact, most live casino developers are making an effort to ensure mobile compatibility. Before diving into the primary reasons why why} live casinos are so popular, let’s first speak a bit about live casinos generally.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Marshall Field's at Christmas

  The aisle on the first floor of the State Street store is 358 feet long. Postcard publisher is unknown.  Many Chicagoans continue to miss visiting Marshall Field’s during the holiday season. Just talking about the famed Christmas windows and holiday decorations brings about memories of the department store’s glory days. Many of us can recall the strong smell of perfume that would greet visitors upon entering the flagship State Street store, along with the huge white Romanesque columns decorated with Christmas fare on the first floor. The real fun, however, was taking the elevator to the 7 th floor to get a glimpse of the giant Christmas tree inside the Walnut Room restaurant. The best place to view the tree was one floor up on a balcony area. Christmas decorations on the first floor. Postcard publisher is unknown.  Frango mint chocolates were piled high in various areas throughout the store, and many visitors couldn’t resist buying a box. Frango chocolates were once made in a kitc

Burlesque Dancer Sally Rand Took the Chicago World's Fair by Storm

Sally Rand danced at the Streets of Paris exhibit. Postcard printed by Curt Teich & Co, Chicago. Sally Rand was never supposed to perform her iconic “fan dance” at the 1933 Century of Progress World’s Fair in Chicago. The dancer’s requests to perform inside the Streets of Paris exhibit had been turned down several times. But Rand decided to take matters into her own hands by riding into a pre-opening party on the fairgrounds, uninvited, on a white horse wearing nothing but a velvet cape. The crowd loved it. Rand was arrested but released the next day, when she promptly accepted an offer to perform as the headliner in the Café de la Paix’s floor show for $90 per week. While her dancing broke boundaries and city decency ordinances at the time, her legacy was born and Rand made her cultural mark on the world. According to The 1933 Chicago World’s Fair by Cheryl Ganz, 29-year-old Sally Rand had previously worked as an acrobatic circus performer and film stuntwoman. She had also alread