Perhaps it is unfair to blend Bergdorf Goodman (what is called a “luxury department store”) with Bloomingdale’s, Macy’s or a shopping mall but they all retain predominantly one thing in common; namely, in-person shopping. It is an element critical to the endorsement of the shopping model to which they are attuned.

Bergdorf Goodman Inc. is a luxury department store based on Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, New York. The company was founded in 1899 by Herman Bergdorf and was later owned and managed by Edwin Goodman, and later his son, Andrew Goodman. Since the early 2010s, Bergdorf Goodman has been a subsidiary of Neiman Marcus, which is owned by the private equity firm Ares Management.

Macy’s has conducted the annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City since 1924 and has sponsored the city’s annual Fourth of July fireworks display since 1976. Macy’s Herald Square is one of the largest department stores in the world. The flagship store covers almost an entire New York City block, features about 1.1 million square feet of retail space, includes additional space for offices and storage, and serves as the endpoint for the Thanksgiving Day parade. The value of Herald Square alone is estimated at $3 billion.

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Tomorrow December 11th I turn 75 years of age. I feel it is to be a momentous event.  Not because I or anyone else will be celebrating the day in any remarable fashion. Currently I have only to get my car serviced. I just like the alignment of the count with three-quarters a century. To me it sounds highly profitable. Indeed it is. Which is why I want to write about it.  I would like to record my reasons for thinking so. I’ll start with the easiest details first.

Allow me therefore to begin by considering my things. Why things should be important is naturally a matter of debate among right-thinking people.  But on balance I must confess that the things in my life are not entirely ignorable.  Indeed if I were to ignore them I would only be foisting a deceit of false morality upon you, dear Reader.  Now having said that, upon reflection, I will say that things haven’t always preoccupied me as they now do or as they have lately done (that is, for the past 60 years roughly).

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Chef Barthe’s Cream of Mussel Soup soon became such a favorite of William B. Leeds, Sr. that it was kept permanently on the menu at Maxim’s. Sadly Billy, as his friends called him, died in 1908 of a stroke at the Hotel Ritz in Paris. He left behind his wife and a son, also named William. William B. Leeds, Jr., was at that time the richest child in the world. Later, at the age of 18, he would also marry a Greek princess and gain worldwide fame as a hunter and yachtsman. Like his father, he would call both Europe and America home – especially Paris and Maxim’s during the early days of the roaring 1920s.

Craig Claiborne, who brought this amazing cream of mussels soup to The Times in the 1960s and refined it over the years with his longtime kitchen collaborator Pierre Franey, once called it “the most elegant and delicious soup ever created.” It is also one of the easiest to make. Use wine to steam open some mussels beneath a blanket of aromatics and use the resulting stock as a base for cream. Add the mussels and perhaps a grind of pepper. “One of the sublime creations on Earth,” Claiborne wrote.

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For the past several days or more we’ve had unprecedented seasonal landscape views ideal for arousing even the most deep-dyed Ebenezer Scrooge.

Ebenezer Scrooge is the protagonist of Charles Dickens’s 1843 novel or short story; A Christmas Carol. At the beginning of the novella, Scrooge is a cold-hearted miser who despises Christmas which he associates with reckless spending. The tale of his redemption by three spirits (the Ghost of Christmas Past, the Ghost of Christmas Present, and the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come) has become a defining tale of the Christmas holiday in the English-speaking world.

Dickens describes Scrooge thus early in the story: “The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice.” Charles Dickens (further) describes Scrooge as “a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint… secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster.”

Towards the end of the novella, the three spirits show Scrooge the errors of his ways, and he becomes a better, more generous man. Scrooge’s last name has entered the English language as a byword for greed and misanthropy, while his catchphrase, “Bah! Humbug!” is often used to express disgust with many modern Christmas traditions.

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There is a material boundary between impeccability and humanity. Essentially only one of them matters; and, that is not perfection but resolution. The object mustn’t be amorphous; instead definition is preferred. And there can be no clearer objective than the promotion of facility in human relations. It requires no hesitation to distance ourselves whenever possible from the pedantic indulgence of possible flaws or defects. Cavilling is the attribute of an egghead. The resourcefulness of intellect derives instead from overcoming discord.

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The day – not unlike the weather – was a blur.  As for the weather it was snowy and grey so not at all incompatible with the season.  Nor I suppose was the day itself inharmonious. The day was characterized by that notable quality of goodwill which so demonstrably distinguishes Christmas and Chanukah from other times of the year but was in other respects an indistict collection of impressions and personalities. Even an unpredicted event. But like the melodies of Jingle Bells and Good King Wenceslas it was impossible to escape the unifying zeal of the currency.

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Having just concluded a disappointing and most unprofitable discussion with a junior front-line employee (having a grand though utterly meaningless title of “Early Resolution Officer”) of the Ombudsman of Ontario,  I am sadly  though not at all unexpectedly reminded that the basics still apply. The basics I am equally distressed to observe are not in the least complimentary. To give them their most favourable sheen, the basics like those of the animal kingdom whence we “intellectual” humans derive are simply visceral. This endorsement is particularly unfortunate at this time of year when magnanimity (or at least the appearance of it) is most prolific. The Ombudsman’s clerk (who upon abrupt reconsideration and with discernible gusto accelerated our initial conference from next week to today) could not have been more eager to dispose of my “complaint” which by rote she skilfully directed to but a number of other bureaucracies cradled in the womb of deceit and deception called “government”. Meanwhile the transport of logic and palpability was conveniently for the Ombudsman sidelined and pushed over its edge onto the plate of yet another, a repeating occurrence throughout the past five months which paradoxically (and dare I say, circuitously or worse, circularly) began last July in the same office of the Ombudsman of Ontario. This then is the circle of life!

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It is late afternoon on a snowy day in early December.  I’m listening to Tchaikovsky: The Nutcracker, Op. 71 London Symphony Orchestra & Sir Charles Mackerras (Complete Ballet Score) and gazing idly upon the positively picturesque mirrored river and adjacent snow covered fields.

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Already evidence of the mounting Christmas spirit insinuates the parking lot beside the grocery store. The overnight snowfall has perfected the noticeable transition from provisional necessity to moderate urgency. There pervades an unspoken sense of mystery and qualified apprehension; an anxious mood of preparation for holiday and turkey dinners and Christmas trees with gifts for the children. There is a pervasive air of momentousness. It is an indisputable change from the erstwhile head-down private narrow pursuits which are now directed instead to citizenry and abundant cheerfulness.

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Beyond the apartment front door along the short passageway at the end of which stands the grandfather clock I heard voices in the hallway, conversation by the lift, gleeful enigmatic exchanges peculiar to an insular snowy December day mixed with freezing rain and Christmastime. I have nestled in the den today, gathering sleep and calm. And my own happy conclusions.

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