CCISD police spread Christmas cheer at local elementary schools<\/a><\/p>\nPacked sidewalks. Glowing store windows. And a kind of Christmas magic you couldn\u2019t rewind or stream.<\/p>\n
Rare photographs from the 1930s through the 1950s show downtown buzzing during the holidays \u2014 families bundled up, storefronts dressed to the nines, and crowds filling the streets. Many of those images were taken by Doc McGregor, a chiropractor-turned-photographer who documented everyday life in Corpus Christi for decades.<\/p>\n
\u201cChristmas was a big deal downtown,\u201d the photos reveal, and for many locals, it was the place to be.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was town,\u201d said 91-year-old Harriet Tillman, a fourth-generation Corpus Christian. \u201cEverybody came down here because this is where the stores were.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tillman grew up during the 1930s and \u201940s and remembers downtown as the heart of the holiday season. We spoke with her outside the Cosmopolitan Apartments \u2014 once Lichtenstein\u2019s Department Store \u2014 widely considered the anchor of Christmas celebrations downtown.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a little magic time,\u201d Tillman said. \u201cThe streets were decorated, and Lichtenstein\u2019s was the best. They had beautiful decorations in the window. The whole store \u2014 it was just like stepping into a magic place.\u201d<\/p>\n
That sense of wonder is something downtown leaders are now trying to revive.<\/p>\n
Arlene Medrano, executive director of the Downtown Management District, says the goal is to bring back more than decorations \u2014 it\u2019s about recreating the experience.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re in downtown to re-create that experience for visitors,\u201d Medrano said. \u201cWe are creating an attraction. We are creating a sense of place again.\u201d<\/p>\n
Local historian Karen Howden also helped bring Christmas past back to life, sharing rare video from the 1960s along Chaparral Street \u2014 footage of the original Peppermint Lane.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s how we were,\u201d Howden said. \u201cAnd we really haven\u2019t changed \u2014 how we produce is what\u2019s different.\u201d<\/p>\n
A bigger, brighter downtown Christmas celebration is now in the works, and for longtime residents like Harriet Tillman, it\u2019s a chance to see some of that old sparkle return \u2014 even if just for a season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas \u2014 Before shopping malls, before online carts, before Christmas showed up on your doorstep in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":94821,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[155,157,156],"class_list":{"0":"post-94820","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-corpus-christi","8":"tag-corpus-christi","9":"tag-corpus-christi-headlines","10":"tag-corpus-christi-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94820\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}