Bennett: A historic look at the holidays

Don Bennett recalls what holiday celebrations used to look like in Petaluma.|

Merry Christmas. Happy holidays. May your New Year be better than the one you wish for.

This holiday period I’ve been staying in Petaluma, which hasn’t been the case the past several years, and I hate to admit it, but I’ve been enjoying the crowds, the bustle, and yes, even the traffic; but I’m not going to get too carried away.

But, as I have been creeping slowly around the city on my appointed rounds, it has given me time to reflect on Petaluma today and the Petaluma that existed when I arrived here in 1967, a new homeowner with a new home. I’m still here, and honestly, I’ve never wanted to live anywhere else.

But, the Petaluma of 1967 was a city drastically different from the one today. It had a population of some 20,000 and a downtown shopping district you would find in towns of 7,000 or 8,000 elsewhere in this country. At holiday time, Petalumans headed to Coddingtown or Montgomery Village in Santa Rosa to do most of their gift buying. Petaluma had a Woolworths, a Sprouse Reitz, a Penney’s, a lot of drugstores and furniture outlets, a few quality clothing stores and not much else.

Our fabled old 19th century downtown ironfronts were in such a state of disrepair, the predominant sentiment on the part of our local governing officials was to tear the whole batch down, put in some parking lots and build some new buildings. That was then and of course it didn’t turn out that way, which I think everyone will agree was a good thing.

But, having been raised in western Nebraska, I soon noted two things about this city that I felt were lacking. The first was the absence of any notable visual holiday exuberance, a profusion of lights and stuff at homes or businesses in the city. In my childhood, part of the holiday tradition was to pile the family into the car and drive about town looking at the sometimes awe-inspiring decorations.

There wasn’t much of that here a half century ago, and it really didn’t change until the ‘80s. The impetus for that change was the local chamber of commerce, which started with a contest for businesses and soon included homes as well. Like any good idea, it just took someone to get it started before the contest was warmly embraced by the entire community.

Today, Petaluma is a joy to behold at the holiday season.

Also, Santa’s arrival after Thanksgiving was a big deal then, but it usually involved Santa Claus coming to town in a horse and wagon (in one case, he flew into the Plaza shopping center in a helicopter,) but in those days no one gave much thought to the river. I’ve written before about a conversation I had with one of our civic leaders at the time, who scoffed about the river, saying, “it’s nothing but a dirty ditch.”

I don’t know who gets credit, but I suspect somewhere in the Petaluma Downtown Association or the visitor’s program, but eventually Santa was arriving by tugboat, and that grew into our spectacular lighted boat procession, a memorable event held every holiday season.

The second item that was lacking, common to most cities of our size in the U.S., was an annual celebration of great magnitude. We had an Old Adobe days, but it didn’t involve much more than a barbecue and a whisker contest. No parades of note. In the early part of the 20th century, we had Butter and Egg Days with parades and hoopla, but by the second half of the century, it had degenerated into a downtown merchant’s couponing promotion that gave away prizes of butter, eggs and meat.

Then, in the early ‘80s, the merchants association revived the big parade and celebration, and today Petaluma not only has this jewel, but also the Veteran’s Day parade that draws an immense crowd.

Petaluma today has a spirit of participation and celebration that I found muted 47 years ago. So today, as we celebrate with family and friends, I submit that we have every right to be proud of our city, and the people who call it home.

(Don Bennett, business writer and consultant, has been involved with city planning issues since the 1970s. His email address is dcbenn@aol.com.)

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