Gloomy Strikes Yield to Christmas Light Show

Window Shopping in Paris - Santa Alive and Well!

Text and images by Richard Erickson, Art Direction and HTML Design by Pakeha - exclusively for Norman Barth's 'The Paris Pages - Les Pages de Paris.'
All images Erickson/Grant© December 1995 - used with permission

Paris, Saturday, 23. December 1995:- Every year, sometime in early December, my wife, M-R, tells me that we are going to take the kids downtown to look at the windows of the 'Grands Magazins.' The year I could not get out of it, there was a wind pouring through the Fulda Gap, through the Moselle, across the Champagne, direct from Siberia. By the time we got to town it was too late and other families were already five deep in front of the windows, and I was cold to the bone.

In this year, the year of 50th 'End of War' anniversaries, of presidential elections, and most recently, the transport strikes, we need these windows as never before. While many hundreds of thousands have walked, skated, bicycled, past them for more than a month, nobody has had much time to look at them.

On the TV news that I have seen so much of lately, there was a report on some small town in France, that is famous for its Christmas decoration. This town's main shopping street, is literally equipped, in lights, with what looks like a stained-glass sky. Absolutely wonderful.

In the City of Light itself, there has been a program going on for several years, to turn all the major monuments into nighttime lightshows. For example, the Tour Eiffel is done, as is the Champs-Elysees, along with the rest of its face-lift. The trouble is, the department store windows have to compete with this year-round big-budget display.

The best time of day to photograph the windows is 04:00 in the morning. They are lit, there are few background reflections, and there's no one around to obstruct the view. The main technical problem is that your reporter is asleep at that time of the day.

I did the Galeries Lafayette and Printemps windows, on the Boulevard Haussmann, before dawn, on a strike day. At the time, due to the hour, I did not appreciate the Galeries Lafayette's windows - what was I expecting? - but the photos show something different, and not unpleasing. Further along the boulevard, Printemps' windows had a 'Winter in Canada' theme - which somehow permitted the inclusion of considerable items from the toy department, a la 'Barbie Skiing.'

At the Bazar Hotel de Ville, known locally as BHV, which is on the rue de Rivoli across from the, what else? - the Hotel de Ville - Paris' City Hall; the BHV had no Christmas windows. The sidewalks around most Paris department stores, are devoted to outside sidewalk booths, usually selling inexpensive items you need in a hurry, such as umbrellas. BHV kept theirs in place. It was nearly raining.

I paid a daytime visit to the Bon Marché, on the Left Bank across the Seine, near Metro Sévres-Babylone. As the strikes were mostly over by then, there were too many shoppers to get a frontal view; and this is where there were the reflections - which I normally like. Bon Marché's windows were very elaborate, but I can not remember their theme - and I had forgotten to bring half my reporter-kit, the note book part.

That particular day involved a sidewalk drift through a good deal of the Left Bank, from Montparnasse to St Germain. A bookstore window caught my eye on that boulevard. I think it was some sort of a Polish Christmas card; but if it was, they didn't show the envelope.

The rue de Rivoli seemed the most lively when I was there one evening - although by then, the 'Grands Boulevards' must have been pretty busy too.

Marks & Spencers has a new store in a entire building on the rue de Rivoli, across from the Tour St Jacques; and they showed their London influence, by turning the whole building into a decoration.

Further to the west, Samaritaine, facing both the rue de Rivoli and the Pont Neuf, had both facades - of several buildings - done up. The windows' theme 'C'était une Fois en Amerique...' also featured 'Barbie' and many well-known characters from American TV shows, movies and video cassettes, in a series of inventive scenes.

Although it is fairly well-known that Disney has set up an animated cartoon factory in the Paris area, it was a little unnerving to see so many window decorations and scenes based on characters from the Disney movies, video tapes, and television series; including all the paraphernalia from the latest film release. But, I suppose, business is business in Paris just like anyplace else. The effect is, though, that you can't help thinking you've seen it all somewhere before - which ill lends itself to the 'magic' of Christmas - when one could expect a little - uncanned - extra 'fantasy.'

Updated 12/95