6 Days Til Christmas!

This, unfortunately, is not me.  I'm not sure what my mother did with all of my pictures with Santa.  She's not really the sentimental type.

The first department store to feature a visit with Santa was the J.W. Parkinson's store in Philadelphia in 1841.  No other department stores copied this even until 1890 when a store in Boston repeated it. 

On a personal note, visiting Santa is one of my most treasured Christmas memories.  My Nana (who passed away this last June) would take me into San Francisco on the train for the day.  We would have lunch at the counter at Woolworth's at the corner of Powell and Market and then go to the top floor of Emporium (where Bloomindale's is now) and wait in the huge line (it was like waiting for a ride at Disneyland) to sit on Santa's lap and tell him what I wanted for Christmas.  Some sort of Barbie, a Lite Brite or an Easy Bake Oven.  Then we would go out on the roof, and my Nana would let me ride the kiddie-sized carnival rides before it got dark, and we would take the train home.  Emporium stopped this tradition at some point (I'm not sure when) but started it up again in the 1980s and was still going strong when the store closed after 100 years on Market Street.

There's more information about the Emporium Rooftop Christmas Carnival here.  A history of the store itself written at its closing is here.