Sears and JCPenney Holding On

As a child, there were two Christmas catalogs that came in the mail. They were the holy grail of catalogs before the internet.

As a child, there were two stores in the mall that had a toy section that grew with the Christmas season. Sears and JCPenney are long gone. JCPenney disappeared from the mall so long ago that I can't remember when it left. The Sears store was the last anchor store in the mall and when it left, so did the mall. The mall is gone.

These once mighty giants are both facing hard times. They just could never adapt to the changing market tastes and too successful to think that the internet would kill their businesses.

JCPenney is trying to find something to get them out of debt and it doesn't seem like they are having any luck. It appears they didn't get a boost from the Christmas season.

Sears is for sale and today is the last day for someone to buy them, and there doesn't seem to be any real interest in the company except their previous CEO Eddie Lampert offering to buy Sears and KMart.

It is hard not getting a little nostalgic about the thought of sitting in my grandparents' houses and looking through the Christmas catalogs and writing my Christmas list. Both of my grandmothers bought the Christmas catalogs and both used the catalog to order their Christmas presents.

I remember my grandparents talking about ordering things from the Sears catalog. All of my grandparents grew up in rural areas and lived great distances from the large cities. They had to take the train to reach the big cities.

As we get closer to same-day deliveries from Amazon and WalMart has curbside pickup, the old stores of the past might vanish and become memories this next year. The once mighty giants are replaced with companies that didn't exist forty years ago, and these now mighty giants will someday be replaced with new companies that we can't really imagine right now, but it will happen.

Sure, I like the new technology and don't miss the old Christmas catalogs with only one picture of the items I liked. Today, I can go on a website and look at something from multiple angles and feel good about the fact I'm not getting a cheap piece of plastic, like the toys of the 1980s.