Tis the season – like no other in the year – when we just can’t resist the urge to say, “I remember when …”

Usually, there’s some reference to “the good old days.” That’s when any teenagers within earshot roll their eyes and wonder what in the world was so good about that era before ipods and instant messaging. There’s just no way to fully explain it to them. The answers only come with time and the mystery of selective memory.

For me, there’s a special charm to the mental pictures of Christmas at “the head of the street.” That’s what almost all Twin Cities residents called Main and Lisbon streets. In the 1950s, throngs of shoppers rode the buses to downtown Lewiston. (If you were coming from Auburn, you talked about “going overstreet.”)

The shoppers were shoulder to shoulder as they waited for traffic to stop so they could surge across the intersection to and or from Peck’s.

The marvelous B. Peck Department Store was a destination in itself. In the early part of the 1900s, it was known nationally for its innovative multi-floor retail marketing, and though it was nearing the end of its glory midway through the century, it still held magic for children of the L-A area.

There were life-size animated Christmas scenes in the storefront windows. The massive revolving doors led to a glittering world of scents, sights and sounds, but the ultimate destination was the basement level where Santa reigned. Lines of impatient kids and their harried moms moved slowly to the raised platform where Santa’s helpers made sure each youngster smiled for the camera.

Almost as important as the visit with Santa was the nearby “fish pond” where children could hook a wrapped present.

When my brother and I were growing up on the Auburn farm to which I have returned this year, it was a tradition for our father to take us along to cut our Christmas tree in our woodlot about a mile upriver from the farm.

I learned some other details of that tradition today as I read a column by my aunt, Edith Labbie, in a 1967 Lewiston Evening Journal magazine section.

She told how her mother – my grandmother – took sprigs of fir from the woodlot excursions of the early 1900s and placed them around the pictures throughout the house.

“The mounted buffalo horns that she brought back from North Dakota assumed a rakish air with the fir branch trimming,” Aunt Edith wrote.

A tradition I had not heard about involved the Christmas cards.

“After breakfast, Mother brought out all the Christmas cards that had been arriving for several weeks. She never opened a single one until Christmas morning for she contended that it was a mechanical gesture if we mailed a card to so-and-so’ as an afterthought,” she wrote.

We think of traditions being set in stone, but they’re really transitory things.

Tomorrow’s traditions in Androscoggin County will most likely involve a drive to see the spectacular electric light displays, or the muted beauty of a neighborhood bathed in light from hundreds of roadside luminaries.

So make the most of tradition, and remember that we’re shaping future memories all the time.

Dave Sargent is a freelance writer and an Auburn native. You can write to him at [email protected].