Wrap it as a Gift

The Christmas rush was running like a payday crap game. By Thanksgiving Day, the traditional opening date for Christmas shoppers, hundreds of counters already had that picked-over look. Now, every day, from the halls of Bullock's-Wilshire to the floors of Marshall Field's, surging regiments of customers joined in the nation's greatest early-season buying spree.

The display of negligees could hardly have been greater. Newspaper advertisements warned women that they faced "a frank return to femininity." Said the ads: FROU FROU BECOMES YOU. In every big U.S. city, black (and transparent) nighties revealed the intimate mechanics of window dummies. Everywhere, hundred-dollar handbags were stacked in bargain-counter disarray. Perfume was a preferred item. Despite staggering price tags ($1,000 foi a 72-oz. jug of Worth's Dans la Nuit), it sold like patent medicine. Customers reached for absurdly priced costume jewelry as eagerly as pygmy tribesmen bartering for trade beads.

Presents for men were more mundane, but it was possible to buy a $150 cigaret lighter or a $25 necktie.

Toys were better in quality than last year. The paper shortage had eliminated many accordion-like cardboard creations, and WPB had allowed limited quantities of metal for things like doll carriages. Herds of odd stuffed animals turned up--satin sea lions, kangaroos with detachable offspring and velvet dachshunds in chartreuse, cerise and copper rose. A favorite item for children: secondhand tricycles, to be bought in side streets with the furtive triumph of Central American revolutionists buying old Gatling guns.

The old standbys of yester-Yule, things like the 15-c- handkerchief and the $1 necktie, were as extinct as the dodo. Christmas, 1944, might be merry; it would certainly be costly.

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