REMEMBERING WHEN: “Santa’s Little Helpers” from Sears
By Keith Schell
Last Christmas, I sent out a story for publication in this newspaper titled “The Sears Christmas Wishbook,” describing the joy that the Wishbook catalogue brought to the nation on Christmas morning every year.
Not long after I sent out my Wishbook story, I received a response from a retired friend of mine who had been a delivery driver for Sears for twenty years. After reading my column, he sent me an email offering a completely different point of view on the Sears experience during the yuletide season.
To make a child’s wish come true at Christmas, preparations for the creation of the Sears Christmas Wishbook had to begin long before December.
Serving Ontario by truck and the rest of the country by rail, the Sears Canada corporate printing plant in Rexdale, Ontario (a suburb of Toronto), always required long lead times to accommodate the sheer volume of printing and distribution of its countless seasonal catalogues. Because of this, the Sears Christmas Wishbook catalogues were collated, printed and delivered to all Sears mail-order outlets across the regions by early September each year, in preparation for the annual December Christmas rush.
To a man, the Sears delivery drivers dreaded the arrival of September and the addition of the Wishbook catalogues to the already heavy volume of items they had to deliver. At the height of the Wishbook’s popularity, the catalogues were thick, glossy and printed on heavy-gauge paper. The sheer tonnage of skids loaded with Christmas catalogues added considerable effort to the completion of a delivery driver’s nightly job.
The peddle trailer (a trucking term for a trailer on a run with frequent delivery stops) usually carried anywhere from one-half to three full skids of Wishbook catalogues for nightly delivery, in whole or in part, to the various regional mail-order outlets, depending on the size of the town. Smaller towns might receive only one-half to one-quarter of a skid, while larger towns could receive a full skid. And that was on top of the regular items that had to be delivered to the outlets every night.
At its peak, remember how heavy the Wishbook was when we made our Christmas wish lists? Averaging roughly 250 bundles per skid, with 6–10 catalogues per bundle, a full skid of Wishbooks could easily weigh a thousand pounds! When they weren’t delivering bundles by hand to smaller outlets, drivers had to use handcarts to move the skids around in the trailer or unload them into the rear storage area of the mail-order outlet. (To all the former Sears drivers out there, I hope your back didn’t start aching again just thinking about it!)
Apparently, the Sears Christmas Wishbook brought yuletide joy to everyone in the country—except those who had to deliver it!
This suggestion will probably earn me a middle finger from all the former Sears delivery drivers who got backaches from hauling the extra tonnage of Wishbooks across the nation, but try to think of yourselves as Santa’s little helpers. Your September efforts in delivering the Wishbook catalogues to Sears outlets across the country brought joy to millions of children on Christmas morning every year.
That may be small consolation if you were at home having a loved one rub liniment on your sore back after your deliveries, but take heart in knowing that your efforts made children happy all over the nation on Christmas morning. You did good work.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all, and a very special salutation to all of Santa’s little helpers who delivered the Sears Christmas Wishbook catalogues back in the day!