The holiday season is a time to celebrate with family and friends, often recalling holidays of years gone by. Many recall what it was like to celebrate the holidays in downtown Milford when they were young.
“As a child, I remember my parents parking their car in downtown Milford, strolling and looking in all the many shop windows as a family, listening to the Christmas music coming from Lou’s Bootery, making purchases and putting them in our unlocked car and looking at the overhead side to side Christmas lights and then visiting Santa,” Dona Sapp said. “Christmas Eve was church, and my parents always refreshed our spiritual side with the knowledge Christmas was about the birth of our Savior. Then we went to my MomMom’s to watch her open gifts, and she always had a birthday cake for Jesus, and we sang happy birthday to him.”
Sapp recalled that before she started school, there was never a tree in the house until Christmas morning.
“Santa had brought a tree and decorated it too! Like the magi who brought 3 gifts to Jesus, we received three gifts Christmas morning, unwrapped, straight from Santa’s workshop,” Sapp said. “The four of us children were so excited. Then family gathered and we had Christmas dinner. Oh, those precious memories!!!”
Harry Humes recalled the Santa House is father built for the town around 1939 while Barbara Jones recalled choruses and bands performing on an empty lot on Walnut Street before W.T Grant expanded.
“My fondest memory of Christmas when I was young was the Coffman-Fisher store on the northwest corner of North Walnut Street and the river,” Carolyn Humes said. “After Thanksgiving, they decorated their second floor into a Christmas toy land. We had never seen so many toys! I am sure there was a Santa there as well. It was a child’s paradise and a wonderous experience.”
Alice Metzner recalled the beautiful lights with bells, trees, and candy canes on all the light poles.
“I am not a big fan of the white lights we have now,” Metzner said. “I don’t know, but maybe because I was a kid, things seemed much more magical. I remember shopping in J.C. Penney, Grants, Leggett’s, Woolworth and Lou’s Bootery. My family would go to Woolworth’s to get lunch at the café and get decorations for the tree. I still have some of the vintage Christmas ornaments and they are my favorites.”
Much of the celebrations in Milford were at churches with cantatas and Christmas Eve services. Many recalled the downtown area being crowded with shoppers and working in some of the stores. In the 1950s and 60s, there were appliance stores, a few shoe stores, several ladies fashion boutiques and more. Christmas cards were sold in pharmacies. Until the shopping centers opened on Route 113, downtown was where everyone went shopping, although the opening of the Blue Hen Mall in Dover, pulled shoppers as well.
“I remember going to the Blue Hen Mall at Christmas and all the little animated figurines they had in the center of the mall,” Jen Miller said. “We would make a night of it, driving up from Milford to check out the stores in the mall and those little figurines just mesmerized me as a kid. I remember thinking I couldn’t wait to grow up and have them in my own house. I don’t have a single one, but those memories stick with me.”
According to Charles Gray of the Milford Community Parade, there was a Christmas parade in Milford in the 1990s.
“I believe it was Owen Brooks who mentioned he would like to see one in Milford,” Gray said. “Milford Community Parade organized one for three years and tried to make it stand out. It was held on the Saturday after Thanksgiving with no commercial floats. I believe the church consortium was on the committee as was Councilwoman Katrina Wilson. We ahd horse-drawn carriages, floats created by churches and attendees voted on the best float. We did not have Santa in the parade.”
The parade walked the Riverwalk to Bicentennial Park, ending with a chorus singing Christmas carols. Participation dwindled and the parade was discontinued.
