This content originally appeared on my former Chicagosphere online-media blog, hosted on the Chicago Tribune’s ChicagoNow network.

As a parting shot to Christmas, freelance communications consultant Steve Tanner (@tannerman) and wife Amy take a look at this year’s Macy’s (née Marshall Field’s) State Street holiday windows. Even though Steve’s an avowed “Macy’s hater”, the Tanners find a few things to like in a window display at least better than last year’s illuminated vacuum-cleaner hoses.

Almost every year, the Tanners examine Christmas decorations in the Chicago Loop. This year they properly lambasted our drooping, civic Charlie Brown tree (who didn’t?), but found the theme and overall decorative quality of Macy’s State Street windows an improvement over 2008.

The windows explored how a typical letter gets to Santa at the North Pole. The fact that there was a cohesive theme at all made this year’s windows (not to mention the fabulous, silvery 2009 Walnut Room Great Tree) a success for me. The Tanners found the windows still a bit generic–and hated what they called “Satanic Robotic Red-Nosed Elves”–leftover from 2008, unfortunately.

Browse their photo-filled post about this year’s windows and see what you think for yourself. I’m just glad the windows are still there, period, even if the old nameplate isn’t. (It’s been three years, people. It’s Macy’s now. Let it go…)

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