In “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” the best TV show of all time, Charlie is frustrated in his effort to find the true meaning of Christmas. Spoiler alert. In the end he does.

But before then, Lucy tells him, “Look Charlie, let’s face it. We all know that Christmas is a big commercial racket.” In a hushed voice she says, “It’s run by a big Eastern syndicate, you know.” Lucy didn’t even know about Amazon.

Regardless, the gifts borne by the three kings at the first Christmas started something. Gift giving remains part of how we celebrate Jesus’ humble birth.

I thought back on my years of gift getting and giving. The earliest I remember getting came from Santa with assistance from my mother Alyce. Those exciting toys and boring clothes all came from downtown Sleepy Eye. New Ulm was the big city. A shopping trip there was rare. The Twin Cities might as well have been Paris.

Sleepy Eye, like all small towns in the middle of the last century, had everything one could need. There were even choices. Two large and several small grocers, besides two bakeries and a meat shop, three hardware stores, a couple of drug stores, three or four clothing stores, and of course, the favorite of a little boy, the dime store.

In my mind, I can walk you to where the toys were in each of those stores. A memory of then is of lots of people. Rural towns had full houses of big families with more on the farm sites surrounding them. Sidewalks full of people marked December.

The few things one couldn’t find on main street you could get at the catalog stores. Anything could be found in wish books that came in the mail. Giant catalogs from Sears and Montgomery Wards took prominent spots in our living room every Advent. Sears even took to calling theirs’s The Wish Book.

The best part was that the catalogs were disposable, unlike the similarly sized Bible nearby. A boy could circle things, not subtle suggestions for Santa/mom. My electric football game came from such wishing. There were little Packer and Viking players and a tiny felt football. A sheet of numbers to put on the players meant you could have your own Bill Brown. You hoped that he didn’t run in a circle when you turned it on.

The 10-year-old me didn’t know about Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Sears and Montgomery Wards would both meet that fate. The catalog stores along with most other retail stores are gone from downtown Sleepy Eye and pretty much downtown everywhere.

Years later I remember going through town this time of year on a Saturday afternoon and seeing almost no cars parked on Main Street. It would not have been that way in 1965. It was one of those moments when you realize the world has shifted under your feet.

We are blessed in Sleepy Eye to still have a grocery, hardware, and drug store, and of course the ubiquitous dollar store. But they’re not next to each other where you dashed from store to store, rushing inside to stay warm, seeing your breath in between. Newer versions have parking lots.

Flash ahead to my young adult years. I shifted to the role of Santa’s assistant. More accurately, I carried stuff for Santa/Pam. I’m not a good shopper but was glad to tag along while Pam assumed that duty.

This was the golden age of malls. Southdale was the standard. To be honest, it could be a magical place at Christmas. There in the center court was a giant sparkling tree. Christmas music played. You could go get a cinnamon roll and never get cold.

And talk about people. The term “crush of people” was fitting when malls were the preferred way to spend a December day.

In our early married years, there were a couple of years when the downtown Mankato Place Mall was buzzing. Later, New Ulm’s Marktplatz Mall was crowded for what seemed like a couple of days. Both attempted to integrate traditional downtown shopping with trendy malls. It was a good faith effort, but not very successful.

River Hills Mall in Mankato became the shopping destination in our part of the state. It was perfect in that Pam could shop and I could drink coffee and read at the Barnes and Noble.

In the Cities, the Dales lost shoppers to the Mall of Earth. Well, I guess it’s only the Mall of America. It is colossal and capacious, too much so for me. Besides, I can’t help thinking about Met Stadium buried beneath. I’d rather be in the left field bleachers than in Macy’s.

Last year I was in Mankato for something this time of year and needed to pick something up at Target. I decided to take an hour and walk around the mall. I hadn’t been there since COVID. There were empty spaces where stores had been and not many people. No need to dodge shoppers going the other direction like Justin Jefferson in the open field.

With apologies to Bob Dylan, “Where have all the shoppers gone? Long time passing. Where have all the shoppers gone? Gone to websites, every one.”

Online shopping has been growing for a while. Then COVID was like a shot of steroids. A quick search tells that in 2023, online shopping passed in-store shopping for the first time. 67% of millennials prefer shopping on their phones or computers.

I admit, we do some online shopping. Fed Ex and UPS regularly bring packages. There is convenience. There is selection. What there is not is human contact.

All that shopping I’ve talked about involved interacting with people. Even shopping the Sears catalog meant a drive to town and stopping at the store on Main Street to order.

We have all had unpleasant shopping experiences. Rude clerks can spoil our mood. Looking for a parking space with a dozen other cars circling around a snowy lot is dreadful.

Despite those, there is something to be said for the hundred little interactions one has in a day of shopping. We are, after all, social animals. The people next to us are part of our herd.

Holding the door for someone, being patient with the checkout person who’s had a long day, sharing a funny quip with someone waiting in line, smiling at a child in a cart. There are so many times in a store or on a street that one can choose to be kind and thoughtful. Those are lost to us when we order off our phone.

Oh well, things change. It is the Christmas season, and hopefully we can find ways to bring small joy to our fellow travelers. Charlie Brown would like that.

— Randy Krzmarzick farms on the home place west of Sleepy Eye, where he lives with his wife, Pam.