The Santaland Diaries, Program Notes
• The Guinness Book of World Records lists Macy’s Herald Square as the world’s largest department store building with 2,150,000 square feet of selling floor.
• In 2008, Macy’s celebrated its 150th birthday.
• The star in the Macy’s logo comes from a tattoo that founder R. H. Macy got as a teenager when he worked on a Nantucket whaling ship.
Macy’s flagship Herald Square Department Store is one of my favorite places in New York. When I was ten years old my mom and I ran away from Detroit for a week and stayed in the Hotel Governor Clinton on Seventh Avenue. We went shopping in Macy’s and witnessed a fist fight between two sales ladies in what was then the bargain basement. I was very impressed. It was 1961 and things like that didn’t happen in Detroit. Macy’s has been immortalized in American culture in so many ways: from the classic 1947 Christmas film Miracle of 34th Street, to Kanye West and Adam Levine’s 2006 music video Heard ‘Em Say. It’s where Patrick Dennis’ fictional Auntie Mame sold roller-skates to make ends meet after the 1929 crash, and where real life playwright Lillian Hellman sold groceries when the blacklist killed her writing career in the 1950s. And then there’s Isidor and Ida Straus who went down with the Titanic. Isidor, a co-owner of Macy’s, refused to be rescued ahead of the younger men, and Ida refused to leave her husband. The moment is immortalized in all the various Hollywood films of the sinking, and on a sculpted brass plaque that hangs in one of the 34th Street entrances. Other Macy’s employees of note: Dustin Hoffman, Rachael Ray, Sean (Diddy) Combs, Rhea Perlman, Carol Channing, and Diahann Carroll all wore Macy’s badges before they rose to fame. And Anne Frank’s father Otto worked at Macy’s for a year in 1909.
As did David Sedaris eighty years later. SantaLand Diaries is Sedaris’ comic, caustic, true-life tale of his two-year stint as a Macy’s department store elf. He began reading his “diaries” for audiences while he was enrolled at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, his third attempt to earn a degree. He graduated in 1987 and taught writing at the school part-time. Ira Glass heard Sedaris performing at a Chicago club and booked him on “The Wild Room” on radio station WBEZ. Sedaris quit the teaching job and moved to New York, and as fate would have it found a Christmas job on Macy’s 8th floor doling out candy canes for $7 an hour. The North Carolina native’s quirky manner didn’t meld comfortably with his new elf persona. “I’ve always loved Christmas,’’ admits David Sedaris with exasperation. “I was surprised when people read The SantaLand Diaries and thought I was anti-Christmas...But when you go from people calling you ‘Mr. Sedaris’ to calling you ‘Crumpet’, it plays games with your psyche.’’ Through his connection with Ira Glass he was invited to read The SantaLand Diaries on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition on December 23, 1992, launching his career as a writer and commentator. He later published the essay in his best-selling 1994 collection Barrel Fever.
When acclaimed multiple Tony-winning stage director Joe Mantello read The SantaLand Diaries he saw it as theater: “David’s writing is so peculiar and twisted, I had to bring it to the stage.’’ The SantaLand Diaries debuted at the Atlantic Theater Company in New York on November 7, 1996.
• Santa has been visiting with children at Macy’s since 1862.
• Over 250,000 visitors find their way to Santaland at the Herald Square flagship during the holiday season.
• It is an elf’s lot to remain merry in the face of torment and adversity.
