CHRISTMAS EVE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXII, Issue 19478, 24 December 1925, Page 10

CHRISTMAS EVE

WANGANUI FULL OF LIFE THE FINAL PREPARATIONS. TO-DAY’S CLIMAX IN THE SHOPS Christmas celebrations are impending. but at the moment of writing Wanganui people are not completely under the season’s spell. In another twenty-four hours the spirit of the city will have changed. In the meantime everybody has been preparing. Yesterday the crowds in the Avenue and other central thoroughfares were very large and unusually urgent. They were out to see the sights, to revel in the remarkable pageantry that tho shop windows at this time of year provide. Outside Ihe main stores, where masters of the craft of window dressing achieve their triumphs, people gathered so thickly that at times one could not pass without stepping off tho pavement. It was not the children only who hung about these enchanting emporiums. At Wanganui—and doubtless it is equally true in other cities—adults are children of a larger growth. A toy shop arrests them infallibly. Younger children can hardly glimpse the treasures within because grown-ups crowd to Hie best points of observation. That happened many times yesterday. Of course, Wanganui toy shops are worth viewing at Christmas time. It should be said, however, that people crowded info the city not merely to see tho sights, but to buy. From about four o’clock in tho afternoon onwards the tramcars and buses were crowded with folk carrying parcels. Shopkeepers, it appeared, had been doing rather well, and some of them are already prepared to admit that the public are buying a little more freely than a year ago and that Christmas, 1925, ma yprove after all a not unsatisfactory season from the point of view of the retail trader. It is believed than trade in Wanganui has sensibly improved, and that people arc t a little more prosperous. A fact that seems to confirm this belief ig the remarkable increase of vehicular traffic in the streets. A leading citizen commented upon this to a ‘ 1 Chronicle” reporter yesterday and said he was amazed at the number of motor cars that were passing up and down the Avenue. Tho railway stations, both in the city and at Aramoho, were thronged by those who were on holiday bent. They were crowded to their utmost capacity, and the time schedules of long-distance train? were showing tho usual seasonal effects. Heavier traffic is expected to and from the citv than a year ago.