(festive music) - Welcome to this special edition of "ONQ", I'm Michael Bartley at the beautifully decorated Heartwood mansion here in the North Hills.

If you've never visited this place, it's a true holiday treat, with the Christmas trees, all the elaborate decorations, giving you that warm holiday feeling.

In this episode, we'll be looking back at "ONQ" Christmas stories past.

In the decade or so that "ONQ" has been on the air, we've covered dozens of holiday stories, taking Christmas tours, profiling craftsmen, visiting local companies, some of which aren't even around anymore, but thanks to the "ONQ" archives, they live on.

So let's go back in time to those earlier Decembers, and look at "ONQ" Christmas stories through the years.

(gentle festive music) - [Reporter] Not quite off the beaten path on route 906, near Belle Vernon, Westmoreland County, in a building that was once a roller rink, is a company that makes something very special.

(sewing machine whirring) This is Halco, a factory that makes clothing to suit Santa Claus, Mrs. Claus, the elves and all of Santa's helpers.

- Claunette, I see the order here from Hong Kong.

- Yes, just came here with a fax.

- It's a lot of suits.

- [Reporter] Terri Greenberg wears many hats at Halco.

She's vice president of sales and marketing.

Also the owner's daughter.

Right now, her biggest concern is getting the orders out.

- He ordered hats and stockings.

It started out as a Halloween costume company, and they made all different kinds of the old fashioned like Mighty Mouse costumes that you would step in and wear the mask on.

And that's how we just stayed with the manufacturing of the Santa end of it.

(sewing machine whirring) - [Reporter] Terri's father, Alan Hoffman, bought the shop more than 25 years ago.

Now it sows and sells well over 45,000 Santa suits a year and production has to start early.

- [Terri] January, we plan our season for next year.

We plan our production schedule, we produce new costumes, we have trade shows, we do, our trade shows really give us the indicator of what types of sales we'll have for the year.

And that's when we show our stuff.

When we have the salesmen, we get our samples out to our salesmen all over and that really gives us the barometer for what the year will be.

And we start sewing again in February.

- [Reporter] Halco makes 12 different suits as well as other Christmas accessories.

Jingle bells, Santa toy bags, even wigs and beards, just about anything Santa would need to outfit his crew at the North Pole.

- This is one of our bestselling suits.

It's our velvet Santa with long hair fur.

This suit has been around for many years and we just try to keep it in stock 'cause it's constantly selling out.

And we sew, sew, sew.

This really is a beautiful, beautiful suit.

This suit is another suit that we gave an option.

Santa suits don't change in their design, but this year we added pockets on the outside, which made it nice for Santa.

♪ Here come Santa Claus ♪ ♪ Here comes Santa Claus ♪ ♪ Right down Santa Claus lane ♪ - [Narrator] And while Mr. Claus is known for one style of suit Mrs. Claus wants a little more variety.

She has two dresses.

Then there's this perky Pixies costume designed by Terry's mother for Santa's helpers.

And let's not forget the elves.

They have their own green line.

Chances are when your kids sit on Santa's lap they're sitting on a Halco suit.

- Hey, show a little respect for the suit huh.

(soul music) - [Narrator] And they've even shown up in the movies.

- Our suits have been seen on "Law and Order", "Jake and the Fat Man".

We've been on the "Today Show".

We have been in Macy's Day Parade.

So we're just thrilled that if we see a suit of ours, any one of our sewers can say, "That's a Halco suit and we know it's a Halco suit.

- [Narrator] Halco employees are also proud of the quality work.

Very few suits come back for replacement and some have lasted for 20 years.

(machine whirring) How much?

Well, it depends on the style and material.

Now you can buy one for as little as $50 and as much as 800.

And it comes complete.

- It comes with your hat, your coat, your belt, your boot tops, your gloves, your glasses.

- [Narrator] Halco is strictly wholesale with distributors all over the world.

Reaching as far as Asia.

- [Terri] We have sales reps all over.

We're not a store, we're not an outlet and we're not set up for people to come here to try on clothing or for people to look around and decide.

I like this, or I don't.

- [Narrator] And with all of these holiday colors flying around, when the big day arrives?

- Christmas is let down in December because we've been doing this since February.

By the time Christmas comes, we don't wanna see red and white material anymore.

- We work all year for these two months.

It is what makes our company so unique.

And these women just really put their best what's in their best foots and their best efforts forward 'cause they know that it's something to please everyone and Christmas is such a wonderful holiday.

So everybody feels good about what they do.

♪ What a beautiful sight ♪ ♪ Jump in bed cover up your head ♪ ♪ 'Cause Santa Claus comes tonight ♪ (Christmas music) - It starts out kind of light and yellow color.

- I like that one.

- You like that one?

- I like the pink.

- I like those ones too.

Those are awfully pretty.

- [Narrator] Their floral display epitomizes the holiday season.

Their blooms are a simple and uncomplicated as a child's Christmas spirit.

And yet, there is an element of confusion.

- The first thing I've got to ask you, how do you say the name of this flower?

- Well, there's actually two ways that you can say it.

And I prefer the way as poinsettia, which you actually pronounce the I.

You can also pronounce it as poinsettia, - Poinsettia.

- Poinsettia.

- Right.

- Which you don't pronounce the I, but there is an I in the word.

- [Narrator] Dr. Sven Verlinden is an assistant professor of horticulture here at West Virginia University.

There are 28 varieties of poinsettias here this year, 1800 plants in all.

- Our program here at the university is unique in that most university greenhouses do not produce plants in this, or this many plants or in this mass.

And so he gives the students a real feel for real-life situations and how to grow, and how to deal with poinsettias in a real retail type of a setting.

Probably easier to place it in the market.

See right here, some of these root tips are kind of gone.

- For me, the thing that I enjoy most is just watching the whole scenario of production.

(water splashing) from the small green plants to that first moment in October, when you start to see the first tinge of color, and it really dawns on you, "This is gonna work.

They're really gonna grow."

- [Narrator] This crop of poinsettias is Natalie's baby.

Every day, since August, she and another student have nurtured these plants as part of a special topics class.

- The biggest surprise for me was probably just how much diligence it actually took.

In any other jobs I've had growing plants.

someone else was always looking over my shoulder, so I knew if I goofed up someone else would catch me.

But for this project, it was really important to be on your toes.

And if they got too dry and died, it was pretty much all your fault.

So we, we really had to be careful and watch them close.

When I left for Thanksgiving break, I took them home to my friends, my mom, to my grandparents, everybody got a different color.

So we kind of had Thanksgiving poinsettias.

We had a plum pudding poinsettia on our Thanksgiving table.

- I don't know where they get all these varieties, but I don't remember ever seeing this one before.

- [Narrator] WVU horticulture students also see the retail end of the business, an important part of a horticulture education.

- I like to walk back through the greenhouse and see them massed together.

Then they make a real strong impression.

So I think we picked three things that we had never seen before.

- [Narrator] And that's what makes Gail and her husband atypical poinsettia buyers with so many new varieties from which to choose, 74% of Americans still prefer the traditional-looking red ones.

- Hi.

Yeah, we're ready to check out.

The first plan I picked up was for my mother was the traditional red, because it was so striking, and I thought she would enjoy it from times past.

She lived in Florida where they grow wild outside.

but I put it back.

Heck.

(laughing) I wanted something different, so we just kind of buy what strikes our fancy.

- Not poisonous.

- That's right.

- Everyone thinks poinsettias are poisonous.

- No, they're actually not poisonous, not poisonous at all.

At least not to humans, as far as I know, and to most house animals.

That doesn't mean that you wouldn't get an upset stomach if you ate a poinsettia or even the leaves or the bracts.

- So don't eat them, right?

- No, that's right.

Don't eat them.

- But you won't die if you do.

- No, no.

- Okay.

- Most likely is an upset stomach, and that's probably mostly because of the latex in the leaves and in the bracts.

And so that will actually cause an upset stomach, but it will not cause any problems.

- Not even poisonous to cats.

- No, not poisonous to cats.

- There you have it.

- But they might get an upset stomach.

("Little Drummer Boy") - [Lori Savitch] The poinsettias are native to Mexico where they are nothing more than weeds.

In fact, there's a Mexican Christmas story about poinsettias similar to the story of "The Little Drummer Boy".

("Little Drummer Boy" continues) As the story goes, a poor Mexican girl was sad because she had no gift to bring to the Christ child at Christmas Eve services.

So she presented a bouquet of weeds at the church nativity scene.

Well, the weeds burst into bloom and a Christmas tradition was born.

("Little Drummer Boy" continues) Poinsettias were introduced in America in 1825 when US Ambassador to Mexico, Joel Poinsett brought home some cuttings.

In the early 1900s, German immigrant, Paul Ecke began growing poinsettias at his farm in California.

Today that ranch is the world's largest poinsettia grower.

In fact, 90% of all poinsettias on earth got their start at the Ecke ranch, including all of the ones here at the West Virginia University greenhouse.

Why is this plant so popular?

- [Man] I think it's so popular because it has that perfect combination between a red and green and the contrast of the red and green and it's very Christmassy.

Also the bracts look like a star, which makes it appropriate for the holiday.

(bag rustling) - [Lori] The money from the poinsettia sale is funneled back into the WVU horticulture program for next year's holiday crop.

For "OnQ", I'm Lori Savitch.

(bell music) ("We Wish You A Merry Christmas") (festive music) Light up night, crowds of people, animated windows.

At first glance, it looks and sounds like most other holiday seasons in downtown Pittsburgh.

But this year something is different.

Something that's making even the jolliest of shoppers a little bit melancholic.

- I feel bad it's closing, I wish it wouldn't.

I'm gonna miss it.

- I'm very sad to see it go.

I really enjoyed coming to this store.

- Kaufmann had a name to it.

Would draw people to the store period.

- [Narrator] The store will stay open but the name's about to change.

After nearly 130 years in business, Kaufmann's Department Stores will soon become Macy's.

It's because Kaufmann's parent company was bought out by Federated Department Stores.

But forget talk of big business and mergers.

For Pittsburghers, it's all about memories.

- I came here from where I was a small girl.

Yeah, to Adulthood and I've always enjoyed the Christmas windows at Kaufmann's.

- My parents didn't have a car.

We always took a bus and spend the day to see all the windows everywhere and do our Christmas shopping.

- It's been a part of our lives all these years.

It's been a pleasure to shop there and memories, memories of when I was a young girl to my children to my grandchildren.

So we've gone through the generations of it all.

- [Narrator] And you have to go back quite a few generations to find a time when there wasn't a Kaufmann's in Pittsburgh.

The very first store was founded in 1871, not downtown but in a place called Birmingham, better known today as Pittsburgh South Side.

- The Kaufmann brothers were German Jews who came to Pittsburgh in about 1871.

Actually, '71 was when they started their first store and it was men's tailoring store in it with some ready-made clothes and it was a success from the very beginning.

- [Narrator] There were four Kaufmann brothers, Jacob, Isaac, Morris and Henry.

Jacob and Isaac started the first store.

- The younger brothers came into the business.

- [Narrator] Andy Masich of the Heinz History Center says the other brothers joined in as the business expanded.

- They decided well, we need a second store over in Allegheny City, which is what we call the North Side today.

And then a third store downtown got so big, they called it the depot or the big depot and they closed the other stores to concentrate their efforts downtown.

And between 5th and Forbes, they acquired the whole block and soon it became a department store that rivaled any in the country.

- [Narrator] It rivaled any in the country because Kaufmann's did things other stores had never done before.

- They were really very forward thinking.

They put the customer first.

They were one of the companies that first started putting price tags on things.

Now, this is something we take for granted but in the 1880s and '90s, it wasn't very common to have a price tag, a card on a piece of merchandise but they wanted for everyone to pay the same price.

They didn't want any question about who's getting what for how much.

- [Narrator] And the Kaufmann Brothers loved to renovate.

Here's a photo of something you may have never seen before.

The very first Kaufmann's Clock.

- A four-sided click right on the corner of 5th and Diamond, they called it then.

Now we call it Forbes.

And that clock had a sign under it saying meet me under the clock.

And Pittsburghers did.

Everyone used that as a meeting place.

And when the Kaufmanns redid their store and demolished the old one and built up this modern electrically lit facility, they got rid of the clock.

Well, there was such a hue and cry that Pittsburghers wanted their clock back that Kaufmann's built this bronze electric clock that's still there today.

And that's become a feature of Kaufmann's.

- [Narrator] That new Kaufmann store and clock were completed in 1913 and over the years, as the company grew, so did its traditions.

Kaufmann's passed out holiday books to children and began mailing flyers to customers.

- We have over 35,000 books, which are cataloged.

40 to 45 degrees relative humidity.

- [Narrator] Robert Stakely is an archivist at the History Center.

- [Robert] This is a flyer probably around circa 1920.

The way we can date that is by seeing that one of our big warehouses, which was just completed, which was actually completed in 1920.

- [Narrator] In the 1920s, a china closet cost 18.75.

A high chair went for $1.98.

But those weren't the only kinds of items the department store sold.

- Kaufmann's, at one point, did sell groceries.

They had a hardware store.

They also had an automobile parts department in the store as well.

For me, it's fun because I grew up with Kaufmann's.

- [Narrator] Groceries and car parts eventually went away but in their place came so much more.

(lively music) By 1924, Morris Kaufmann's son, Edgar, took over as president.

Decades later, Kaufmann's merged with The May Company.

Together, they made shopping, especially around the holidays more than a chore.

They made it an event.

- [Man] They always used those fabulous windows as attractions for customers but during the holiday seasons, they pulled out all the stops.

Parents with children in tow would stand for hours in front of the Kaufmann's windows, looking at the Christmas displays.

- [Narrator] You might say it's still the same way today.

Families gazing at the windows and sharing memories.

Lizborg Sholty grew up in Beaver Country and now lives in Georgia.

She made the trip to Kaufmann's downtown while visiting family.

- [Interviewer] I What do you remember about Kaufmann's growing up?

- Basically the windows coming down for the window display, - My daughter wanted to come down mostly.

She said, "I have to see Kaufmann's before it closes."

That's what she said.

So that's what we did.

(toys rattling) - [Narrator] Inside there are lots of folks with fond memories too.

Like display manager Jack Neuser, who's worked for Kaufmann's for 40 years.

- Kaufmann's always was a soft spot in my heart because of the clock, number one.

We had pictures standing under the clock since I was three, I believe.

You know, it's sort of a tradition again.

We've always been Kaufmann shoppers.

So it was very easy to become a Kaufmann employee.

It's phenomenal the years, they must fly by.

It seems like we just put Christmas away when we were putting it up again.

It's been a great time.

- [Narrator] But the times are now changing.

Still, Jack remains positive.

- [Jack] It's gonna be different, yes but it's only a name.

- [Narrator] So you think good things are still to come.

- Absolutely, good things are everywhere and it's what you make of them, ya know.

Definitely.

- [Narrator] But the folks outside aren't so sure.

- I think a Macy's is like New York and Kaufmann's is our own little Macy's.

- It was just an institution in Pittsburgh, downtown Pittsburgh.

- Kaufmann's is a landmark.

With the clock and I don't know, to me it's just the essence of Pittsburgh and shopping.

(pensive music) (lively festive music) (lively music) - The whole things needs to go this way about eight inches.

- Just getting all the wires put on it round the edges and then we're gonna put our guide wire on and then we're just gonna come across and put our lights.

- This is where we had some damage here and these last couple maids a milking had come untied, and were leaning down.

- Every single bulb.

But we have to do all the bulbs, we have to check the sockets, make sure they're good.

- I guess about two million lights in the woods and it's a mammoth project.

Driving through it, I don't know if you would realize that or not but we're talking seven days a week, 25 guys, it's an amazing feat.

(rain pattering) - Straight on up.

(hammer clanging) - Fortunately we start September 16th.

(upbeat music) And we tried to lay out all the major wiring right away then and we take advantage of mother nature, when the leaves all fall, it buries the wiring and the wires are not real obvious at that point.

We're just going to have to get this a little closer now.

What we'll do is we'll check it for power, make sure everything works.

Voila We wrap every tree and every tree limb that we can in the areas that we put them.

And we actually wrap in a circular fashion up the tree.

So the smaller the tree, the more wrapping it requires.

On one tree alone, there's probably six to eight strands of light that each person puts on.

The larger trees take as many as two dozen to three dozen strands of lights, a hundred foot long.

So it takes a lot of lighting.

(upbeat music) - We pulled these out of the trailer.

These balls are broken, you know, when you bumped the balls they go off and they get broke and they go off.

So What we have to do is check all this sockets because sometimes when you pull them out, they get caught on the other displays and we have to replace the sockets, the balls, we just finished up this section right now.

- Every year we have a different hurdle.

One year ramps came late.

One year we had snow and ice, you know one year we didn't have money in place to start the event, every year we think well we're going to correct these things and the following year will be smoother, but there's always something that comes up.

- Deer are really interesting.

Most of the time they aren't a severe problem.

They tend to browse right in front of the displays and add to the people's enjoyment during the show.

However, they have been known to eat light bulbs, but they are a little bit of a nuisance.

- Oh look at that.

That is beautiful.

- I think there's about 37/38 cases of twinkle lights in there.

- And there's 24 in a case and a hundred on a strand.

That's a lot.

- Well, the total park is 652 acres I believe.

We don't go through all that, but we probably go through two-thirds of it probably have approximately two and a half miles of drivable roadway.

(festive music) - It should look perfect, it should look, what I go for when I lay this out is that you get the full impact of every single scene or display from the window of a car.

So, I mean every display that's set, everything that's laid out is placed with me looking out the window of my vehicle because that's how people see it when they come through.

♪ On the first day of Christmas my true love sent to me ♪ ♪ A partridge in a pear tree ♪ - [Man] Each display is anywhere from 15 to 20 pieces.

Some of the larger displays, like "The 12 Days Of Christmas" could be hundreds of pieces that go to make one display.

(festive music) - We're coming into Bear Land right now, right beside Bear Land, we have the colossal Santa.

That's something that I wanted to tell you about.

But it's 60 feet high, and 80 feet wide.

There's 20,000 lamps on there.

(festive music) There's a display up here, it's the blooming tree and it's a trailer park and it's done with miniature lights and an animation unit.

And one of our electricians, John Debonye, came up with this idea on his own, did it on his own, and that was, that was 10 years ago, nine years ago.

(festive music) I would say the thing that I enjoy most about this light show is, once it's up and operating, I like to go down by the donation booth and stand there, and I love to watch people's faces after they'd driven through the light show, I'd say that's, that's the thing I enjoy the most and the children smiling or the, you can't help, but when you drive through this, to feel good and then you can actually see that on people's faces, and it kind of makes it all look wonderful.

(festive music) - We hope you've enjoyed our look at "OnQ" Christmas stories through the years.

For the entire "OnQ" staff, I'm Michael Bartley at the beautiful Heartwood mansion.

Thanks so much for watching, happy holidays.

(gentle festive music) (gentle festive music continues)