When we think of Christmas a century ago we usually look backward, imagining nostalgic scenes from Currier & Ives or Norman Rockwell. Our grandparents, on the other hand, had their eyes locked firmly on the future. Exciting technological developments such as electricity and the gasoline engine promised to make life more rewarding and exciting.

Santa’s sleigh was growing passe. Now he came to town, at least in several Bangor newspaper advertisements, in a gondola suspended from an airship. The first dirigible seen by Bangoreans had glided briefly above the Eastern Maine State Fair just last summer.

The jolly old elf could also be seen onscreen for the first time at The Nickel, the city’s first movie theater, in “The Night Before Christmas.” The famous poem was “illustrated in pantomime.”

Automobiles were being advertised as suitable gifts by S. L. Crosby Co. on Exchange Street. For anywhere from $650 to $1,250 one could buy the spouse a Reo roadster or runabout. No clever newspaper artist in Bangor portrayed Santa coming to town with an auto full of presents, however, because every child knew how bad the roads were in 1907.

Machinery that could broadcast sound was opening up a whole new world as well. Those with a little money to spend could buy the latest in listening equipment – reginaphones, Victor talking machines and Edison phonographs – at Rice & Tyler’s piano store on Central Street.

Those who couldn’t afford one of the new talking machines would soon be able to go and hear the latest holiday tunes at the city’s first penny arcade.

Perhaps the most enduring sign that Bangor had a bright future was the growing number of modern department stores. Their big plate glass window displays were illuminated with stunning exhibitions of electricity. Newspaper reporters seemed awestruck by the decorations at Freese’s in particular. “Three electrical stars, pending from which are ropes of lights and an electrical sign, the whole design consisting of 1,500 globes, form an imposing decorative effect,” wrote a Bangor Daily News scribe on Dec. 2.

Floor by floor, the reporter described the store’s offerings. “The specialty on the first floor is ribbons with fine displays of jewelry, comb sets, handkerchiefs, Japanese crockery, china and suchlike. Lufkin, the confectioner, will serve delicious candies in Christmas boxes. There are ladies furnishings, long and short gloves, and umbrellas … men’s neckware are in abundance, besides an assortment of suspenders and arm elastics …” And so on to the second floor and beyond.

As Christmas approached, the city’s new Union Station, another sign of bustling modernity, was crowded with trains hauling extra passenger cars. “Christmas spirit, too, was evident around these trains. The platforms were filled with people waiting to greet friends. And when the long strings of cars rolled under the train-shed, there was a succession of exclamations and shouts of greeting from one end of the place to the other,” recounted the Bangor Daily News on Christmas morning.

People opened their presents, ate their dinners, and then many took to the streets for various entertainments on Christmas day. These included a boxing match, Mike Cunningham of Lewiston vs. Young Cote of Biddeford; a live drama, “The Two Orphans,” at the Bangor Opera House; group singing and a movie, “The Clockmaker’s Secret,” at The Nickel.

A few men’s clubs gathered for festivities. The Knights Templar drank a toast at noon, and the Tarratine Club had open house all day. At 2 a.m., it was reported, the Cascaret Club, an organization of “well known Bangor young men,” had held a banquet at Thomas J. Welch’s Restaurant on Washington Street.

Amidst all the festivities, “the deserving poor” were amply attended too, testified lengthy newspaper stories about events at charitable institutions. Homeless transients, however, remained undeserving. Known as “shelters,” they were given a cot at the city jail.

“A ‘shelter’ is a man who has no money and no place to go, and is therefore willing to spend the night locked in a cell, where he can at least be warm and fairly comfortable,” explained an unsympathetic Bangor Daily News reporter on December 26. “For breakfast he is given a cup of water, together with several crackers which are ample of circumference and have the good quality of being filling….What a way to spend Christmas!”

Meanwhile, a certain criminal element took to the streets at Christmas, a sure sign that just beneath the surface plenty of poverty existed in the Queen City beyond the “shelters” and the beneficiaries of the charitable institutions. The Panic of 1907 was still depressing the economy, although the Bangor press had noted little effect locally. The newspapers warned shoppers to beware of pickpockets in crowded stores. Three young teenagers, Andrew and Robert Barry and Moses Weinberg, were sentenced to 60 days in the city jail for robbing several Salvation Army collection boxes.

When Christmas day was over, the newspapers devoted far more space to the post-holiday revels of the wealthy set than to crime. A host of parties was planned at Society Hall, Memorial Parlors and other fashionable spots, the most brilliant and elaborate being Miss Dorothy Woodman’s coming out party on December 27, according to the Bangor Daily News.

Young people had exchanged the antics of the Barn Dance, popular at Thanksgiving, for the Yale Flip. “The college boys have brought it with them, along with a new style in evening vests,” explained a weary Bangor Daily News society reporter on Dec. 27. Doubtlessly, these privileged youths knew little of “shelters” or pilfering Salvation Army collection boxes.

wreilly@bangordailynews.net