You Can Take the Girl Out of Philly, but You Can’t Take Philly Out of the Girl

By MELISSA WILLIS
I held fast to this belief throughout the 15 years I made my home in Wildwood. I grew up in the same Italian Catholic neighborhood where three generations of my family had lived before me and I never imagined that Philly wouldn’t feel like home. As Christmas approached, however, I was beginning to have my doubts.
I had been back in the city for less than a year and I felt like a fish out of water. The noisy crowds rattled nerves accustomed to quiet winters in a near deserted beach town. The smells assaulted my nose with every breath. Everything felt cold and impersonal and I was beginning to wonder if I had made a huge mistake when I decided to move back.
As December began to slip past, I turned positively mopey. One Friday night, I curled up in bed with a bag of potato chips and a full schedule of made-for-TV movies on the tube. I sobbed my way through six hours of cheesy Christmas movies and drifted off to sleep with the ghosts of my own Christmases past dancing in my head.
On Saturday morning, I awoke with a brilliant idea. I called my brother and arranged to meet him in Center City the following Monday. We toured the Christmas Village at Love Park and snacked on treats from Reading Terminal Market. We wandered through Dickens Village, A Christmas Carol coming to life before our eyes.
Striding into Macy’s for its iconic light show, we spread our coats on the floor just as we had done when we were kids and it had been Wanamaker’s department store. We munched on sugar cookies as thousands of brightly colored lights danced and twinkled over a display nearly four stories high. Sometime before the grand finale, I realized that I felt genuinely relaxed for the first time in months.
That Christmas outing was a game-changer for me and I walked out of Macy’s into an unseasonably warm December evening determined to repeat it every year. Just last week, I snuck away on my lunch break to take in the holiday show at the Comcast Center. Carols blared through the building’s lobby as snowmen boogied and an animated Santa made his descent over Liberty Place.
As the show came to an end and flurries of artificial snow drifted down from the ceiling, I leaned back against the wall, smiling gently to myself. Christmas in the city brings the Philly in me back to life. It remains to be seen whether or not that will carry over into other areas of my life but at that moment, it truly felt good to be home.
Willis writes from Marcus Hook, Pa.