CHRISTMAS: It’s just 77 days until Christmas.

For adults, that likely elicits a groan. For children, the magic that is the holidays can’t come soon enough.

We’re planning some special sections for Christmas time, and are hoping Era readers will share with us some memories and photos of Christmas past — the older, the better.

We’re looking for Christmas parades, where children went to visit the jolly old elf himself — Santa, pictures of Christmas displays of old, and memories and photos of the years of those can’t miss toys — Beanie Babies, Cabbage Patch Kids and the like.

We remember visiting Santa in the middle of the Bradford Mall, where the fountain would be covered and the animatronic displays would mesmerize us — an ice skating Pink Panther, woodland creatures on a teeter-totter.

And we’ve heard how generations of local children would visit Santa at 45 Main St. — Emery Hardware in older times, Angell’s Entertainment Center about a decade ago and the Main Street Mercantile now.

Share your photos and stories, via email, at news@bradfordera.com with a note they are for Christmas Memories; or via U.S. Postal Service at The Bradford Era/ Christmas Memories, P.O. Box. 365, Bradford, PA 16701. Please include your name, address and number so photos can be returned.

HISTORY: The year 1900 was a busy one for the City of Bradford.

On Oct. 2, 1900, The Era wrote about the arrival in Bradford of a new librarian.

“Mr. Robert Fletcher, recently elected librarian of the new Carnegie Library, arrived in the city yesterday and will begin his duties today.

“He will begin work at the Bradford Library, sorting the books which need rebinding and preparing others for cataloging, It is estimated that it will take six months to properly catalog and arrange the 7,000 volumes in the old libraries and get them in shape to put on the shelves of the new institution.”