Troy — Malls have lost the suburban glamour and cultural power that made them the set of many ’80s or ’90s movies. Now they’re odd spectacles of assimilation.
I couldn’t recall the last time I had gone to the mall. Somerset Mall is only a 20-minute drive, but most of my shopping happens at the grocery store and on my laptop. I had no clue what to get my family members for Christmas, so I figured that perusing a wide variety of goods in person might bring some inspiration.
Christmas decorations hung from the massive skylights, and a snowy palace rose three stories tall near the elevators. There was a line leading to the Christmas castle. Parents took deep breaths, summoning patience while wrangling their high-energy toddlers, awaiting an escort from the elves for a coveted audience with the jolly man himself.
One of the kids kept running off and hiding behind the bench I was watching from. After his mother’s first few unsuccessful attempts to call him back in a mixture of Arabic and English, she came over and scooped him up.
Being from Metro Detroit, I don’t bat an eye at hijabs, and my ears have long since ceased to class Arabic as foreign. But it suddenly struck me as odd. Saint Nicholas has no place in the Muslim canon. Then I realized that the majority of the families in line to see Santa were Middle Eastern. Some were Chaldean, but there were plenty of Muslims in the queue as well.
Turns out celebrating Christmas was a pretty hotly debated topic within Islam. Many imams argued against adopting the holiday—some because it was too Christian, some because it was too secular—but still others argued that Muslims could celebrate Jesus’s birth because he is one of their prophets. The religious arguments are certainly interesting, but Mall Santas represent more than Christianity’s influence on the West.
Mall Santas are an American fixture. Macy’s claims to have hosted the first Santa Claus in 1861 in New York. After World War II, as the suburbs and shopping malls boomed, visiting Mall Santas became an annual tradition.
The Muslim parents in line to visit the fat man in red were participating in a tradition as American as Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July. The kids running around with red hats and snowflake-laden sweaters were sharing the experience of millions of American children before them.
Then, out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a shock of long bleach-blonde hair. It was an old Chaldean woman wearing a large, gold rosary around her neck. She was speaking Aramaic with her daughter, who pushed a stroller with a feisty little boy inside and an Express shopping bag on the handle. I started looking around for other blondes and quickly realized she was the only one in sight. I searched for white people and saw maybe three or four families in the packed mall.
The Chaldean women were walking my way, so I got up and offered them my seat. Watching the crowd was fun, but I couldn’t return home without at least one gift checked off my list.
Starbucks had a line that had barely moved during my bench reverie. I couldn’t bring myself to wait that long, so I went to the empty Nordstrom coffee bar.
The slight embarrassment I felt over my off-brand coffee reminded me that the mall is a place to be seen. In the 1980s, 1990s, and even 2000s, teenagers could reliably be found at malls after school. You could watch them wandering around Abercrombie & Fitch or Hollister and sharing meals with friends at the food court. They always dressed their best (even if that meant high-tops and layered T-shirts). It was where the community gathered. It wasn’t just about shopping, the mall was an American cultural institution, the town square.
The problem with places like this is that in 2024 nobody needs to go out.
White suburbanites have lived in the concrete sprawl, ruled by cars and 20-to-30-minute trips, for multiple generations now. They can do their shopping online, so they do. Many even go to church online.
Middle Eastern immigration to the U.S. has been a relatively recent development. Many of the community’s elders in Metro Detroit are immigrants themselves and remember meeting one another in public spaces, seeing each other in person as they go about their daily tasks. Their religions are rigorous. They don’t count livestream viewers toward attendance.
White suburbanites have retreated from the malls, the material meeting place for commerce and community. They buy and return online, occasionally texting back and forth with an AI customer service representative. The Middle Eastern diaspora has adopted the mall as a new town square in a new country. They go to Somerset, dress their best, visit Santa, stroll through stores, and know whether the sweater they are about to purchase will itch or not.
Black Friday at Somerset offered a bizarre, yet sweet, vision of assimilation to an older American way of life—one that those who are from here seem to have forgotten.
Caleb Wallace Holm is a contributing writer for Michigan Enjoyer. Follow him on X @calebwholm and Instagram @calebwallaceholm.
