Hey, it's Curious City reporter Monica Eng. And as we get closer to the Christmas holiday,

one listener wants to know the history behind a Chicago Christmas tradition and the institution

that created it. That's coming up. If you're already a WBEZ member, thank you.

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Carolyn Cross's great-grandparents came to Chicago from Lithuania around the turn of the century.

And even as newly arrived immigrants, they started participating in a Chicago Christmas tradition,

visiting the Walnut Room restaurant at the Marshall Field's department store downtown on State Street.

It all started when her great-grandmother took her grandmother.

And then my grandmother took my mom, and then my mom took me.

So, you know, it's been a tradition in the family for a long time.

In that tradition, it's always included some specific steps.

First, when we were little, little kids, we would go see Santa Claus.

After that, we would go look at the windows.

Then the best part, chicken pot pie at the walnut room. Now, if you're not familiar with this Chicago Christmas tradition,

the walnut room is a huge, elegant restaurant in the seventh floor of Marshall Fields, now a Macy's.

It's trimmed with Circassian walnut from Russia and flanked by white columns

with a second-level balcony overlooking the main floor. And every year, around the holidays,

an enormous Christmas tree stands in the center of it all. Here's how Carolyn remembers it.

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