From the newsroom of the Washington Post, Washington Post is Colby.

Hi, Stephanie McCreement from the Washington Post.

This is Post Reports.

I'm Martine Powers.

It's Monday, December 23rd.

Today, the death of the American shopping mall, how Dry January has launched an era of

sober curiosity and the origins of your Christmas tree.

I remember my parents used to be like, why are we taking this all again?

Like, what do you even do there?

You don't have any money.

It was such a negotiation.

Like, can you please just drop me off?

I'm Abba Vatterai and I am the National Retail reporter.

So many of the movies that we grew up watching, I feel like, in middle school, at a high school

or center to around the mall, either that's where the job I would take place, where it was sort

of a critical point where everybody mingled and things went down.

Like, in mean girls where they kind of equate the mall with a watering hole

and everyone's gathering there and you can watch all the primates in their natural habitat.

Exactly.

Being an older children mall kind of reminded me of being home in Africa by the watering hole.

And the animals are in heat.

And the movie mall rats, you know, the name says it all.

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