Merry Christmas From Georgia Lift Solutions
As you all know usually our blog talks about elevators from a technical sense or informational, but for this particular Holiday Season I am dispensing with that to bring you a story of why elevators are so special in my eyes. So here we go. See if you see yourself in my words.
A Child’s Wonder
I’m an old man now, older than I ever expected to be, and the world has changed in ways I could never have imagined. But sometimes — often around Christmas — my mind travels back to one of my earliest memories: my very first elevator ride. It was winter, the kind that painted frost on windows and made every breath come out like a ghost. My mother held my hand firmly and comforting, and we stepped inside a lobby decorated with holly and lights that glowed like tiny embers.
We were visiting my aunt, who lived “way up high,” according to my mother. I didn’t know what that meant until the moment I pressed a round, glowing button marked with the number 7 inside the elevator car. That button lit up like a Christmas ornament under my mittened finger, and I remember thinking I had unlocked some kind of magic.
The doors closed with a soft ding, and the world changed.
There was a hum, a gentle tug beneath my feet, and then the impossible happened: I rose into the air while standing still. My stomach fluttered. My mother smiled at me the way grown-ups do when they know you’ve just discovered something marvelous. When the doors slid open again, we were somewhere else entirely — another hallway, another world, the air warmer and scented with cinnamon from my aunt’s baking from down the hall.
That moment — the awe of it — never completely left me.
As years passed, I rode plenty of elevators, in offices and malls and hospitals, and the wonder faded the way childhood magic often does. Elevators became practical, predictable, ordinary. You press a button, you wait, you go up or down. Simple. Efficient. Forgettable.
But now, looking back across the long hallway of my life, I realize how extraordinary elevators really are — these quiet machines that carry us to new places with little more than a whisper and a ding. And every Christmas, when the world slows down and memories have room to drift in, I feel that first ride again. I remember how tall the doors seemed. How warm the light was. How big the world felt when I stepped out.
Funny thing is, as I grew older, elevators grew more impressive too — far more dramatic than the simple little lift that carried me to my aunt’s apartment. Today, there are elevators that would have made my childhood self dizzy with excitement.
Unique Elevator Experiences Today
Take the Bailong Elevator in China — a glass elevator that climbs the side of a cliff, lifting people hundreds of meters all at once. I saw a video of it once. If I’d ridden something like that as a boy, I might have thought I was being carried up into the clouds themselves. Even now, the idea of rising along a mountainside in a transparent box stirs something in me — a whisper of that original wonder.
Or the Santa Justa Lift in Lisbon, a grand piece of architecture that looks as though it belongs in a storybook, all iron lacework and nostalgia. It carries people not just between floors but between different levels of an entire city. I imagine the young children who ride it today, the way their eyes must widen the way mine once did, and it makes me smile.
And then there’s the strange little tram inside the Gateway Arch in St. Louis. Years later, I rode it myself. It creaked and clicked as it climbed the curve of that gleaming monument, and for a brief moment, I felt young again — suspended between earth and sky, climbing in a way that felt both impossible and delightful. When I stepped out at the top and looked down at the city, I thought of that small boy pressing the number 7 at Christmas.
Even the elevators of modern skyscrapers — those fast, smooth magic tricks that whisk you up dozens of floors before you have time to blink — carry a bit of childhood enchantment if you let them. The first time I rode one of the high-speed lifts in a tall city tower, my ears popped and I laughed like a fool. For a moment, I forgot my age.
But you don’t need glass cliffs or towering monuments to find wonder in a simple elevator. You only need to see it through the eyes of a child… or the heart of an old man remembering what it felt like to be one.
Elevators are Still Christmas Magic
Back then, Christmas was a season of questions. How does Santa travel the world? How does the tree sparkle? How do gifts appear as if by magic? And somewhere in that mix of mysteries was the elevator: a box that lifted you skyward with the press of a button. It might not have been Christmas-themed, but it felt like part of the season’s magic — a pocket of warmth and light in the cold winter air.
I suppose that’s why the memory lasted.
The older I get, the more I appreciate the simple wonders we rush past as adults. We spend so much time thinking about where we’re going that we forget to marvel at what carries us there. Elevators aren’t glamorous. They don’t boast. They don’t demand attention. But they’re small miracles of everyday life — quiet, dependable, a piece of engineering that connects our stories.
I’ve ridden elevators when I brought my first child home from the hospital. I’ve ridden them to job interviews, to weddings, to funerals. I’ve held grandchildren in my arms as they pressed the glowing buttons, just as I once did. I’ve stood beside people laughing, crying, staring at their shoes, staring at their phones, staring at their own reflections. Elevators might be simple machines, but they witness the whole spectrum of human life.
And at Christmastime — with families gathering, cities sparkling, and memories drifting like snowflakes — elevators become small vessels carrying us toward the moments that matter.
Merry Christmas from Georgia Lift Solutions
Its really no wonder that I came to work in the industry that so impressed the child barely a kindergartener, and if I could speak to that little boy now during that wonderful ride I’d tell him:
Never lose this feeling. Hold onto this wonder. One day, it will remind you who you are and of the feeling of Christmas.
And if I could speak to you, the reader, I’d say this:
The next time you step into an elevator — especially at Christmastime — pause for just a breath. Feel the warmth. Watch the doors close like curtains before a show. Listen to the hum, the ding, the whisper of the cables. You’re traveling, even if only a few floors. But travel is always a bit of magic.
I’m an old man now, but every December, when I press that button and watch it glow, I am six years old again, rising gently toward a hallway filled with cinnamon and family and love.
And that — that rising — is still a wonder.
Merry Christmas from Georgia Lift Solutions!
