Holidays Offer Window of Opportunity to Be Creative : Displays: Major department stores push aside merchandise to stage seasonal entertainment. And it all draws a crowd.

It’s a tradition with a variety of stores around the country to play impresario with their display windows at Yuletide. The windows become a popular art form--free public theater.

Merchandise is banished in favor of seasonal entertainment that may involve complex and imaginative sets, a cast of animated figures, storytelling tableaux and incidental music.

Even people who hate to shop find themselves taking the kids to view these windows.

In a brief survey, few can compete with those of Gump’s in San Francisco when it comes to animated figures. You see, their figures are live, starring in an unscripted production appropriately titled “Tails.” The protagonists do have tails--they are orphaned cats and dogs a spokesperson describes as “adorable and adoptable.”

Gump’s has been doing this in collaboration with the city’s Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals since 1987. To date, nearly 1,100 animals have been adopted.

This year the furry folk have the run of windows with artistically designed settings inspired by Victorian-era San Francisco homes. Naturally, creature comforts--including temperature control and litter boxes--are discreetly incorporated into the design.

The SPCA monitors the animals’ welfare rigorously during the display period, which continues through Dec. 31, and also carefully oversees adoptions.

Chicago’s big department stores provide an eyeful for sidewalk fans. Lord & Taylor’s holiday windows this year feature a turn-of-the-century circus.

On State Street, spectators can inspect “Santa’s Workshop,” at Carson, Pirie, Scott & Co. Four windows are filled with elfin activities--in the mail room, the carpenters’ workshop, the paint shop and the shipping and packing department, all with background music. The stylized figures range from two- to three-feet tall and were created by a local sculptor.

Also on State Street: The fairytale “Cinderella” is colorfully enacted, chapter after chapter of soap-opera charm, in 13 of Marshall Fields’ windows. The characters in the drama are figures about three feet tall, costumed in elaborate period dress amid matching decor.

Filene’s in Boston has developed two themes, both deriving their basic theme from that good old Christmas staple, gingerbread.

Five windows on Summer Street frame New England village scenes of houses made of real gingerbread and decorated with assorted candies. Villagers, perhaps working off all those sugar calories, are energetically exuding the seasonal spirit around the village and environs--skiing, ice-skating, decorating their Christmas trees and singing carols.

Another series of Filene’s windows, on Washington Street, features gingerbread holiday ornaments handmade by celebrities to be auctioned for charity.

The list of more than 50 celebrity gingerbread sculptors includes David Letterman, Bill Blass, Julia Child and Candice Bergen. Their works are all open to bids in a silent auction, whose proceeds will go to the Floating Children’s Cancer Center at New England Medical Center.

In New York City, Macy’s offers an irreverent look at “Christmas at the White House” in four windows on 34th Street.

In the Red Room, the president and his wife unsuspectingly prepare for a quiet family Christmas, while Ross Perot in the guise of Santa peers down the chimney. In the Oval office, Barbra Streisand appears to be in charge with her feet up on the desk. In the White House kitchen, Hillary has pulled a batch of cookies from the oven, and in Chelsea’s bedroom, the first daughter is curled up reading “ ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas” with Socks asleep on her bed.