“It would be a public relations disaster to eliminate them,” he said. But, he added, “I suspect they’ll quietly cut back, spend less, become less elaborate. And they’ll disappear when the companies themselves eventually disappear.”

It’s hard to fault struggling retailers for trying to recoup some of the cost, but part of the windows’ allure has always been that they were pure fantasies untainted by any overtly commercial appeal. Those days seem to have passed.

At Lord & Taylor, this year’s windows are co-branded by the Hallmark Channel, which is promoting its “Countdown to Christmas” holiday programming. Farther uptown, the windows at Saks Fifth Avenue not only carry the Mastercard logo, but the “Snow White” theme on display is basically a plug for the Walt Disney Company, which said it had entered a “promotional partnership’’ with Saks for the windows. (To both stores’ credit, there are no paid product placements in the windows, a trend that has infected some other holiday windows in the city.)

The crowds jostling to see Lord & Taylor’s displays used to be so large that ropes were deployed to maintain an orderly flow. But when I stopped by this week, the pedestrians on Fifth Avenue were rushing by, and few paused to take a look. No ropes were needed. Down the street, the repurposed B. Altman department store, which now houses the City University of New York’s Graduate Center, sat like a hulking ghost of Christmas past.

Still, there was plenty of greenery and lots of twinkling lights on the Lord & Taylor facade, and holiday music wafted over the sidewalk. The windows themselves were charming, although less elaborate than the ones I remembered from years past. Saks also featured an impressive full-facade light show after dusk. Its windows were attracting somewhat larger crowds during the day when I stopped by.