As someone who fully embraces the nostalgia that flows through this little hobby, this time of the year always resonates stronger than the rest of the year. If there’s one thing I miss about childhood, it’s the anticipation of Christmas morning. I have heard that once you become a parent you almost get a second wind for that kind of anticipation, but this time it’s for your own kids and not yourself. Without kids of my own, it is left to my own memories to recapture that feeling.
Christmas smelled like pine needles and eggnog. It meant a vacation from school and the possibility of snow. I was not as jaded against snow as I am now. I’m older, and the winters feel colder than they did back then. I’m not as eager to hurl snowballs as I once was. I haven’t built a snowman in decades. If Frosty exists in the snow that might pile up in my front yard, he’s on his own. I’m no longer keen to feel slush down the back of my jacket.
Christmas tasted like thumbprint cookies, and cookies shaped like reindeer and Christmas trees. There was a large glass container of small balls made of peanut butter, oatmeal and chocolate that you could eat until you passed out. Christmas was a warm fire and a plate full of snacks. Christmas meant an inevitable stomach ache. The fire was warm, I ate too much, I ruined my appetite for dinner. It’s a wonder I wasn’t a fat child.
Christmas looked like a box of crayons. Gone was the tepid blandness of the rest of the year. The stores were decorated with reds and greens, with silver and gold, and each house straining to outdo the other. Everywhere you turned, colorful lights twinkled in trees and wreaths. The local mall was transformed into a Winter Wonderland, with person-sized candy canes and animatronic bears dressed as Santa that waved as you passed. Everything felt a little bit fuller, a little more alive. It was a disappointment when such a thing could not be sustained, when the world retreated back to the everyday humdrum.
Above all else, Christmas meant fat toy catalogues filled from Sears and J.C. Penney. While Santa was making his naughty or nice list, millions and millions of kids were making their toy lists, and those thick catalogues filled with every toy imaginable were there to help.
It was a different time, a strange time if you consider that everything you might want now is a click away. As a kid, with no disposable income and no way to hit an intangible “submit order” button, that catalogue was a portal to a different universe. Hours melted away while you stared at all of those toys, wondering how it would feel to own that, or how cool it would be to play with that. Sometimes this was the first opportunity you would have had to see a particularly stubborn toy, or it might have been the debut of a brand new action figure you had no idea was coming. There was no SDCC then, no preorders. Toys had a way of sneaking up on you, suddenly appearing in catalogues, the back of packages, or, if you were lucky, the toy aisle itself.
There was cruelty in those catalogues; cruelty that came in the knowledge that you could never have everything. You learn the extent of your own greed when your Christmas list runs both the front and back of a piece of paper…and you’re still not through. You learn to prioritize. They’re listed in the order of most-wanted to least-wanted, but even your least wanted is still wanted. You want it all. Gimme gimme gimme.
Fingers crossed that you get the ones at the top of the list.
Somehow the catalogues made everything seem cool. Maybe it was the way the toys were all bunched together in their individual panels. Maybe it was the miniature scenes created by a handful of fake snow, or a sprinkling of sand. A couple of Masters of the Universe figures might be cool enough if they’re all standing around, but somehow their awesomeness was amplified if they were standing around a Castle Grayskull surrounded by dirt and mud and withered trees. That AT-AT is an impressive toy, but how much more impressive is it standing in the snow, flanked by a handful of Snowtroopers. How cool would that be under the tree?
It would be there. Christmas of ’82, along with a Snowspeeder to bring it down.
Christmas was anticipation. It was that nervous flutter in the chest, and the night that never ended. How do you expect me to sleep on Christmas eve? There are presents out there, somewhere in the house. I had my list memorized. But had they been able to find what I wanted? I know we weren’t overflowing with money. Was it too much to hope for both Shockwave and Megatron? I hadn’t been able to decide which I wanted the most.
They would be there. Christmas of ’85, along with the batteries for Shockwave.
Christmas was bittersweet satisfaction. It’s a moment you never want to end, the next present, the next unwrapping, the next possibility. But it does. As a kid it’s hard to feel satiated — you take your time with each present, opening the package, inspecting it, playing with it, making it last, knowing that there is always a finite amount of anything. But it does end. With the end comes the playing and the enjoying, and the knowledge that it will be another year before that particular deluge comes. It feels like an eternity away. But soon you’re an adult and the memories of Christmas long past have piled up like so much destroyed wrapping paper.
As a kid you’re stuck in a moment, rooted on yourself and your own wants and needs. You’re thumbing through a catalogue and wishing for everything. As an adult you realize how lucky you were. Those memories are captured in your own personal catalogue, to be flipped through whenever you want.
