The official soundtrack
for this entry--MUST be played while reading:
Somewhere in My
Memory
Candles in the window,
shadows painting the ceiling,
gazing at the fire glow,
feeling that gingerbread feeling.
Precious moments,
special people,
happy faces,
I can see.
Somewhere in my memory,
Christmas joys all around me,
living in my memory,
all of the music,
all of the magic,
all of the family home here with me.
It’s impossible
for me to hear this song—originally from the Golden Age classic “Home Alone”--
and not be immediately consumed with warm fuzzy memories of the Christmases of
my childhood.
There were
certainly a lot of great ones. I
remember the trips to cut down a fresh tree, then bringing it home and
decorating it with my parents and my sister.
I remember spending Christmas Eve with my Dad's family and Christmas Day with my Mom's. Delicious food, elaborate desserts, warm
houses, lots of people laughing, lots of relatives who have since passed on.
And, the
presents—oh, the presents! Lego sets. Wrestling figures. Video games.
Board Games. Bicycles. Any toy you could dream of. One year, I even got a swingset. As a kid, Christmas morning represents all
that you’ve worked for over the course of an entire year—affirmation that you
were, in fact, a good boy or girl, and that Santa noticed and was rewarding you
for it.
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| Early '90s Lego "Ice Planet" Set |
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| WWF Hulk Hogan Hasbro Action Figure |
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| The Original Gameboy (via http://danielvol4.blogspot.com) |
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| My Pal 2 |
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| CROSSFIIIIIIIIRREEEEEEEE |
I received so
many great Christmas gifts in my childhood that it’s impossible to pick a
favorite. But perhaps the one that
stands out most in my mind is when I got the original Nintendo Entertainment
System for Christmas in 1990. I’m not
sure that I appreciated how big (or expensive) a gift it was at the time, but I
do know that I spent countless hours playing it throughout the rest of my childhood.
Six years later, when I WAS old enough to
realize that a gift was expensive and difficult to obtain, I got another of my
most memorable gifts—Nintendo 64. That
Christmas N64 was flying off the shelves, and selling for almost 4x MSRP on the black
market. But I guess I was just a lucky
kid, because Santa somehow found one for me.
(Not me of course, but another young Golden Ager celebrating getting his n64 for Christmas)
For her part, my
sister scored both a Tickle-Me-Elmo and a Furby during the Christmases that
those items were all the rage. My
parents certainly weren’t paying more than retail price, but we do have an
uncle who “knew some people.”
Christmas was
just a wonderful time. There were more
great gifts than I could ever remember, but I know I’ll never forget the
anticipation leading up to Christmas Day and the pure joy and excitement that
we felt running downstairs on Christmas morning. It was magical.
Sadly, as I got
older, that magic wore off. The air came
out of the Santa balloon. The toys and
games turned to boxer shorts and tube socks.
The family gatherings that used to be so fun began to feel repetitive
and boring, and all the good food we used to eat became a downer because I knew
it would make me fat. All the things
that I used to look forward to, I became indifferent about. And after a while, indifference and apathy
gave way to an active dislike. By my
college years, I thought the whole thing was a commercial fabrication, and I
actively told people that it was “a stupid holiday.” A number of factors in my life had made
me a lot more cynical about a lot of things, and Christmas, which had once been
my favorite day of the year, became an object of scorn.
Then in early 2007 I
took a service trip to Honduras that changed my perspective on a lot of things
in life--so much so that I decided to spend Christmas that year at a Honduran
Orphanage with some friends. My mom was
pretty sad that I wouldn’t be home for Christmas for the first time ever, but I
think we both knew that it was the right thing to do. The kids in Honduras had really never
experienced Christmas the way I knew it. As it turned
out, Santa didn’t visit orphanages in Honduras—until 2007, at least. We made a small stocking full of school
supplies and candy for each kid, and gave each a toy or other fun present, many of
which we’d brought with us from donors in America. The excitement on Christmas morning was off
the charts. You would have thought
they had won the lottery. This was
Christmas in its purest form, and it reminded me of the magic of the day.
Here’s why I
tell you this story, on this blog for children of the '80s and '90s: as a generation, it is now our responsibility to ensure
that every kid can experience the unadulterated joy of Christmas the way we
did. Many of us who grew up in the
“Golden Age For Kids” have countless wonderful Christmas memories—“precious
moments, smiling faces, happy people we can see—somewhere in [our]
memories.” We had loving parents and
families who created those beautiful memories for us--the memories that we still carry with us today and that we'll carry always. Unfortunately,
many children aren’t as lucky. They may
not have parents in their lives, or they may be in families without the means
to provide gifts or elaborate meals or parties.
That’s where we come in. Whether
it’s spending Christmas at an orphanage in a place like Honduras (or anywhere else) or it’s adopting an angel and buying a gift for a child that
would otherwise be disappointed, or maybe it’s just doing some other act of
kindness that benefits a child at this time of the year…. The responsibility is
ours now. God knows we had enough
joyful Christmas moments throughout our childhoods—let’s make sure that the
next generation has those same moments.
Because every kid deserves to experience the magic of Christmas—and if
you can bring happiness to a child on Christmas, you just may be reminded of that
magic yourself.
