“The fastest, coolest kid in the schoolyard”
I remember one of the best gifts that my grandmother ever gave me for Christmas. It was a 1987 Huffy, a BMX-style bike with a curved seat post and hard plastic seat with perforated holes.
She bought it for me because for a whole year I had no interest in the 1970s-era Schwinn that one of my neighbors gave me after I learned how to ride a bike. I rode that Schwinn with my older sister and two cousins in the neighborhood. Then older kids laughed at me, and I began to hate it.
Why We Wrote This
For many children, Christmas morning is all about the presents. But as our writers unwrap their favorite holiday memories from childhood, something else comes into focus: the giver.
My new Huffy was everything. It didn’t even matter that it wasn’t the Huffy Sigma, with plastic white discs covering the spokes, or the BMX model with five-spoke alloy wheels.
While riding it, I felt like I was the fastest, coolest kid in the schoolyard. I could pop a wheelie or do a sliding stop on the back brake, like a scene out of “The Goonies.”
I still have that bike. It’s in my grandma’s house – which may be about to be torn down. I keep it not simply because it’s always hard for me to say goodbye, but also because it reminds me of her.
I always made a list of big brand-name popular toys, not really knowing they asked too much of my grandmother’s budget. Huffys were cheaper versions of better BMX bikes she couldn’t afford. But she wanted to see me smile. That’s how Christmas worked in our house.
That Huffy was the surprise of my childhood. It brought me such joy. So I keep the bike to remember a feeling long lost to me, and the gift giver, who is no longer here.
– Ira Porter / Staff writer
Courtesy of Murr Brewster
Lyrical legacies from the Mesozoic: my stuffed poet Gronk, and his transcriber
My first stuffed animal was a handsome green dinosaur I named Federal, and we were inseparable. His neck plush and fuzzy outer shell, however, were not. So when Federal developed a rip from too much affection, Mom sent him to a farm upstate to play with the other dinosaurs.
That was a mistake, it turned out. I wasn’t really an indulged child, but you’d better believe that I demanded all subsequent critters get the full benefit of surgery.
The next Christmas there was a new dinosaur under the tree. Gronk came with a straw hat and a poem. Gronk had written the poem, of course, though Daddy typed it up. I can still remember Gronk’s opening lines:
A hundred million years before the
first of rabbits rabbitted
And long before the earliest bison
bisoned on the plain,
The world was warm and squoggy,
and was generally inhabited
By dinosaurs that grew and grew but
never had much brain.
All my stuffed animals had jobs. Frisby was a grocer. Bugle ran a messenger service. But it wasn’t until Gronk came along that it occurred to me that you could also be a writer.
Gronk wrote me a poem every Christmas for years. I still have them all, on onion-skin paper. I grew up to be someone who dashed off verses for friends and family on special occasions.
The urge to rhyme runs strong in me, and I even wrote a book of dinosaur poetry myself. I called it “The Gronk Chronicles.”
I would never have learned about the rich lyrical legacy of the Mesozoic era were it not for Gronk, and his transcriber, my dad.
But that dinosaur surely had a way with words, and his legacy now is mine. You’d better believe I still have Gronk, too.
– Murr Brewster / Special contributor
Tearing open the gift of giving
United States troops coming home after World War II were so grateful to be alive and so happy to be reunited with their families, who were equally joyful to see them return.
The eagerness to move past the darkness and chaos of war found expression in parents’ showering their children with gifts at Christmas. Commercial interests, of course, were eager to help.
The mail-order behemoth Sears, Roebuck and Co. issued a holiday toy catalog of 600-plus pages. My siblings and I took turns poring over it and making copious wish lists. We never got everything we wanted, but we were grateful for what we got.
Something was missing, though.
We kids had always dutifully given gifts to each other, in addition to the bubble bath for Mom and soap-on-a-rope for Dad. But then one year it changed for me. I suddenly got a great idea for something to give my younger brother. I was excited.
He was a nascent gearhead, and he’d joked about a name for a fictitious town car club. I knew a store at the mall had some new gizmo that could stamp a custom message on an article of clothing using heat-transfered letters.
I bought a blue cotton work shirt. Then I went to that store and had my custom message emblazoned across the back. I wrapped it up and put it under the tree. I couldn’t wait.
I don’t recall any of the gifts I got that year, but I remember every detail of the one I gave my brother. He thought it was so cool. Dad thought it was hilarious. Mom was impressed that I’d gone to such lengths. I glowed when my brother held up the shirt, which proclaimed, “Libertyville Street Freaks.”
That gift marked a major shift in my childhood. I’d felt a little of what our parents must have felt in celebrating their children with presents. I’d finally torn open the gift of giving.
– Owen Thomas / Special contributor
Courtesy of Courtenay Rudzinski
A special friend and a timeless gift, 50 years later
When Valerie moved in across the street, I was delighted to have another little girl to play with. Not only was she petite and cute as a button, but her family was unlike any neighbors I’d ever seen.
Her father, muscular and tattooed, surprisingly hit it off with my conservative dad. Her mother was young and pretty, and Mimi, the grandmother, lived with them, too.
Valerie had her ears pierced. I repeatedly pointed this out to my mom, only to be told I was too young. Eventually, she relented. I almost passed out in the store after the piercing. Valerie’s mom offered to help me twirl my stud earrings twice daily and showed me how to clean my tender earlobes.
One year at Christmas, Valerie and her mom came to our door with a shoebox. Thinking it was probably cookies or fudge, I was surprised to see lots of smaller tissue-wrapped gifts inside. As my mom and I began to unwrap them, we found several hand-painted ceramic ornaments in the little box. I had never seen anything so beautiful.
We laid them all out on the table and fawned. There was Santa Claus, a gingerbread house, a boy with a snowball. Others included a candy cane, Santa’s boot, and a Christmas wreath. But best of all, there was a stocking with my name, spelled correctly, which is no small feat.
It was such a lovely gift. Now married with grown children, I’ve moved several times and had many Christmas trees. And while Valerie’s family didn’t live there long, these little treasures have traveled through time with me.
Each year as I unpack our holiday decorations, I feel the same wonder I did nearly 50 years ago. When I open these ornaments, a sweet childhood memory evokes the joy of a special friend, and the delight of a timeless gift.
– Courtenay Rudzinski / Special contributor
Courtesy of Howard LaFranchi
A globe for Christmas – and a lifetime of curiosity about the world
In 1964, my big gift under the Christmas tree was a globe with robin’s-egg-blue oceans, countries in a broad spectrum of primary colors, and mountain ranges in bas-relief.
I was 10 years old.
I’ve occasionally thought about that globe, wondering why a young boy would place that atop his wish list. What did that say about a little version of me?
Here’s the chicken-and-egg question I’ve sometimes asked myself: Did that gift from my parents reflect their observations that I was showing signs of interest in the world? Or was it a gift I had requested, a manifestation of my growing curiosity and the desire to know more about the world?
I loved to accompany my parents to screenings of international travelogues – the YouTube travel documentaries of those days. They were presented on a big screen in the auditorium of the high school in my Northern California town.
I recall filling out a postage-paid postcard from a waiting room magazine. It promised a “free” book called something like “The People of the World.” Instead, it summoned an Encyclopaedia Britannica salesman to our door. My parents purchased an expensive set, it turned out. But I never received that free book.
The mountain ranges on my globe – the Sierra Nevada, closest to me; the Himalayas, so exotic! – were eventually rubbed flat.
But not my curiosity about the world. In high school, I was a foreign exchange student, living with a family in France for a year. Later I would return to attend a university.
It was a dream come true when I was named a foreign correspondent for this newspaper. Later, I was a State Department correspondent, and now I cover international diplomacy, with occasional overseas reporting thrown in. (Which explains why this tale was penned in Ukraine.)
Occasionally I wonder – did it all start with that Christmas globe?
– Howard LaFranchi / Staff writer
Courtesy of Colette Davidson
A gift in my parents’ closet, and a child’s rite of passage
I was around 8 years old when I discovered my parents’ secret hiding place for Christmas presents.
It was the back of my mom’s closet, a labyrinthlike cave that was deeper than it was wide. It was crammed with eccentric scarves, secondhand cotton tops, and her wedding dress in a plastic dry cleaner bag.
A few nights before Christmas that year, I got curious and went exploring. Back behind her sewing box was the gift I’d been begging for: Samantha. The American Girl doll had two long braids, an elegant plaid dress, and black patent-leather shoes. She was perfect.
On Christmas morning, as I tore open the presents addressed “from Santa Claus,” whom should I find within a large rectangular package? Samantha!
It took me a few minutes to understand. Santa was my parents. My parents were Santa. At that moment, the magic of Christmas came crashing down.
Like all kids, I managed to recover from that inevitable rite of passage. And Samantha remained one of my favorite toys for years. Still, she, too, was eventually packed away, forgotten somewhere in some closet.
A few years ago, when I had my own children, Samantha came back into my mind. During a trip to my childhood home, I searched for her in desperation. There she was, in my bedroom closet. Her hair was ratty, her tights had lost their elastic, but she still had her same cute smile. My daughters were smitten.
This year, we’ll spend our first Christmas as a family in Minnesota. My oldest is about to turn 8 years old, and, just as I did at that age, she still believes in Old Saint Nick. She told me she wanted a boy doll for Christmas, to be a companion to Samantha.
It’s unlikely my kids will rummage through my mom’s closet, digging for Christmas gold. But the power of a child’s curiosity knows no bounds. Maybe, this holiday season, history will repeat itself.
– Colette Davidson / Special correspondent
Snow monsters, turtles in a half shell, and the greatest gifts of all
When I was young, as sure as flurries shimmy through snow globe winter wonderlands, my family and I would travel to my maternal grandparents’ house for their annual Christmas party.
My favorite Christmas gift as a boy was a game wrapped in a frozen moment in time. I was either 7 or 8 years old when I received the Nintendo version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: The Arcade Game. The opening cutscene took our heroes into a burning building, and the bottom of the screen looked like a yuletide fire.
One of my most tangible memories is my older cousin and I fighting our way past endless streams of bad guys, only to succumb to an anthropomorphic mix of a polar bear and arctic wolf named Tora.
For some folks, deep cuts happen when our fingertips are sliced by wrapping paper. For others, deep cuts are remembering the names of random Ninja Turtle villains.
But the deepest cut from that time slices through my foggy memory. The North American release date of the game, Dec. 14, 1990, was only 10 days before my maternal grandfather passed on Christmas Eve that year.
Nothing was the same after that. We continued to meet as a family year after year. But after that Christmas of 1990, I had changed.
As it turned out, the most indomitable obstacle in life was not a digital snow monster, nor the greatest gift a video game. There were other gifts, other toys, other losses as I grew up. But since that Christmas morning, I discovered my grandfather and my family were the greatest gifts of all.
– Ken Makin / Special correspondent
When my father gave me a radio – and a part of who he was
Christmas 1984 was the best summer ever.
I grew up in South Africa, and seasonal celebrations in the Southern Hemisphere included invites to outdoor barbecues or a swim at the beach after we’d opened presents. Definitely no caroling renditions of “Let It Snow.”
What made that Christmas so memorable was that my father gifted me a radio. A portable Sony, only slightly bigger than my hand, with an extendable aerial. I was 11 years old, and this was the gift that introduced me to my greatest love in life: music.
My father and I were very different people. We often struggled to communicate. He was a connoisseur of classical music, and he’d amassed a formidable record collection. He didn’t get the appeal of the rock music I discovered via the airwaves.
I carried that radio with me everywhere. I even smuggled it into school. Every night, I’d listen to a DJ named Chris Prior, aka “The Rock Professor.” It was a music education. When I first heard Robert Plant’s song “Little by Little,” I didn’t know a singer could express such emotional depth.
Less than 10 years after that Christmas, my father passed away. The radio fell into disrepair. I wish my father were still here so I could tell him about the deep meaning of that gift on my life.
I’d tell him I got to interview Robert Plant, my all-time favorite artist. I’d tell him I still listen to Chris Prior’s show, just as I did when I was 11, and that I listen to it halfway around the world, via the internet, and that I regularly correspond with the DJ I’ve been listening to for 40 years.
Most importantly, I’d tell him how much I appreciate that he wanted to share the gift of music with me. Our tastes differed, but the passion was the same. That connection I now feel with my father is as invisible as the airwaves that came crackling through that radio decades ago, with an impact just as powerful. Thank you, Dad.
– Stephen Humphries / Staff writer
Teenage angst meets “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe”
In Christmas Eve 2005, I was crammed into the living room with my siblings and large extended family. My parents saved most of our gifts for Christmas morning, but my mom always picked a few for us to open the evening before. Part of the reason was to give my older relatives a chance to witness the fleeting wonder of Christmas that only a child can have.
Like any typical teenager, I was quite certain my parents couldn’t possibly understand what a mature human I had become. I expected my gifts to be as disappointing as my teenage angst.
As the paper fell to the floor from one particularly heavy gift to me, I discovered I held in my hands “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Original Novels” by C.S. Lewis.
I knew little about the series but was curious. Disney had just brought “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” to the big screen a few weeks prior. I guess it would be nice to read the book before I saw the movie, I thought to myself. “Thanks,” I told my parents with a polite smile.
The first time I read it, I was immediately swept up into the wonders of Narnia. The whimsical characters made me laugh and cry, sometimes on the same page. Aslan, Narnia’s creator and protector, struck me with his fierce devotion, powerful presence, and tender love. His compassion felt so pure it made my heart ache, and I found myself wanting to be completely immersed in his world – a world where other imperfect young people were also trying to discover who they were, and the value they had.
As I reflect on how this gift changed my perspectives of love and life, I think about how excited I am to share it someday with my 3-year-old son and his soon-to-arrive sibling. Even as it becomes more frayed, tattered, and weathered from use, I hope they, too, will delight in this journey through a wardrobe, and to a world of self-discovery.
– Samantha Laine Perfas / Special contributor
Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
Decades later, “She still makes me smile”
You know how people sometimes ask, “What would you grab in a fire?” My answer is always the same – my Raggedy Ann.
I don’t remember how old I was when I got her one Christmas, but I was pretty young. She was made by Larkie, my mom’s best friend, a gifted seamstress, an artist.
Larkie handmade all her gifts – including stylish outfits for my Barbie doll, outfits I still wish came in my size.
Her Raggedy Ann became my constant companion. She came with me on sleepovers and vacations. She has deep-red hair, black button eyes, a lazy smile, and a red triangle for a nose. She wore a delicate, blue-flowered dress with a white pinafore and pantaloons. But on her muslin chest is the best part: a red heart that says, “I love you.”
Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
Both my mom and Larkie passed on decades ago. Raggedy Ann comforted me then, as well as the times when I was scared or sad. Mostly, she made me smile.
She’s a bit bedraggled now. But she hasn’t lost any of her charm, or the magical innocence of childhood. I put some of my socks over her black cloth feet to reinforce them. My friend Ali, another wonderful seamstress, sewed a new dress for her. It’s almost an exact duplicate of the original, now threadbare with age.
She sits in a place of honor on a shelf in my bedroom where I see her every day. She’s a connection to Larkie, my mom’s bestie and my second mother. She’s the embodiment of joy, and she still makes me smile.
– Melanie Stetson Freeman / Staff photographer
Courtesy of Danny Heitman
In a world of words, a gift that’s hard to define
When my Aunt Eunice gave our family a deluxe dictionary for Christmas in 1972, I didn’t jump for joy. For an 8-year-old, it seemed as exciting as a new pair of socks.
Even so, I knew Aunt Eunice meant well. She was a lively character – a longtime librarian who enjoyed travel, savored a good meal or a great story, and was thrilled by words, especially when she could arrange them for winning points during her frequent Scrabble marathons.
Language was an endless pleasure for Aunt Eunice. The dictionary she gave us, wrapped with a bright-red ribbon, was an invitation to join the fun. Before long, I was embracing our snazzy new reference volume with pride.
I loved the thumb index on the side – little tabs, arranged like stair steps, with the gold-printed alphabet descending from A to Z. There were nearly 1,500 pages in all, with entries ranging from Aachen, “a city of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany,” to zyzzyva, “any of various tropical American weevils.”
Any language with arms wide enough to touch both German cities and American weevils was something I could dwell in for a lifetime.
This year, I’ll celebrate my 60th Christmas. The toys I got on yuletides past have long since vanished beneath the snowdrifts of time. Aunt Eunice has left us, too.
But the dictionary, its binding now faded and bandaged with tape, still rests on my shelf, a constant companion through my decades as a reader and writer.
Now that online tools can quickly summon a word and its meaning, Eunice’s gift might seem outdated. But I cherish it, relishing the chance to see a vast world compressed within an intimate space.
This world of words, an infinitude of wonder, is what Aunt Eunice gave me all those Christmases ago. Even with this treasured dictionary, the gratitude I feel is hard to define.
– Danny Heitman / Special contributor
Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
From teen embarrassment to the warmth of Dad’s gift, wrapped in love
When my family moved from Wisconsin to New Hampshire, I learned what it felt like to be new.
New Hampshire was as cold and snowy as Wisconsin, but the hills were higher. Many classmates had skied since they were 3 years old, bombing down the icy slopes. As a fifth grader, I was practically a middle-aged “flatlander” when I first peered down the ski hill, gripping my poles in terror.
The next few years, I skied by myself through the shadows of the pines to minimize the embarrassment of wiping out. By eighth grade, I was good enough to ski the most difficult trails.
There was one last thing I wanted: an L.L. Bean ski cap with earflaps and two yarn braids. All the cool ski kids had one.
On Christmas Day, my dad handed me a gift exactly the right size. I held my breath. As I pulled out a dark-blue-and-green knit cap, he said, “I had it specially made.” I paused. His eyebrows danced over his blue eyes. A self-pleased smile played across his lips.
There in my hands was indeed a ski cap with two yarn braids. Large light-blue letters marched across the forehead: KENDRA. My heart sank.
Dad eagerly searched my face for my reaction. Dad didn’t ski. Money was tight. He had tried to make something I wanted even more special. A wave of compassion washed over me, and looking back, I think I grew up a little. “Thank you,” I said quietly.
Instead of shoving it to the back of a drawer, I wore my KENDRA cap for years. I covered my name with my ski goggles under the chairlift to avoid being teased. As I flew down the hills, the cold wind streaked my cheeks in tears. But inside I was warm, wrapped in the love from my dad’s gift.
– Kendra Nordin Beato / Staff writer