Christmas Past: These are a few of my favorite thing!

I’ve always associated Christmastime with many wonderful nostalgic memories of family, friends and merriment.  And while channeling my inner Charles Dickens, I’ve decided to write three posts this week in honor of Christmas Past, Present and Future.  Today, I pay tribute to Christmas Past.

About a week ago we took Jimmy to see Santa and people asked us, “What is Jimmy going to ask Santa for this year?”  I found this question quite silly as our kid is 16 months old and we’re still working on the basic words like mom, dad and shoe (although he did “ask” Santa for a Fisher-Price Race Set with extra racers).

My memories of Christmas morning included my brother and me waking up to sneak downstairs and see what Santa brought, but we had to wake up our parents first so they could see our faces light up with joy.  After opening our Santa sacks and rummaging through our stockings we’d fall asleep on the floor of the family room surrounded by our gifts.  This past weekend my husband and I were talking about Christmas pasts and remembering some of our favorite Christmas toys from our childhood.  Here are a few of my favorite toys from Christmas past.

The Strawberry Shortcake Kitchen

Like most girls my age, I loved everything Strawberry Shortcake! I remember playing with my little kitchen all the time – especially the little plastic pots and pans with smiley faces on them.  I think I embraced my love for cooking in my early 20’s thanks to the Food Network.  My husband and I cook at home all the time and I hope to share this love of cooking with our son, (we already know he loves going to the grocery store with Daddy and pushing the shopping cart).

 Cabbage Patch Kids

Clearly I have always wanted to be a Mommy and it all started in the early 80’s with the CPK craze! I LOVED my dolls and all their accessories (especially the shoes which, apparently, were realistic: not staying on my dolls, as my son’s never did either until he started walking).  My first Cabbage Patch Kid was a little brown haired girl named Patricia Kris who I loved dearly.  My mom even made her a communion dress that matched mine in the 3rd grade.  Over the course of my childhood, I proceeded to “adopt” about 10 others including a Show Pony, a Koosas, a Preemie, a Cornsilk Kid and an Olympian.  Xavier Roberts would be pleasantly surprised to know that I have not tattooed my name on my son’s butt, but the thought of getting a temporary tattoo and sticking it on his bootie has crossed my mind.  Even now, if I’m in the toy aisle and see Cabbage Patch Kids, I’m still looking for a Colleen Margaret doll to adopt.

Nintendo’s Gameboy

When I was a kid we spent a lot of time in the car traveling while we went camping all over the US.  Before Gameboy my brother and I had individual handheld electronic games like Paperboy, Football and Poker (yes – I played poker as a kid taught by my Grandpa Fashing). Anyways – the year I wanted to ask Santa for a Gameboy, there was a nasty rumor that Santa wasn’t real (I know, right?).  Well that year I was nearly punished without any gifts and told all my wish list items would be donated to the orphanage for kids who still believed in Santa, because if you don’t believe you don’t get anything.  To this day, I still believe in Santa! 🙂

My Dollhouse

One year, Santa brought me a very large flat box with a dollhouse in it from the Sears Wish Book, only to follow up the year after with it fully assembled! I loved my dollhouse.  I would save all my money and buy different furniture for my dollhouse all the time.  My mom would give me scraps of wallpaper for my little house and old dish towel to use as carpeting. One day I hope my little nieces have a little doll house that I can play with and enjoy with them.

There are many more items I could have included like my pink Huffy bike, the original Nintendo that I shared with my brother, and the Care Bears but you get the point.  I hope someday our son will have just as many memories of gifts Santa gave him as his Dad and I have. Hopefully he too will be able to share in the merriment that being a child and parent at Christmastime has brought us.