Question Of The Day. Saturday 9th Of December.

[Norachan]

Good morning. There are only two weeks and two days left until Christmas!



Did you have any particularly memorable Christmas gifts when you were a kid? What kind of things did you ask Santa for?

I asked for a pony pretty much every Christmas and Birthday from the age of about 5. I never got one though.

(Insert tragic violin player here)

One year I got a Girl's World. Does anyone else remember them? It was just the head and shoulders of a doll, you had to practice putting on her make-up and doing her hair. It must have been in the early 80's, so some of my eye make-up creations were inspired by Siouxsie Sioux. And my mother wonders where my teenage Gothic stage came from!



How about you? Do you remember any of the Christmas gifts you got?

 

[micknsnicks2mom]

i actually don't remember any of the Christmas gifts i received as a kid.

i do remember that many years there were those lifesavers candies 'books' in my Christmas stocking.

 

[Winchester]

I remember one year when my sister and I each got a Susie Smart doll with the desk. I have no idea what happened to them. Just saw them on eBay....holy cow! The price of nostalgia. Even the desk alone is over $200.00 now!

Vintage **Ultra Rare!** Susy Smart Doll With Desk! | eBay

We always got the Lifesavers books, too. I looked for them a couple years ago.

 

[jcat]

Our dad built us a big wooden play house that we used for years. The pieces slotted together, so we could have it in the backyard in warm weather and inside in winter.

 

[muffy]

My favorite gift was the year I got the English Racer bike. I loved it so so much. I got games, clothes, dolls and books for Christmas. One year I got one of those little bake sets. Boy did I like that. I didn't care for dolls that much. I was a little tom boy.

Santa was very generous when he came to our house.

 

[blueyedgirl5946]

I only remember that one year I asked for a house robe and a suitcase. I was probably eleven years old then. We didn't get a lot of things under the tree. Most of the time, we got a doll and a few small things. We always got a bag of apples and oranges. Then we got a bag of brazil nuts, and some hard candy. There was also a candy which was squares of coconut stuff, and orange slices. We once got a bicycle to share. There were three of us. But we were still happy. Dad finally got enough spare parts, etc. to put together two more so we all could have a bike. I remember I painted mine green and yellow. I thought it was beautiful, spare parts and all.

 

[betsygee]

i do remember that many years there were those lifesavers candies 'books' in my Christmas stocking.

I remember those! We got them, too.

 

[Kat0121]

I remember those! We got them, too.

I loved those! Do they still make them?

 

[Margret]

My dad always put a box of Chocolate Cherries "in" my stocking (Okay, actually it was under my stocking -- too big to go inside). After he died it was a couple of years before I could bring myself to eat Chocolate Cherries again, and now I can't have them because of the diabetes.

One year I really, really wanted a Slip 'N Slide. Does anyone else remember those? They were for houses that had a bit of a hill in the yard, which we did. It was a long yellow piece of plastic with a sort of hose down the side with small holes in it every so often. You'd hook your garden hose up to it and the holes would allow water to spray on the plastic. It was supposed to be a water slide for use at home.

Anyway, when I got up on Christmas morning that year, under the tree was a large box wrapped in a single layer of tissue style Christmas paper. I could see right through the paper and the label on the box said "Slip 'N Slide." I was so excited, even though it would be months before I could play with it. When my parents got up I said "A Slip 'N Slide! Thank you!" and my Dad got mad at me for breaking the rules and not waiting for them to get up to open my presents. He hadn't even noticed that he'd wrapped it in see-through paper.

When summer came I played with it, and it was a total dud. It didn't spray enough water to actually be slippery and my legs would stick to it horribly.

When I was, oh, 16 or so? my dad went to department stores all month long and let people in the perfume departments spray him with perfume until he found the perfect one for me. It was L'air Du Temps, by Nina Ricci, and I still wear it. I have no sense of smell (with a few rare exceptions), and this is mild enough that it's hard to put on too much, and I get a lot of compliments on it. Also, my husband, who is allergic to most perfumes, isn't allergic to this one (which my father couldn't possibly have known back then, but it's certainly fortuitous).

Margret

 

[mightyboosh]

My parents were very generous and my childhood Christmas memories are magical.
I remember getting a Jonny Seven gun once. I also loved the comic annuals that came out at Xmas. The Beano was one of my favourites.

 

[kashmir64]

For my 12th birthday, I got my very own horse. A yearling Arabian colt. (I'd been training smaller horses since I was 7). So for Christmas every year after, I got horse stuff. New saddle blankets, bridles, grooming supplies, etc... I was happy as a clam with those.
My mom remembers getting a new dress and a doll once. It must have been really hard growing up in the '40's on the reservation. I'm glad things have changed.

 

[debbila]

One Christmas all three of we girls got a baby doll and a doll bed. I also got a pet turtle with its plastic "pond" that it lived in. I don't remember if I got the doll carriage the same year. When winter was over I took my puppy for a ride in it outside. I don't remember if the roller skates were for Christmas or my birthday ( which was two weeks after Christmas ).

 

[micknsnicks2mom]

I remember those! We got them, too.

I loved those! Do they still make them?

they do seem to make the Lifesavers Christmas/Candy books still!

 

[Draco]

I had a girl's world too.. or was it my sister's? I never cared for it, lol.

I always got a My Little Pony, which I loved. I still have most of them! I remember getting Nosey Bears (Which I still have), video games for whatever system I have that year, LiteBrite, VHS movies, something art-related (sketchbooks, colored pencils, paint sets)..

 

[Max's Human]

The first thing I must admit is I'm an adult and was at tbe time my mother in law got me A CABBAGE PATCH DOLL (they were impossible to find) and the following year the dear woman got me SAUER KRAUT KIDS (2). I WAS TICKLED TO DEATH.

 

[margecat]

I once got an Easy Bake oven, though I didn't ask for it. I must have done something very dangerous the first time I used it, as my parents confiscated it, and I was never allowed to use it again! Well, Mom and Dad, I've gotten my revenge: I now command an expensive professional restaurant oven system, am known as a good baker, and people pay for my baked good. So there.

 

[Kat0121]

My dad always put a box of Chocolate Cherries "in" my stocking (Okay, actually it was under my stocking -- too big to go inside). After he died it was a couple of years before I could bring myself to eat Chocolate Cherries again, and now I can't have them because of the diabetes.

One year I really, really wanted a Slip 'N Slide. Does anyone else remember those? They were for houses that had a bit of a hill in the yard, which we did. It was a long yellow piece of plastic with a sort of hose down the side with small holes in it every so often. You'd hook your garden hose up to it and the holes would allow water to spray on the plastic. It was supposed to be a water slide for use at home.

Anyway, when I got up on Christmas morning that year, under the tree was a large box wrapped in a single layer of tissue style Christmas paper. I could see right through the paper and the label on the box said "Slip 'N Slide." I was so excited, even though it would be months before I could play with it. When my parents got up I said "A Slip 'N Slide! Thank you!" and my Dad got mad at me for breaking the rules and not waiting for them to get up to open my presents. He hadn't even noticed that he'd wrapped it in see-through paper.

When summer came I played with it, and it was a total dud. It didn't spray enough water to actually be slippery and my legs would stick to it horribly.

When I was, oh, 16 or so? my dad went to department stores all month long and let people in the perfume departments spray him with perfume until he found the perfect one for me. It was L'air Du Temps, by Nina Ricci, and I still wear it. I have no sense of smell (with a few rare exceptions), and this is mild enough that it's hard to put on too much, and I get a lot of compliments on it. Also, my husband, who is allergic to most perfumes, isn't allergic to this one (which my father couldn't possibly have known back then, but it's certainly fortuitous).

Margret

Oh I remember the Slip n Slide. Yes, it was a dud for sure. That thing got abandoned to the basement pretty quickly.

 

[Margret]

One year we had a very cold winter, so cold that they removed or covered all of the "Stay off the ice" signs in the parks in the Denver area, and my dad decided it was the perfect time for us to learn how to ice skate, so we all got ice skates for Christmas. Unfortunately, my dad didn't understand the physics of ice skating.

The way it works is that the blades on the skates have to be sharp. The sharper the blade, the more your weight is concentrated in a narrow line on the ice. Your weight, supported on those narrow blades, puts enough pressure on the ice to make it melt just a little, and it's that narrow layer of liquid water that makes it possible to skate.

However, my dad didn't know this, so when the guy who sold him the skates asked whether he wanted to have them sharpened as well my dad thought about sharp blades near the hands of his children and said "No thank you."

At the time my mother was working in the Physical Therapy department of a hospital that was just north of our school, and just south of a pretty little park with a small lake. Every weekday morning we'd go to work with my mother and spend a couple of hours doing homework, or reading, or whatever we liked before walking to school, and after school we'd walk to the hospital and spend another couple hours doing whatever before my mother got off work and we all rode home together. So when I got ice skates for Christmas I immediately started making sure I did my homework in the evening every day so I could go to the little park and learn how to skate in the morning, but for some strange reason I was very bad at skating. I couldn't seem to go anywhere on the skates, and I fell down a lot (kind of like trying to balance on a bicycle when it isn't moving). And one bright, sunny, gorgeous winter day I fell down on my bum for about the third time that morning and my tailbone really, really hurt, and suddenly I couldn't move my legs. Now, my mother was a physical therapist, so I knew about paraplegia, and I was terrified. I managed to use my arms to pull myself to the edge of the lake so I wasn't sitting on ice, and then I waited for someone to walk along the sidewalk so I could call for help and ask them to go into the P.T. department and get my mother, but no one came. Every few minutes I'd try to use my legs again, and after about a half hour they finally began working, so I got the skates off and put my boots back on and went to the hospital parking lot where I used my key to get into the trunk of the car and throw the skates in before I walked to school. And that night I very thoroughly "lost" my skates in the back of my closet.

I was very embarrassed about it; here I was, an adolescent girl, and I had hurt myself falling on my bum! At that age it's just so easy for a girl to be embarrassed about the changes that are happening in that part of the body. I didn't tell anyone about it, even my mother. I wasn't paralyzed so I didn't have to, right? Therefore I never got a proper diagnosis, but from the fact that, more than 50 years later, my tailbone still hurts whenever I try to do a sit-up I conclude that I probably got some kind of a fracture of my coccyx. And I was fully adult before I read an explanation of how ice skating works and finally realized that it wasn't even me being a klutz; my dad had inadvertently sabotaged me by not getting the blades sharpened. I remember vividly how they looked, so I'm pretty sure of what was really going on.

Don't get me wrong. I love Christmas, and I love Christmas presents; it's just that the rare totally disastrous gifts are the ones that seem to stick in my mind from my childhood.

Margret

 

[amysuen]

Good morning. There are only two weeks and two days left until Christmas!

Ack, good job freaking me out - I thought I was on top of things...

I don't remember what I asked Santa for but my most memorable presents were a Barbie Townhouse one year, and a Princess Leia doll a couple of years later.