Although I am in my 50s (early!) I am still asked to provide a Christmas list each year. As much as I protest that I am a GROWN WOMAN, I must admit it does bring back the days of the Sears catalog*, flipping through every toy page, initially wanting everything but then being drawn over and over again to just a few special items. I think this is one of the first times we are faced with overwhelming options and asked to make a decision as to what we want most. If the cereal aisle is our training wheels, the request for our Christmas list is the shiny new 10-speed bike.
They say you never really feel like an adult until your parents are gone. This is never more evident than when you are asked for your Christmas list and you see something in AARP magazine to put on that list. But if you remember that feeling of making your wish list when you were a child, you can bet that your mom and dad remember all the late Christmas nights hurriedly wrapping presents after you’ve gone to bed, putting together doll houses and bicycles with insufficient instructions and parts strewn everywhere, trying to curse quietly, carving reindeer teeth marks into carrots (an exercise to be repeated at Easter) and eating Santa’s cookies and drinking his milk. And they remember being woken up at the crack of dawn after only a few hours of sleep, protesting because they know it’s all part of the tradition of Christmas morning, but inside they are just as excited as you, for you.
Now, as an adult, I know that it’s so much more fun to give than to receive. But if my receiving still gives mom and dad joy, I will gladly be a kid again. But I draw the line at pajamas with feet in them.
* For those of you NOT receiving AARP magazine, Sears catalog’s annual Wish Book edition was like Amazon in paper form.
