The truth about toys

As much as I loved Christmas as a child, it did teach me an important lesson about truth in advertising. There is none. Or at least there wasn't when it came to ads for toys.

I think it was 1968 when I finally saw the light. It was one of those transitional years. My oldest brother Ted was a hunter and asked for duck decoys and a duck call. My other brother Dan asked for a telescope.

I was 10. I was convinced that what I really needed to be happy that Christmas was this Mars lander spaceship that from what I could judge from the television commercials was a fully operational space ship that I could control. It would take off and land based on my piloting skills. I had to have it.

As you can almost see from the photo, we all got what we asked for. Ted got his duck decoys. Dan got his telescope (you can see one leg of it on the right of the photo) and I got my Mars spaceship.

The problem was the spaceship turned out to be a stinking balloon you taped onto a plastic gondola. The remote control turned out to be a cheap fan you controlled with a handle. If you moved it at the right angle, you could make the balloon float around the room.

Even at 10 I knew it sucked and I'd been lied to. It was fun to play with for about five minutes. Even my the underwear and socks my mother always managed to slip under the tree as a Christmas present were more interesting in comparison.

Okay, you can slip into your lectures now about commercialism and toys not being the true meaning of Christmas. BS. The reality is that we all want things. And it is the wanting that is sometimes more satisfying than the getting. The bummer is that I fell for the dream and got sideswiped by the reality. It was one of those Sea Monkey moments.

But I learned my lesson. Apparently all of those people who fall for the Nigerian spam scams didn't.

Who said there isn't magic in Christmas?

Christmas past

One of the most important thing about Christmas to me is the memories it creates.

Seventeen years ago, I got a call from a friend of mine who I'd known since we were about 16 years old and working at the Boise Public Library. Jan and I kept in touch when we both left Boise to go to college. In November of 1989 she called me and told me she was engaged to a fellow graduate student who was from England. The were getting married the day after Christmas in the small village of Talaton in Northern England. She invited me to the wedding.

I had never been to Europe. I didn't even have a passport. I jumped at the chance, applied for a passport and booked my airfare to London. My friend's fiance Simon met be at Heathrow and we took a train into the where we stopped at his flat in Brixton to pick up Jan and headed to Victoria Station to catch a train to Talaton. After a minor misunderstanding with a ticket salesperson (due to the language barrier...I must have spelled my name to him five times) I was issued a British Rail Pass.

Talaton is located in Devon. The nearest city is Exeter. It is a farming community that dates back to the 1500s. Simon's parents owned a 16th century farmhouse called the Old Manor that they operated as a bed and breakfast.The wedding party and many of the out of town guests were staying there. Simon's father picked us up at the train station and drove us to the Old Manor.
We were met at the front door by Corky the cat, one of the most British looking cats I've ever seen.

Behind Corky was Simon's mother, an equally British looking and very gracious woman who welcomed us warmly and herded us into the dining room for a quick supper of bangers and eggs. Then I went to my bedroom and collapsed in a jetlagged coma until 1 p.m. the next day.

We went Christmas shopping the next day in Honiton, a small town in Devon known for its lace and antique shops. The only thing I could afford was an old top hat from the 1800s that was a few sizes too small.

But at tea time that day I experienced my first "cream" tea. When I'd first heard the phrase "cream" team, I thought it implied some flavored tea. What it really referred to was teas served with scones, jam and plenty of Devonshire heavy cream to spread on the scones. Fortunately I was a skinny young man at the time and learned the art of piling on the cream and jam. The result of a cream tea was a sense of euphoric immobility and peace unlike any I've ever achieved since.

On Christmas Eve, we ended up at the local pub listening to the locals converse in a Devonshire accent that was thicker than their cream. I'm convinced I was perceived as a deaf mute or an idiot because all I could was nod and grin because I didn't understand a word that was being said to me.

We returned to the Old Manor and opened presents and toasted with some Christmas cheer. And although I was far from home and away from my family, I will always remember that Christmas as one of the most peaceful and warm I had experienced as an adult (until I met my wife of course).

Christmas 1964

We were too tired after shopping to put up our trees, so the Elvis tree will have to wait until tomorrow. We use artificial trees anyway. Although I like the way a real tree looks and smells, I have always felt guilty about killing a baby tree for decorative purposes. This is a bit hypocritical considering I am surrounded by wood based products in a house built primarily of wood. But I don't eat baby animals either.

But I digress.

Most of my early childhood, we had an artificial tree. It was one of those aluminum jobs that you couldn't put lights on. It was illuminated by a spotlight shining through a motorized color wheel with different colors of celephane on it. The colored wheel made the aluminum tree glow alternately green, blue, red and yellow. In retrospect aluminum trees were kind of lame, but in 1964 they were pretty high tech.

I loved Christmas in 1964. I loved the decorations, I loved the tree (aluminum or not) and most of all I loved presents. I know that sounds superficial, but I was six years old. The sweet siren song of wrapped presents was almost unbearable for me.

My oldest brother used to orchestrate these elaborate plans to hijack one of our presents in the wee hours of Christmas morning. He diagramed the living room where the tree and presents were and coached my other brother and I on a game plan to defeat our home security system -- my father.

We had a shoebox that contained our burglar kit. In it were three balls of yarn with paperclip hooks tied to the ends, three pairs of slipper socks, a flashlight and the plan diagram.

The plan was simple. My middle brother Dan would get up and pretend to go to the bathroom to create a distraction. At the same time, my oldest brother Ted would crawl into the living room and the Christmas tree. He would hook one end of each of the balls of yarn to one of each of our Christmas presents and then crawl back to our bedroom while unrolling the balls of yarn. Dan would flush the toilet to cover up any noise while Ted and I would drag the presents to our room using the yarn.

It seemed like a pretty good plan, but the minute Dan got up to go to the bathroom, my father, who I swear slept with one eye open, yelled, "GET BACK TO BED!" We never got to see if the rest of the plan would work.

So, we had to lay in bed wide awake waiting for our parents to get up and give us the signal that it was okay to raid the tree. Then we'd tear into the living room in our pajamas and wait patiently while my mom took photos of us posing with our packages (I'm reminded of those people who train dogs to sit there with a dog biscuit on their noses until they are given a signal that they can eat). Finally my mom would let us open the packages.

Funny, I can't really remember what any of the presents were, but I can remember the painfully pleasant anticipation of waiting to open them.

There is a life lesson in there somewhere.