Catalogs of Christmas Past

There are so many things that dads (& moms) of a certain age got to experience while growing up that today’s younger generations tend to miss out on.  Saturday morning cartoons, drive-in movies and Pixy Stix are all nearly as scarce as lawn darts, these days.

Helloooo up there!

One favorite little part of Christmas for me, that seems to have been missing for a while now, are those huge Christmas catalogs or “Wish Books”.  Every year we’d get these massive books in the mail from stores like Sears, JC Penney or Montgomery Ward that were about 5 or 6 hundred pages of gift ideas for adults and kids.  Imagine a print version of Amazon.

I wanted everything on this page!

Every kid knew to flip to the back half of the book, because that’s where the toys were. And I mean TOYS! They had every toy a kid could ever want or imagine!

Barbie was my sister's go-to.

My sister and I would fight over who would get the book first. What we’d do is go through it, page-by-page, circling all the things we wanted with a pen.  I guess the thought was, mom and dad would look at all the things we’d circled and get them for us.  As time went on, we figured out that we weren’t likely to get most of the things we'd circled, even with Santa’s help.  But we didn’t care. We just kept on circling those toys. After all, it was called the "Wish Book"!

Definitely had a few of these.

This seems like such a small thing now. But for me, it was all part of that holiday magic that only kids get to experience.  My kids have had their own versions of holiday magic, and they’ve certainly not been overly deprived.  But, as a dad, sometimes I wish they could have all the same happy experiences I did. I guess that’s just the way it goes.

Oh, and I still miss lawn darts.  - DCB