I don't remember ever seeing so many santas as there are now. They are everywhere you look and the insistent advertising of stuff follows them like gnats on a sweaty horse. I don't have a picture of me with santa. And only a couple of santa and my son. Of course, I was born in 1940 and for the first 6 or 7 years of my life, WW2 influenced every aspect of my being. Christmas was very simple. I would get one big thing , some pajamas and a few clothes. Mostly we gave each other (My aunts, uncles, grandma, mom, daddy) pajamas or robes. Evidentally we wore them out a lot! I got one thing from santa and a couple little things and stocking with fruit, hard candy and thats about it. I can remember one Christmas at my grandmothers where the tree was a pine and i helped make a paper chain for part of the decorations. It was so cold because the only heat source was a little fuel heater in my grandmas bedroom, the others had those little fireplaces that took coal and a large fireplace in the dining room for big logs and the wood stove in the kitchen! Wow, when i woke up after sleeping under about 4 quilts, i ran to the kitchen and dressed by the wood stove. Needless to say, we took very few baths, only sponging off with water heated on the stove and carried to the bathroom, which had only been added about 1941. So , still, Christmas came to all of us during this time, with more necessities than wants. I always got a book for Christmas and to this day, love to read. Starting out with little Mother Goose books and moving up to the classics like Black Beauty, The Black Stallion, then on to the Nancy Drew stories. I loved horses from the get go and any book about them i got. To this day, I love the smell of a library and the feel of the books. I tended to be a tom boy and wanted more things like a lionel train and a cowgirl outfit and matching guns..which i got. One Christmas , a misguided santa tried to give me a baby doll and carriage..i promptly tried to flush said babydoll down the toiled and cracked his head...huh, from then on, it was proudly displayed on the mantle every New Years Eve with a sash on that gave the new year, cracked head and all! We got things we needed mostly from then on, even when i was a young teen, maybe some roller skates and some paints and color pencils because I loved to draw, horses. But school clothes and my buster brown oxfords were the norm. I remember the first big teen thing I got was a little bulover watch from Sears and i was really proud of that watch. We had no shopping malls or big places to shop, the Sears was a bus, then trolly ride from the house and it was pretty big but did a moster job in mail order..my first bike came from there, a JC Higgins bike, too big but thats what you got, and my daddy put blocks on the pedals so I could reach. Still, there was a lot of falling, scraped knees, crying and sniggling behind my back by my mother! So maybe we have too many santas and not enough books given , now its video games, phones, computer stuff. Kids no longer want to enjoy the long books that give you the imagination to believe you are in the story yourself. After all, i read Gone With the Wind when I was 13 and could still enjoy the read. What do you think folks? Too much hype, not enough going to gather pinecones for the tree?
Maybe.
