Our family no longer buys Christmas presents.
It’s awesome.
Think about it: no lines, no traffic, no swapping soulless $25 Barnes & Noble or Best Buy gift cards.
And no stress.
(Try it.)
Since memories of gifts are all that sustain me now, here are five of the best Christmas presents I’ve ever received. Hold the garbage bag open so I can shoot wrapping paper 3-pointers:
PATRICK ROY REPLICA STREET HOCKEY GOALIE GEAR
My mother delivered, well, the motherlode on this one: Replica mask and helmet painted just like the great Montreal goaltender’s, replica catching and blocker gloves and a full-sized, real deal white stick with KOHO painted down the blade in blue and red and ROY stamped on the shaft. Pretty sure my buddy Nick scored at least a dozen street hockey goals simply because I couldn’t stop looking at myself.
HOOSIERS REPLICA UNIFORM
Before I fell in love with hockey, basketball was my game and Hoosiers was my obsession (OK, my dad’s, but it soon became mine). Gene Hackman. Barbara Hershey. The Hickory Huskers. Jimmy Chitwood in the state championship. Ollie’s underhand free throws in cracker box gymnasiums in tiny farm towns across Indiana. And the uniforms: my stepmother sewed for me replica gold shorts and a maroon jersey — number 11 — to go with a pair of brand new black Chuck Taylors. I died. Then my grandpa, a fine woodworker in his spare time, built an indoor mini basketball hoop the size of a coat rack. I dunked on my uncle Denny all that Christmas night in South Haven, then did nothing but shoot living room triples in my new threads for the next six months. (Is it weird I was 17?)
HATS
Dude, I was a hat aficionado. I still have boxes full of them in the basement. The Chicago Bulls were my team in the early 90s and, while I always welcomed a new hat if the colors and logos were cool, I was always down for a new Bulls lid. And there they were one Christmas morning: three of them hanging on our peach-lit, Victorian style tree. Screw what was wrapped in the boxes below. As soon as I saw the hats, my year was complete. (Signature cap from that era: the cursive team name across the front with either the league or team logo on the side. I had the Spurs, Celtics, Bulls, Pistons. Hell, I even had the Kansas City Chiefs because I loved the arrowhead logo. Classic. I actually got a red and yellow Chiefs winter jacket one year for Christmas, thereby making me perhaps the oddest kid in tiny grape-farming Lawton, Michigan. Kind of like now, when I see a guy walking down the street in Kalamazoo wearing a dirty San Diego Chargers jacket that was clearly some kid’s Christmas present in 1993.)
GEORGE CARLIN BOOKS AND CDs
I fell in love with George Carlin when I was 15. My dad bought me Brain Droppings for Christmas and the rest is history. I lapped up every word of that book and thought it was so hilarious that I interrupted the rest of Christmas morning periodically with passages, reading them aloud to the rest of the family with the type of pride that suggested I had written the book, myself. Audio CDs soon followed and the Carlin-themed gifts continued well into my 20s. The best thing about George: he’s the gift that keeps on giving. For generations.
THE TRAIN
Circa 1985. I’m five years-old and my siblings are three. We had a trashed basement full of toys, yet for some reason we loved putting cardboard boxes together in a row, plopping ourselves in them and pretending we were riding a train. We’re a creative bunch. So our parents, in an attempt to kick things up a notch, bought us a giant, automatic plastic train big enough to carry us for rides through the countryside of our house’s kitchen, den, living room and hallways. Seriously: a molded plastic train with wheels and a battery and seats. So cool, right? Yet, there we were once Christmas morning ended: three happy kids, the eldest here acting as conductor, steaming around the living room in the cardboard boxes with a probably $300 plastic train that most kids would die for idling next to the couch.
Why my parents didn’t suspend gifts until 25 years later is beyond me.
I tried to do the “no gifts” thing with my family and people were offended. So now it’s gift cards & stupid stuff — because that’s so much better than keeping the money ourselves or donating it to charity.
Amen.