It was the day before Christmas, 1997. I was six and playing in the shed behind the house. Being six, I was completely obsessed with cardboard boxes, and was delighted to find a particularly big one in a corner, hidden behind a whole lot of other junk.
I dragged it out, opened it up, and found… the holy grail. The toy to beat all other toys. It was a Baby Born, all packaged up in its white-and-pink box. And it was all for me.
(I only have one sibling and he was an 11-year-old boy at the time with a serious gaming addiction, so it was safe to assume that Baby Born wasn’t going to anyone else.)
I knew Santa must have delivered it early and stashed it away in our shed to save himself some stress. Clever Santa! So I left Baby Born in the box, and eagerly awaited her true arrival the next day. It was the best Christmas of my entire life. Close runner-ups: the year I got a Razor scooter, and the year I got a dollhouse.
Now – I know Christmas isn’t all about gift-giving. But sometimes I miss the days of being young and just about wetting my pants with anticipation for what was wrapped up and waiting for me under that Christmas tree.
As adults, we don’t tend to get all that excited about presents – generally, anything under the tree is probably just a variation of things we buy for ourselves all the time. But as a kid, you have no capacity to really buy the things you dream about unless you save your measly pocket money for 35 light years. So Christmas? The jackpot holiday to beat all others.