The Best Gifts

Will today's kids remember Christmas the way so many of us older folks do?  I'm often accused of being a Scrooge at this time of year because I do not get into the "holiday spirit" in any way.  I'm disgusted by some of our stations going to Christmas music right after Halloween.  I don't put up decorations in the News Room.  I don't do "ugly sweater day" or "secret Santa" or "Christmas cookie exchange".  I like my "holiday season" to last about two weeks--and then we can start looking forward to something I enjoy: warmer weather and being outside without having to bundle up like I'm going on a polar expedition.

But back to Christmas gifts.  No doubt, you have a special gift or two that to this day your remember receiving as a child.  Not because it was the coolest toy that year or that it was super expensive or that getting a gift was pretty much the only expression of love in your family.  I'm talking about a gift that produced special memories or experiences for you.  For me, that gift was a basketball hoop when I was 8 or 9 years old.

In a lesson of delayed gratification, the hoop didn't go up until the spring, when my dad could dig a hole for the post and the driveway wasn't covered in snow.  But once it went up, it allowed me to play ball with my dad and my friends and even my younger sister.  And I still play basketball today--with many of the friends that I have made since coming here to Oshkosh more than 17-years ago. 

I can also tell you my all-time favorite birthday gift: tickets to the Milwaukee Brewers-Cleveland Indians game at County Stadium on July 31st, 1982.  We went with my grandparents.  My sister got a foul ball--something the entire family reminds me of every time I talk about going to a Brewers game.  It was the NBC Saturday Afternoon Game of the Week.  Mike Caldwell started.  Rollie Fingers got the save.  And with the win, the Brewers moved into first place in the American League East--on their way to the AL pennant and the World Series.  Not a bad expierence for a ten-year old kid.

And that is why I wonder if kids today are going to have those kinds of memories when they think back on Christmas decades from now.  Will they talk about how many zombies they killed Christmas Day of 2017 when they got the hot new X-Box game?  Will they even remember the smart-phone case, the pair of fashion sneakers or the Spiderman action figures that will just join the ever-growing pile of toys in their rooms?  Maybe I'll get more into the "spirit of Christmas" if we would get back to giving gifts that mean something--and not just "stuff" somebody wanted for a week or two.