What was your most memorable childhood Christmas gift?

Now that I asked, I will have to think about it myself.

Gee i think it was my guitar and my air hockey table-still have the air hockey table.

Mine was a boy doll in yellow t-shirt and red overalls.

Merry Christmas
Carol

Here is a pic of my first real live doll Mick ...LOL
and my boy doll..(I think I named him Billy)
I had my first crush on a boy named Billy in grade six.

I guess the red overalls were changed to the baby's nightie when Mick
outgrew them.

Ah memories... :)

oh how cute billy is!!!

i think i misunderstood! your son is the dollybaby -thought he was billy! LOL
the dolls cute but that lil baby is a pumpkin!

This message was edited Dec 17, 2004 8:36 AM

Thanks Dorie..
I sent this pic on to my son.. Mick

These are so cool! Love the two baby dolls, one as cute as the other.
My first kitten, I think. I could not bring him into the house ( MY mom's rule) so I slept in the attic with him. LOL
There was an old bed up there with a feather stuffed cover, guess that was the old version of down.
It was kind of scarey up there, but I had to sleep with my new kitten.
I named him Fluffy. He was a grey kitten with green eyes. Now I have my cats indoors with me all the time.

A handmade doll house that my dad made. I remember playing with that for several years.

My cowboy (cowgirl?) boots when I was 9. But I was a sneaky-pete with a big mouth... I found them early in the top of my mother's closet, told her I knew what I was getting, and she made me wait a whole month after Christmas for them.

I remember a Christmas when my mother made an entire wardrobe for my favorite doll. When I got up early Christmas morning, there was my doll under the tree in a beautiful dress, and all around her were many outfits complete with accessories. Bless my mother's heart for all that work!

Wow Weezingreens, what a wonderful gift (or rather bunch of gifts!) your mother gave you! It must've taken her weeks to sew them all. Unless of course, she was a sewing whiz and got them all done in a snap. :-) Regardless, it's still about the best gift I've heard of for a child so far :-).

Darius, that's a cute story about your mother making you wait. I bet the next Christmas you didn't peak....or at least learned to be quiet about it LOL

-Julie

You didn't say if it had had to be a good or bad memory. This one is a little of both. When I was 3, we went to visit Santa at the Courthouse in town on Christmas Eve. He would give you a bag of candy, nuts and fruit. The stores would stay open late so the parents could shop. Well this year my dad did the shopping. All I wanted was a table and chairs( the kind you play house with). Please keep in mind that I was only three, and no idea we where tenant farmers and really didn't have that much money, before I tell you how big a brat I was.

I can remember this day like it was yesterday and I was just a child. I never understood the impact of it until years later and will never forgive myself for being such a brat. Got up Christmas morning went rushing in expecting to see my new table and chairs, but what is sitting there but some ole doll house, ( who wants a doll house anyway?) Well I guess it didn't I went and kicked it and said Santa take it back I don't want it.

I of course didn't know any of this until years later, when my mom decided to tell how big a brat I had been. My dad left the room in tears, (I don't think I ever saw him cry). He never bought us another gift. He left it up to mom after that. BUT when he came back in the room he was carrying my table and chairs. I ran and hugged and kissed him and said he was better than Santa Claus. Mom said you sure saved the day he felt wonderful then, but he had saved extra hard to get you the doll house too. Turned out I really liked the doll house too.

So I guess this is my most memorable gift. I might also add I still have the doll house.

I remember seeing a doll in a store when I was little and shopping with Mom. She had on a ragged burlap dress and she had a tear rolling down her cheek. This tear was removable. She looked so sad that I started crying and told Mom that all I wanted for Christmas was this doll because she was so sad and needed a home.

I did get that doll and wish I still had her. I can't even remember what she was called. Maybe I should try searching ebay for an antique doll with a tear.

When I was VERY young my "Pappa" (Grandfather) gave me a little black doll with three hanks of black thread for hair...tied with 3 red bows...I loved that doll like no other......Jo

I just found some information on that doll I was talking about, and she didn't have a name at all and is now worth some bucks. She wasn't sold for very long.

http://www.whitless.com/littlemissnoname2.htm

AWE! I don't remember her, but I was a teenager then. She looks so pitiful. LOL

I actually have 2....a doll that came from my g'ma and g'pa when i was maybe 4?Shes in something kind of like a furry one piece that comes up over her head. The only plastic pieces on her are her face and hands. That doll and i went on many many adventures, lol. Mom brought it back from Nebraska for me about 10 years ago. Talk about the memories that came back.
My other one is an afghan that mom made all of us kids about 25 years ago. I think i was the only one of us 5 that was happy with it. I'll tell ya, that afghan has kept me warm for many a cold nights. I think i made her really proud last winter when i had just had my surgery. I was curled up in bed and covered with this afghan, she came in to check on me and just kinda looked at it with this really puzzled look. I think she was surpised that i still had it. Its traveled the world with me : )

My camoflage (genuine plastic foliage don't you know) combat helmet when I was 5. One NEEDED protection when one was the only girl in the neighborhood. Not to mention that we were scheming to take the old Navy parachute and practice jumping from the barn. Didn't break a thing but my Mother's hand when she paddled us all! Lol!

A beautiful Ballerina doll that my mother ordered from the old "Star Weekly" magazine. She was beautiful and I can still even remember the way she smelled. She was gorgeous and I named her Maria.

Most of the girls have a doll that they remember fondly.
I was only the second girl in a family with six brothers.
My sister was the doll lover and used to try to get me to play along with her every year when we got our Christmas dolls. She still remembers how hard it was to get me to play with them. LOL
I would rather be borrowing my brothers toy cars and eighteen wheelers. We used to have a dirt area in the yard and I used a hoe (my dad was the gardener then) To make ellaborate roads for them. LOL
Oh well, it is good to hear that the dolls had found homes where they were really cherished. Mine probably felt like the little girl doll in Toy Story, all neglected underneath a pile of stuff somewhere.LOL

This is a great thread. I loved reading everyone's special memories. My most memorable gift at Christmas was a blue canary my Dad gave me. He gave me a clue, "It walks, it talks, it sings, it rings." That was at least 40 years ago. Of course I will never forget my "Kissy" doll. lol

Lol Windy. My dolly was as lonely as yours.

Frogsrus, glad I was not alone. Maybe we could start the lonely dolls club. You have to bring a frog to the meetings. LOL

I'm in the i loved dolls club...remember the paper dolls? Man, i had a suitcase full of their attire.. popsicle sticks and tape were used to hold their heads up, lol.....
but i was also known to share mud pies with the girl down the road, terrorized poor whuzzhisname about his momma (nowadays that'll get you shot).....now that i think about it, i must've been one heckuva snot : )

we were quite poor when i was a child so none of our gifts were very spectacular but my mother found a way to make them almost magical. she would wrap one and then leave a long strand of the ribbon attached to the present. we would open the present and then have to follow the ribbon all through the house to get to the next present. the "treasure hunt" made it that much more fun. i also remember that one year there was only one small present under the tree with a note inside. the note left instructions to go to another part of the house to find the next present and so on and so on.

I was born in the 60's and my family was not poor but both my mom and dad had grown up very poor. They were frugal, and at the age of about 6 I had never had a "real" doll. I asked for one for Christmas. I was a bit heart broken when on Christmas Eve I opened a gift and found a shabby doll with a cloth body, plastic head, arms and legs. I guess I had something beautiful pictured in my mind from a catalogue. My mom, seeing my disappointment, pointed out that this doll was very special because she had been old and broken and a blind man who needed work fixed her up and made her pretty again just for me. My mom taught me a lesson in compassion that I have not forgotten and I remember the doll with fondness.

I too remember a bride doll when I was nine. It was our first year in Oregon. I still have her and she is tucked away and looks like she is 42 years old. But mom made me other clothes for her too. And those I don't have but only her original dress.

I had absolutely no use for dolls. Mom gave me one of the original Thumbelina dolls, and I gave it to a friend. My poor mom, she was so upset!

The gift that really sticks in my head was a slide whistle. Had that thing for many years.

I guess it was a BB gun to knock off the squirrels, then place them down along the creek for the two red foxes that came tippy toeing along there every night at dusk. It was not that I shot the squirrels for the fun of it as hunters do, but rather to save my mother's tulips from the squirrels, and the chickens from the foxes.

shakemh

Must have been one powerful BB gun. LOL
At least you used the squirrels for a good purpose and saved the lives of domestic chickens.

That's really sweet! Fed the foxes and saved the flowers and chickens all at the same time.

That'd be my very favorite 'still in the original box,' "Samantha the Bewitched" Doll.
In full regale splendor: a Red velvet, red sequined witches costume (with a matching pointed witches hat, an broom included.)
It cost my mother some _BIG_ bucks then. I still can't part with it!
I kept playing with it and putting it back in the box.

I also kept playing (and fighting) with my 3 brothers', for their Lincoln Logs, science kits, erector sets, farm animals & farm vehicles and earth moving construction vehicles though.
Samantha was always well protected by GI Joe and by staying in my mothers' bedroom.
Barbie of course was a blonde, GI Joe had to keep rescuing her; even from the clutches of Ken, the non-rugged & non-macho guy.

~* Robin

It was a toy farm set complete with barn and animals when I was 9. The rest is history.

Mine was a cowboy"not a cowgirl" outfit with chaps and spurs,hat, holster and gun, and the whole works.I must have been about four. I have a picture sitting on a horse(remember how someone went around neighborhoods with the pony and they took pictures of the kids).I still love that picture !It was a great Christmas, that year!!
Bonnie

I mentioned the boots when I was nine, way up above. The gift I didn't appreciate until many years later wasn't Christmas, but close. My mother was sending me back from California to Florida to live with my Dad and his new wife.

When my mother picked me up from the foster home for the airplane ride, she had made a very formal cowgirl suit for me, complete with culottes, from some of my Dad's old dress blues, which were a fine grade of wool in those days. The jacket had red inserts on the shoulders, and white piping in between the red and blue so dark it was almost black.

The flight was a military flight taking all night and then some. I got to "fly" the plane and the pilots treated me to hamburgers at a refill stop in Texas.

WOW! You got to go into the cockpit. That would be really memorable.

I can remember when we left California to go live with my g'parents in Nebraska....my brother and i got the coolest "pilot wings" and we got to see the cockpit too..i dont remember much about it, but i do remember the wings and we did get go in the cockpit also....
Jen
p.s.....i was maybe 4? so it had to have been early 70's.

Wasn't hard, LOL. There were just the 2 pilots and me. Musta been a transport. My bunk bed was just 2 feet behind them, no curtain even.