Being a Baby Boomer, I have seen Christmas from many angles over the past half a century. I remember what's now considered retro attire like flannelette pajamas splashed with cowboys for boys and ballerinas for girls.
Christmas trees were all real trees simply because there was no such thing as an artificial Christmas tree — or at least, not a decent looking one.
Fun in the winter was sledding down the slope behind the school on big hunks of cardboard ripped up from big boxes. My memories of playing outside invariably included being damp or outright wet because gloves and mitts were made from wool and nobody had waterproof ski jackets yet.
To keep your feet dry you put your feet in plastic bags before you put on your galoshes. If you were a lucky girl you had puddle jumpers — a now obscure type of footwear that went over your shoes and fastened with a button and loop at the ankle. Now they just sound quaint and archaic but at the time they were the coolest. Though we weren't calling things "cool" yet.
I remember being a teeny bopper, excited to receive my very own 45's of the Beatles to play on my very own white plastic mono record player. My parents were thrilled to have the use of their stereo back.
As a teenager I graduated to long playing albums, and the Beatles had graduated from being adorable mop-tops to gurus of a new era and perspective on the world.
Much later I was a new mom of my own baby boom, of five children. The focus had changed from what I wanted for Christmas to providing warm memories for my own brood.
Christmas Eves were spent with my husband assembling bikes and little rocking chairs, and finishing last-minute wrapping. Christmas Days were spent shuttling between our home and the kids' grandparents. For weeks we'd have been rushing off to practices for Christmas pageants, Christmas parties and field trips with other homeschooling Baby Boomers and their children.
As our kids got older, they helped to bake pies, baste turkeys and decorate the tree. Some years we had an artificial tree, one year we had a living tree in a pot that shed needles like crazy, and now we're back to a real tree. Gifts were no longer baby dolls and Tonka toys. Now they were makeup and hair trinkets, guitar strings and CDs.
This year, it's a return to Tonka toys, coloring books and rubber snakes for our grandsons. Now when I wander through toy stores, it is accompanied by memories of my own childhood Christmases, piggybacked with memories of past years when our children were small. And so it goes, each year another link in the chain of the circle of life.
Once again, as in the olden days, I wish you all a Merry Christmas.
Visit Jody's website and blog at http://www.ncubator.ca and http://ncubator.ca/blogger