It's
time to talk about Christmas wishes in this edition of the POP CULTURE ADDICT'S ADVENT CALENDAR - Day #14 in a series of 25!
And
when I was a kid, there really was just one place in the world where I believed
all wishes were born. And I am not
talking about the stars in the sky, the four leaf clovers in the fields, or
even Santa's Workshop. I'm talking
about a magical book. A book that would
come out in the fall that had lots of potential wishes inside of it for boys
and girls to dream about.
A
book that has really become quite pathetic in recent years.
I
mean, look at the 2016 Sears Wish Book!
This isn't a Wish Book! It's a
Dream Crusher Book! This is NOT the
book that I grew up with. This is NOT
the book that I anxiously waited for all year to see what the hottest toys
were. This IS however a brilliant book
to use for the fireplace to keep all of us warm.
I
suppose that it is a sign of the times though.
Sears has had a tough few years lately as far as sales are concerned. I suppose the idea of a Wish Book even
existing is a good thing. And,
considering the focus on online shopping, it's a miracle that a book is even
being published!
But still...how many of you have fond memories of the Wish Book? I know I certainly do.
Back
in the days in which I was a kid - and back in the days in which the Wish Book
was over a thousand pages - my siblings and I would study that book as if it
was some sort of ancient scroll that would grant us magical powers. Each one of us would have a different
coloured marker (mine was almost always red), and we'd put our names next to
everything that we wanted for Christmas that year.
Of
course, mind you, my family never had big bucks to spend for Christmas, and if
we tallied up all the things we asked for in the catalogue, it'd be an easy
thirty thousand dollars! Rather, it was
a guide for my parents to look through it, see what all of us wanted, and
select one or two things from the book.
Or, they'd take the list of things and see if they could get them at
another store cheaper. Either way, the
Sears Wish Book sort of worked the same as a letter from Santa in a way - and
somehow my parents found a way to grant as many of the wishes that we hoped would
happen that Christmas.
After
all - they have Santa's phone number.
They made it happen.
In
all seriousness though, looking through that Wish Book was a really fun
activity. And, I definitely remember
putting a lot of red signatures in the toy section of the book! From what I remember, my initials always
went in the board game section, the video game section, and the Gifts Under $25
section.
(What
can I say? Some of those gifts were
actually quite kitschy and neat!)
I
don't know why I loved board games so much - especially since most of the time
I only had myself to play them. I guess
it helped that I had a really good imagination and I could find ways to enjoy
them solo. I could think of about a
hundred thousand ways to make "Don't Break The Ice" much more
enjoyable - which may or may not have involved a drinking game or two.
And
putting my initials next to video games in the book was always a crapshoot of
sorts. Although I had a Nintendo by the
time I was nine years old, I really didn't expect my parents to buy me
expensive video games (and believe me, in 1991, video games were REALLY
costly). But when the video game
StarTropics came out, and I saw the commercial for it, I practically begged to
get that game for Christmas. I thought
it looked like an awesome game that I really wanted to play. It was like Legend of Zelda, but in a
tropical island setting. So, when I saw
it in the Wish Book that year, I put my initials beside it not really expecting
it, but hoping that my wish would come true and that I would be playing that
game during the holidays that year.
So
when I unwrapped StarTropics underneath the tree that year, it made a
ten-year-old me believe that sometimes the Wish Book really did grant wishes.
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