‘Tis the season for gift guides! There are so many lovely ones out there and I love to peruse them all. Funnily enough, I almost never buy anything that was featured in a gift guide, because by the time the guides come out I have already completed my shopping, and I will NOT deviate from my early-shopping habits, no matter how tempting the offerings may be. I do, however, like to imagine that I might note certain items for the following year. If only I could remember them all.
Gifts are fun to give and fun to receive, and in my recent plea to Ask Me Anything, Suzanne (HI SUZANNE) asked: What are some of the Very Best Gifts you have ever received? Well, Suzanne, as I’ve mentioned before I am pretty much always delighted with any gift, but I thought that today I would talk about my Very Best Childhood Gifts.
There is a reason I lost my mind and blacked out with excitement when my friend Elise (HI ELISE) sent me a reprinted Sears catalogue: I was OBSESSED with the Sears catalogue as a child, all of them throughout the year, but most of all, the Wish Book. When did the Wish Book come out? It must have been in plenty of time before Christmas – the fall, maybe? – because items took a while to order (by phone!) and then arrive, but I have no real idea. In any case, I would page through it with the seriousness of a scholar, circling things and making notes. I loved everything about it; I loved the “Gifts Under $10” section, I loved the little wintry ensembles that would be in the clothing section, I could barely imagine being fancy enough to get cubic zirconia tennis bracelets or bottles of Poison perfume. What would my life be like if I had that matching beret, scarf, and glove set? I would wonder and then SOMEONE WOULD GIVE ME SUCH A SET and my life was pretty much the same, but with fancy matching winter accessories.
One thing I coveted desperately but never received was a Snoopy Sno Cone machine, but to be honest, it’s probably for the best. It was most likely garbage that would yield nothing like the delectable delights tasted only at the shopping mall parking lot fairs of my youth, or the Calgary Stampede, and so I can just let it live in glory in my dreams. This is not unlike Easy Bake Ovens: they seemed so wonderful and miraculous, and yet were a recipe not for delicious tiny cakes but for third-degree burns and crunchy-edged but pudding-centred disasters.
Circling back to the Best Gifts Ever Received, here are the Top Five from my childhood and adolescence. I was the recipient of many wonderful things, but these are the ones that stand out the most.
- Kora Candi, my Cabbage Patch Kid. Remember when Cabbage Patch Kids first came out, there was a run on them and they became Tickle Me Elmo before there was even an Elmo to tickle. It was INTENSE business. I desperately wanted one, and my mother was probably a ball of nerves about it. First, she had to put her name on a wait list at Zellers, and then when she received the top-secret phone call that THERE WAS A DOLL FOR HER, she had to go into a special back room to get it, and it was quadruple-bagged so that no one would know she had it and murder her for it in the parking lot. The things moms do to make Christmas magical. My mom faced death, or at least mugging, just so I could open up Kora Candi on Christmas morning. How I loved that doll! She had brown hair and brown eyes, just like me, and I very seriously glued her adoption certificate into my very special album that had all my scratch and sniff stickers in it. My grandma bought and made all sorts of clothes for her as well, and how fun was that to dress her for the day’s activities. I had friends who had not one but several Cabbage Patch Kids, and I could not understand that. I only had energy and love enough for one. I poured all my love into Kora, and then, later, into Bitsy, my Pound Puppy. What was with all the adoptable dolls in the 80s? It was a thing, for sure.
- Welcome To My Dollhouse. When I was very young, maybe four, my grandpa built me my very own dollhouse. It was even better than anything I pored over in the Sears catalogue. It was a two-story white house with plastic wrap to simulate glass in all the windows; Grandpa built a lot of the furniture and put pieces of carpet on the floors and wallpaper on the walls. Some of the furniture was purchased – likely by Grandma – and I spent many hours rearranging things and playing with my little dolls. There was even a little stove and a toilet with a tiny toilet paper roll, which is a weird detail but important. Dolls need to use the facilities just like anyone else.
If you look past the Kool-Aid stained face, you can see the dollhouse to the left. Fun fact: my grandma – the same one who aided and abetted my grandpa in the making of the dollhouse – made that quilt for me. It featured girls in costumes from other countries, because I loved thinking of girls just like me, but in different places all around the world. What would their lives be like? I would wonder, looking at the clogs on the girl from the Netherlands.
This photo cracks me up. I am holding some tiny dollhouse furniture – A TV! A lamp! I love lamp! – with such intense focus. Who is the man on the couch? I mean, probably my dad, but who can say really. Although everyone in the world had that couch, I know from the throw pillows that this was at my grandma’s house. It’s possible that could be an uncle behind me. NO ONE KNOWS. The 70s was a bad time for decent photos, and a bad time for my hair.
- Princess Diana Everything. The Royal Wedding took place the summer that I was six, and at that time I was visiting my other grandparents. My grandma woke me up at 2:30 in the morning so we could watch it together, and from that moment on I was obsessed with Princess Di. OBSESSED. Do you know what the great thing is about having a complete and utter obsession? There is a theme to all your gifts for years to come; all relatives know exactly what to get for you. I have an enormous stack of coffee table books all about Princess Di, her clothes, and the Royal Wedding. Looking at it now, it’s startling to think such a young woman wore such objectively frumpy clothes, but the 80s were a strange time in fashion. The Very Best Gift I received from this era was a Princess Di paper doll book. Princess Di and clothes, two of my favourite things. I actually received two of those books, one of which I used to cut out and one I saved. I will say that cutting out that wedding dress, with all those lace points? It was HARD WORK, especially for someone who was supposed to be using safety scissors.
Diana had some sassy shapewear.
The dress! There is a little slit on the front, and that held her bouquet.
Aw, it’s sad to think of now, the hopefulness of a young woman, only to end in terrible sadness and tragedy. Well, the world was richer with her in it.
- Makeup and Accessories. My dad had two younger sisters, who were twins, and collectively they were known as The Girls or The Aunties, both with the initial C. My dad is, how shall I say this, a fairly conservative person and he wasn’t thrilled with his daughter doing things like wearing makeup or getting her ears pierced, but The Aunties broke through that wall. One of The Aunties was famous in my mind for showing me the cover of Born in the USA and telling me that the Boss had a butt that I should look for in any future relationships, and also that my mom could “do the looking but SHE would do the touching” when it came to my handsome grade six teacher, on the evening of our school Christmas performance. The other Aunty C took me to get my ears pierced when I was nine and she also, a few years later, gave me the gift of makeup; it was one of those huge mirrored boxes with a ton of different eyeshadows and lip colours. I still think of it with longing; how fun to try on everything under the sun, and Dad couldn’t say anything, because he didn’t like to hurt his sister’s feelings. I also loved receiving bath beads or salts, and those gift packs with scented soaps and body washes, particularly if they came from The Body Shop, which was the height of elegance and wealth for me in those days.
My first day of grade seven, making use of all that makeup. See what I mean about the couch? Tell me you didn’t have one too.
- The Mists of Avalon. I was – well, am – a bookworm, and I always love to receive a book as a gift. My Aunt J gave me The Mists of Avalon when I was fifteen, and I have to say, that was a bold move. For one thing, I personally would have no idea at all what kind of book to give a fifteen-year-old girl, and for another, I would be nervous that such a bookworm would not only have already read any book I could choose, but would own it. This is what makes the receipt of The Mists of Avalon so marvelous; not only had I never read it, but I had never even heard of it, and so would not have specifically requested it, even if I was allowed to specifically request gifts from relatives. I must have read this giant tome about fifty times; it is the only fantasy-adjacent book I have ever been interested in. It is all about the story of King Arthur, but told from the women’s point of view, and it is incredible on so many levels. I loved it so much that I excitedly bought the prequel, Lady of Avalon, years later, but I couldn’t make it past the first chapter. There was just no recapturing the magic of the mists.
I told my son about my love for this book, saying It isn’t really about King Arthur at all, it’s all about the women, to which he replied That’s really on-brand for you. Isn’t it?
Do you remember your Very Best Gifts Ever? It doesn’t have to be from childhood, of course! This is where I will also mention that the Very Best Non-Childhood Gift is Rex, who was groomed this week and looks exactly like a stuffed-animal replica of himself.
I mean, come on. How am I not dead from cuteness overload?
As a reminder, if you have questions, I have answers! Just fill out this form. If you don’t have questions, just fill me in on gifts you’ve loved, gifts you’ve given, even gifts that you hated! There are no rules here. xo
Oh, Nicole! I felt so much about your reading likes and loves were revealed in this post–that perceptive comment about Mists of Avalon being on brand for you and this: “It featured girls in costumes from other countries, because I loved thinking of girls just like me, but in different places all around the world. What would their lives be like?” I love this curiosity and empathy about you so much!
Oh, thank you so much Maya! I have just…never been interested in reading about male life! Maybe it’s because I have brothers and now sons, but I am really only interested in (as Alice Munro says) the lives of girls and women!
When I was younger, my grandfather built me a dollhouse that was an exact replica of my parents’ house; the rooms had the same wallpaper, he made miniatures of our furniture and my books – the whole works! Now, it sits in my basement trapped in this weird limbo / intersection of “this is a really special time capsule on so many levels and all I have left of that house” and “my 9-year-old daughter would love this so hard and play the heck out of it until it crumbles”… Thanks for the memories – that Pound Puppy got me right in the feels!
Wow wow WOW!!! A replica of your HOUSE. That is really amazing! What a treasure. What an incredible gift!
Did you have a Pound Puppy? What was its name? I feel like I was allowed to name mine, so it must not have come with a name.
Your Kool-Aid stained face! I love. ❤️
One of my close friends visited England with her family during the summer Princess Di married Butthead. But I remember getting up early (even before sunrise!) to watch the royal wedding. She brought back from England gifts with Diana and Butthead’s faces on them. Now that I think about it, it was very cool.
Oh, that is very cool! I have a commemorative engagement mug that my aunt passed on to me, and I have it facing out in the Diana direction 🙂
Oh my goodness, that dollhouse is amazing! What a wonderful gift! I think I’d enjoy a dollhouse now, even at my age!
Right? When I see a dollhouse – there is a huge one on display at Costco right now – I stare at it longingly.
I love EVERYTHING about this, from the Sears Catalog memories to the idea of your mom making a back-room deal for a Cabbage Patch doll to the tiny toilet paper roll (essential) to the photos of young Nicole and made-up pre-teen Nicole to The Aunties and especially the butt comment to your son’s “on brand” comment to the pictures of an absolutely GLORIOUS and so proud of himself Rex. Thank you for answering my question. And I have another one: When can we expect a book of humorous essays from you, Nicole?!?! You are so much more enjoyable than David Sedaris et al.
I have a terrible memory and I am sure I got many MANY wonderful gifts over the years. But the two I remember most vividly from childhood were getting a Barbie Dream House — which I LOVED for years, and in which I enacted many extremely detailed and convoluted and highly dramatic stories for my Barbies — and then when I was in sixth grade a boom box, along with a Bonnie Raitt CD. (Why Bonnie Raitt? She was not hip with the sixth grade set. Why not Michael Jackson’s Dangerous? Or The Bodyguard soundtrack? Or one of the several Garth Brooks albums that came out that year? To be fair, I acquired No Fences at some point later. But nonetheless I became an instant Bonnie Raitt fan.)
The Barbie Dream House! My friend had that and the camper van. So fun. Bonnie Raitt! That is a blast from the past. I remember getting Cyndi Lauper and Madonna tapes to play on my own boom box – and later, Bon Jovi!
You are so sweet about the essays 🙂 Maybe one day!
The Mists of Avalon is so dark! Maybe it’s just perfect for a 15yo, but I don’t know! Maybe some of the seedier aspects of it just went over your head.
For some reason I can no longer remember, I wanted a new backpack. My parents refused to buy me one because I had a perfectly good one, but I wanted a new one. My dear Uncle Kevin (a bachelor then and a bachelor now who still sends me a present to unwrap every year) was stationed in the Bahamas and he sent me a new backpack internationally. What a dear man.
Rex’s handsomeness cannot be underestimated. Do you think he knows he’s glorious?! How can he not? You must tell him a hundred times a day, right?
It IS so dark! I read it fairly recently – 2020, when the libraries closed – and I loved it even more. There is an amazing scene near the end where Morgause has plotted against Lancelet and Gwynefar and she offers to “reward” one of the knights, who exclaims that her stress level must have affected her deeply, because she could be his grandmother. At that point she thinks “I have lived too long.” I could read that chapter over and over. It’s very dark but god, I love it.
Your uncle sounds amazing!
Well, this is a bummer – I commented, but it isn’t here. I’ll try again . . .
I wish I was clever enough to come up with a good question, this one is great and your answer is so fun.
When I was about 9, I asked for a stuffed animal. For some reason, we never had stuffed toys. No idea why. There is a home movie (without noise) of me opening a stuffed dog. I basically lost my mind with excitment. My face was so red and you can tell I was squealing with delight. Maybe I’d been told I wasn’t getting a stuffed animal?
Like you, I really wanted the Snoopy Snow Cone machine and the Easy Bake Oven. I never got them. I also wanted a Barbie head to do her hair and makeup. Again, never happened.
The couch is funny. Ours was early colonial plaid reds and blues.I feel like my neighbors had that couch. I wonder what future generations will laugh at us for.
Funny enough, 27 years ago today Coach proposed. Best Christmas gift ever. Hands down.
Oh, that’s so sweet! Go Coach! That’s a great story!
That story about the stuffed animal, awwwww. That is just wonderful.
I got a bike for Christmas when I was nine. We’d moved from the city to a small town the previous spring and I was allowed to wander more than I had previously, so it was a great gift. I was pretty much allowed to ride anywhere in town I wanted to go and I loved that freedom.
Oooh a bike! That is such a great gift! I loved the freedom of being able to ride around the neighbourhood.
When I saw your post title, I knew this was going to be amazing and it did NOT disappoint.
I love that your Grandma woke you up at 2:30 am to watch the royal wedding. I remember watching William and Kate’s wedding vividly because my daughter was a newborn and I sat on the couch and pumped (I had terrible supply; sigh) while I watched their wedding on TV.
I also LOVED the Wish Book. I don’t think I ever got a single thing that I circled, but the possibilities of it all were endless and blew my mind.
I’m not sure what my favourite Christmas gift would be? I have lots of memorable ones (like my pawn shop alarm clock, a doll I called Christmas, skate blades)…but I’m trying hard to think what I’d classify as my favourite? My daughter gifted me an ornament years ago that I really cherish. My husband bought me a food processor one year which seems like a very lame gift, but I didn’t think I wanted one…and then I got one, and use it all the time. So that one made me very happy, in a weird adult way.
Elisabeth, I got up to watch William and Kate’s wedding – my girlfriend hosted an early morning tea party/ watch party and it was so much fun. When I got home I immediately called Grandma (she was still alive) and we dished about it for SO long. She of course had gotten up to watch it. It is one of my very favourite memories, thank you for bumping it up in my brain. I’m just going to warmly and fuzzily think about Grandma for the rest of the day now.
I read Mists of Avalon in junior high! I think I picked it up off my mom’s bookshelf because I liked the cover. I don’t remember anything except the story except that it was awesome.
My favorite gift memory was when I was 6 and got a Speak n’Spell. But oh the humanity, my parents didn’t see the fine print that the batteries were not included. There was a blizzard on Christmas that morning and it was so cold that the car wouldn’t start, but my dad bundled up and walked to the nearest gas station to get batteries. I’ve never forgotten that he did that.
BATTERIES! My husband remembers getting gifts that required batteries and absolutely nothing was open on Christmas. The torture! My cousin had a Speak ‘n Spell, so fun.
One year my mom got me something that needed batteries, and she wrapped them separately and had me open them first! I was not so amused.
Hahahaha!!!
Oh, The Wish Book was THE best. I remember spending hours and hours pouring over that book circling things.
Poor Princess Di; she was loved by everyone but her husband. The whole situation was tragic.
I love that you still have your Princess Di paper dolls! And I adore the pictures of childhood Nicole – even with the Kool-Aid stained face.
We did not have that couch; although I do recall a hideous orange, pleather couch that resided in our den. but I do remember that couch being in one of my aunt’s home. That was a wild (and unfortunate) time in home décor, wasn’t it?
It really was. Remember all the brown and avocado kitchen appliances?
OMG, yes! My mom had an avocado green refrigerator until the day she died. That thing was ugly but I wouldn’t be surprised to find out it was still working today.
Do you know what is odd? While I remember a sense of abundance around the holidays, meaning lots of gifts under the trees, I don’t really remember what I got! Maybe that is the sign that I was never going to be a gift person? I mean, I know I loved whatever my parents picked out for us, I just don’t have strong memories about the actual gifts. I did have a cabbage patch doll that I loved. Funny story – my cousin had one, too, and the doll happened to have her name (Julie). She found the adoption certificate that comes with the doll and thought SHE was adopted! She confronted her parents with the evidence and everyone had a good laugh over it. But poor Julie, thinking her parents were trying to bamboozle her.
So the best gift I have ever gotten was when I graduated from high school. My mom kept a journal of my senior year of high school. She wrote in it nearly every day. She’d record what I was going through and try to impart the advice I was too stubborn to listen to. I was a well-behaved kid but sadly not super nice to my mom at times. She wanted so badly to be close to me and I gave her the cold shoulder a lot of the time. And I went through a really rough break-up during senior year so it was a tumultuous time… But it was an amazing gift. I have apologized profusely to my mom for how snotty and rude I was to her as a teen. She said she didn’t think anything of it and knew it was just a stage of life. But gah. That’s the main reason why I was happy to have boys. I would have been happy with either gender, of course, but I didn’t want karma delivering me a snotty, know-it-all version of myself as payback!
Wow, what a wonderful gift. I was pretty horrible to my mom too, but more like in junior high. She used to say that she hoped I had twin girls who behaved exactly in the same way! Our moms could have been buddies!
That story is so funny – poor Julie!
Oh, how fun!! It’s funny what memories/gifts of the past stick with us! I remember a play kitchen and spending a lot of time playing with the pots and pans, stirring pretend food, etc! LOL I remember the joy/gratefulness but I don’t remember any other specific item from most of my childhood.
Oh, Rex—what a gorgeous boy you are! Those eyes!!! They’re what people refer to when they talk about “puppy-dog eyes”, you think? Like, “How can you say No to me?” My son’s dog’s eyes get a lot of attention but his are opposite of Rex’s — they’re steel blue and piercing and look fierce, hiding his goofy and playful personality!
Oh, I had a play kitchen – I think the stove was a turtle and the fridge was a penguin! I wonder whatever happened to it. I LOVED it!
I just showed my entire family the photos of Rex.
Also I have a photo of me one Christmas when I was 12 wearing a new leather jacket and…a red beret, scarf and gloves set. I actually think it’s in an album at my grandmother’s house. Next time I’m there I’ll take a photo.
YOU WERE SO FANCY!!!! I’d love to see that photo.
I noticed in another post someone asked if Rex was wearing socks- no, those are his paws, tee hee! He is so, so cute.
Anyway, i loved this trip down memory lane. There were some strange things in the 70s and 80s! My grandparents had couches very, very similar to the ones in these photos. The one thing you had that I would have loved so much is the dollhouse. I was obsessed with little people and furniture and things like that but never had a dollhouse. My friend and I would build homes for our “little guys” (that’s what we called it, as in “Let’s play Little Guys”) out of blocks, which maybe was part of the fun. But I was always very, very envious of girls who actually had a dollhouse.
Do you ever look at dollhouses when you are in, say, Costco? They often have a big one on display and I just stare at it.
This was such a fun read; my face might hurt from all the Smiling. (Smiling is my favorite!)
I love that you actually remember your gifts and still have some of them.
I think I got a bike one year that was SO awesome; I loved riding my bike around the ‘hood.
Also once I got this amazing record player, I might have been 10 at the time, it was set up like a jukebox, (the size, not with interchangeable records) I loved listening to music so much, so having this big red record player was the Bomb!
REX IS THE BEST GIFT and I could cry seeing his happy face.
Oooh a record player!! That is a fun blast from the past!
Your Sears catalog love reminds me of when we would get the Toys R Us catalog and circle all of the gifts we wanted for Christmas. SO MUCH FUN. I would also get the American Girl catalog and drool over all of the expensive dolls that I would never be able to afford myself.
One year, I got the game Guess Who? for Christmas and I maintain it was my best Christmas gift ever and made one of my aunts play it with me at least a dozen times during Christmas.
I had purchased a Maplelea doll (Canadian version of American girl) for a friend’s daughter, and I got the catalogue for years after. I was in my thirties and I would look through it longingly.
OMG, that photo of Rex. I mean he is VERY handsome and he knows it 🙂
I loved reading about your favorite gifts. I never had a Cabbage Patch Doll, although they were popular in Germany for a while… but I am more interested in the dog stuffed animal next to your doll. Because I had one exactly like it. They were called “Wauzies” in Germany… do you remember that name??
I don’t remember that name, here they were called Pound Puppies!
Oh, I’d forgotten about Pound Puppies!!! I had one! Or was it my brother? Anyway, my dearest possession as my Cabbage Patch Kid. Her name was Charlotte but I renamed her Candy. I lived in Australia back then and only later on realised “candy” was Amercian for “lollie”. Anyway, it seems like an appropriate name for a kid’s doll!
Oh, I love it! Thanks so much for sharing!
Jocelyn Wilma and Wallis Jules. I benefitted from an extra given to my mom’s nursing school roommate. No pound puppy, though. 🙂