Hayter’s article for Dec 11, 2022

“History of Hayter Christmas gift Getting”

          When I was a kid, I never imagined a time when I would cease to be excited about Christmas. Next to the last day of school, it was the most anticipated day of the year.

          Of course, I’m talking about Santa Claus Christmas, not Jesus Christmas. The Hayters were conservative Christians. Nowhere in the Bible did it mention the date of Jesus’ birth, so why celebrate it in the dead of winter?   

          The idea was forget the strangely created birthday celebration. The church my family went to thought we should collectively celebrate Jesus twice on Sunday and once on Wednesday, every week of the year. As an individual you can celebrate any other time you want. I mention that only to keep people from castigating me for pooh poohing Christmas. If you’ve never been castigated, you’re one lucky duck.

So, today I’m talking about a Santa Christmas. I never remember believing in Santa. I likely swallowed the notion that he lived at the North Pole, but I knew that after Thanksgiving he stayed at Macy’s in New York for a day. After that, he visited a bunch of other stores in my hometown

I’ve written articles about Christmas for 42 years now. In fact, I was tempted to use one of my old articles today. No one would know, and fewer would care.

Over the years, I’ve mentioned it at least 32 times about how hard it was for Dad and Mom to make Christmas happen for seven kids. Don’t get me wrong. We each got Faris and Elsie something for Christmas. The money used for their presents came from our allowances. Actually, Dad’s salary paid for all gifts, because he gave us our allowance.

I’ve mentioned it several times that Dad used “lay away” to buy our gifts. That’s when you pick out a bunch of stuff back in October, and leave it at the store until you pay it all off. That way, your kids can search the house top to bottom and not find any gifts. If the last payment came the day before Christmas, then we were supposed to think that Santa delivered it all while we were asleep. Yes, I was a dumb kid, but I didn’t fall for that nonsense. Dennis, my big brother taught me that.

The main reason that Dad did the layaway thing was because he had trouble not spending Christmas money during the few months before Christmas. It would have been used for emergencies that cropped up. You know, stuff like going to the drive-in picture show.

          Among the biggest problems with lay away is that it doesn’t allow much time for you to assemble some of the stuff you bought the kids. On Christmas Eve 1957, Daddy and my big brother Larry stayed up all night working in the garage to assemble Dennis and my JC Higgens bicycles. The best Christmas gift ever. Unfortunately, the relationship between Larry and Dad cratered somewhat after that night. The lesson being, bicycle assembly is not a good father, son project.

          Some of what we got either broke or was put away before New Years Eve. It doesn’t take a lot of time for a kid to lose interest in certain toys. How long can a slinky hold your attention?

Some of the other stuff we got for Christmas was marbles, skates, a view master, and a stick horse. Dennis got the brown-headed horse and I got the red one. I kid you not, there was a time when I ran around the yard with a red-headed stick dragging the ground between my legs. After about a week, Dennis sold me his brown-headed for some of my marbles. He was three years older and caught on to the stick-horse lunacy a little quicker than I did.

          I once got a chemistry set for Christmas. I’m sure there were instructions somewhere in the box. If so, I either didn’t understand them or never bothered to look at ‘em. Had I experimented enough with my set, I would’ve likely killed myself during one of my experiments. All I managed to do was mix jars of bad smelling powders together making them stink even worse. Not that much of a thrill.

          Nowadays, the children of suburbia get better stuff. Forget Monopoly, they’ll have those goggles where you turn your head and the view you’re looking at moves in whatever direction you head does. You can go forward, backwards and upwards.

About 48 million kids are going to get drones. The only downside of a drone is that, in the hands of a kid, it won’t last nearly as long as a good stick-horse.

Drones can do a lot of stuff. How long will it be before they become a distraction to outdoor sports? – “Ralph, it seems the baseball smashed into a drone! That’s getting way too common, folks.”

One thing is for sure, it’s going to get harder and harder to surprise some the young folks today. Whatever electronic device they want in November may be outdated come December 25^th.

Okay, I’ve taken up enough of your time. You now need to go to The Woodlands Mall. I understand there have been some changes. Kay and I would go, but I fear we’re too old. I’m now only good for one evening a year. I once wrote a Christmas shortstory about an elderly lady sitting at one of those slatted wooden benches outside of Mervins… or Sears. I miss Sears.  

 So, off you go. By the way, just in case your kids are as dumb as I was, I’d shy away from chemistry sets. I doubt you can even find a stickhorse. Kids are a lot more sophisticated today.  

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hayter.mark@gmail.com