Rethinking the Christmas List

I got almost everything I asked for on my Christms list.  As I opened gifts, I mentally checked them off.  There’s the Homer Laughlin book; the Garden Claw; the black gloves; the black peacoat; the Felco secateurs; the external hard drive; the gift cards.  All neatly checked off.  But no heart shaking surprises.  No opening a gift and getting a huge surprise…”For meeeee?  Ohhhhhhhh how did you know?  How did you guess?  It’s the best thing ever!”  Nope; none of that.   Actaully opening gifts was rather anticlimatic.  I know that isn’t something that the gift-giver wants to hear since I got exactly what I asked for.  That’s the purpose of wish lists, right?

That’s sounds ungrateful, doesn’t it.  It isn’t meant to be.  I’m thinking of past Christmases.  Perhaps Christmases too long ago.  Perhaps back to Christmases when Santa brought one toy.  And we received one gift from Mama and Daddy.  And one gift from my older sister.  There was  more excitement and anticipation then.  And absolutely no sense of expectation.  I never even sat on Santa’s knee and told him what I wanted because I was scared to death of him!  And you know WHY he frightened me?  Because.  Mama always told my brother and me that if we weren’t in bed and asleep by 8:30PM on Christmas eve night, that Santa would bite our ears off!  Talk about PTSD.  It’s a good thing I don’t believe in Santa.  Now that I’m a grownup and everything, I know why she did it.  She just wanted us from underfoot so they could get the Santa stuff going on.  But try telling that to an overly sensitive and literal 8-year-old.  No wonder I grew up so ambivalent towards Christmas!

But the point of all of this is just to question if Wish Lists are a good thing.  The whole point is a list of things we wish for; not a list of things we actually get.  Or is that just wishful thinking?  Nevertheless, I hope Santa was good to you and yours.