Christmas Memories

Above is a picture of my mother & siblings (& my first niece) some time in the late 70s.  From left to right is my brother Ralph, me, my mother holding my little brother Chris, my brother Steve, my sister Pat holding my sister Karin, & my brother Eddie holding his daughter.

My guess is that it's Christmas 1978, which means I'm ten years old.  I have come to that conclusion because the toy in my hands is a Cylon Raider from the original Battlestar Galactica series which premiered that year & of which I was a big fan.  But it might be 1979.  I think I even had a Battlestar Galactica lunchbox.  How the show didn't survive with a fan like me is a mystery.

As I have mentioned, I don't celebrate Christmas, except with my show.  That was not always the case.  As a child, I loved Christmas, because, you know, presents.  & in general I think I got most of what I wanted.  (Well, except for that time I got a pet rock.)  That was no mean feat, as we were quite poor.  Maybe I should ask my mother how she did that, if my siblings contributed in any way.  How my mother made money in those days is something of a mystery.

One thing I disliked about our Christmas is that, because my mother's German, we would have Christmas - which meant of course opening presents - on Christmas Eve.  Which meant that we (my little brother & I) would be up all night playing with toys & be bored with them by the next day, which is when our friends woke & opened their presents, & be having fun while we'd be tired & bored.  Like the year we got an Atari.  Hours of Asteroids.  All night long.  Our friends got an Atari the next morning.  We played that all night long!  Wouldn't they rather go out & play?

During college & afterwards I would come home for Christmas, mainly at my mother's insistence, but I stopped doing that even before moving away gave me a good excuse not to attend.  (My oldest brother lives in Washington & uses that excuse.)  I just don't really enjoy it anymore - I have the means to get myself all the toys I want - & decided not to attend this year, although I would've had to stay away anyway thanks to my cold.

My brain holds almost no memories about that picture up there - I remember getting the Battlestar Galactica toys, which I probably used interchangeably with my Star Wars toys - I often created my own universes with my action figures, even giving them new names & personalities.  But I'm glad we look happy & healthy in that picture.  Whether we were, who knows?  It was four decades ago.