A compilation of old-time Christmas gun ads dusts off a cobwebbed memory. I was in the seventh grade. “What do you want for Christmas?” my parents asked. I knew they knew and this was a dance of formalities. So I paused as if deliberating before answering. “A .22 rifle.” They said nothing, and I felt my father’s mind-probe stare. He didn’t like guns, and I managed to bargain down to a BB rifle, a defeat that thrilled me on Christmas morning. That afternoon, Dad took me to the city dump, site of an an informal gun range. As I began setting up tin cans and bottles, I recognized a classmate nearby. His Christmas gift was bigger. To be precise, he shouldered a .20-gauge shotgun that kaboomed every time my rifle pinged. He didn’t smirk, didn’t comment, didn’t acknowledge the obvious: we occupied two different strata — his manly, mine puerile. At school he said nothing, though we both knew the injury he could have inflicted. That may have been the best Christmas gift I ever received. Wherever you are, Karl, thank you.
I drilled into our little boy today another of my dead mother’s irrational holiday rules: everything Christmas related must be taken down before the new year begins. Otherwise, the most dire bad luck will ensue.
Atticus accepted the rule as if our very existence hinged upon it, and we did mom proud. As a bonus, he learned another valuable lesson while helping unscrew the Christmas tree holder — lefty loosey, righty tighty.
And he’s been repeating it over and over while setting up a make-believe bookstore and pretending to take phone calls from Santa Claus. All this after his first inauspicious attempt to use his Christmas gift scooter and showing off in this video that his mother, Suzame, made.
What my mother missed.
A newspaper photo published this week shows a “Leave It to Beaver” family posing next to a Christmas tree in 1956. The family includes a boy holding his new shotgun.
Except for his well-coiffed hair and fancy bathrobe, the boy reminds me of what I might have looked like six years later when I turned twelve. I held a gun that Christmas morning but not a shotgun or the .22 rifle I desperately wanted. My father didn’t like guns, so the compromise gift was something smaller and far less dangerous. I hid my disappointment and was eager to shoot my new BB gun. Read More
