Okay, what's the BEST Christmas present you ever received?

[bif]

n/t

[Brucey]

1. It's better to give than to receive,

so the best present was when I allowed everyone to give me presents and I gave them nothing. I got a jigsaw puzzle of Henry Kissinger.

[SiobhanClancy]

2. A horse!

Not many better presents than that for a 12 year old girl:)

[Chovexani]

15. Lucky you!

I'm a 22 year old woman and I would squeal with glee if somebody gave me a horse. :)

[TedsGarage]

3. My parents

The year after my parents split up, my family celebrated one last Christmas together. And it happened in Lansing, too.

[newyawker99]

22. Hi Teds Garage!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[noonwitch]

4. My dollhouse

My grandparents gave it to me when I was four, and I still have it. My grandpa worked for a carpet company at the time, so he put carpeting in all the rooms.

[BiggJawn]

5. Sex.

Always the right size, colour, and I never have "too much" already...

Never took any back to exchange, either...

[liberalhistorian]

10. That is, indeed, the best present

(well, at least for adults, that is!) Although it's been so long since I experienced anything resembling that particular "present" that I'm not sure I'd know what to do anymore, lol!

[Feanorcurufinwe]

6. When I was 16, 27 years ago

instead of getting a bunch of presents, my whole family chipped in and got me a Pioneer stereo receiver.

Well, I'm still using it. Uncountable hours of music in those 27 years thanks to that receiver...

[TrogL]

7. New typewriter

I'd beaten my previous one into the ground, so they got me an industrial grade model.

[XNASA]

8. Can't really pick one out.....

But as long as it's a brown liquid that comes in a bottle and is made in Kentucky then I'd consider it the best gift ever.

[liberalhistorian]

9. Definitely a closed-captioned TV

as a combination Christmas/33rd birthday present in 1998 (my birthday is Jan. 3). Since I have a 50% hearing loss in both ears, I was driving everyone crazy always asking "what'd they say, what'd they say?" while watching TV. My loss is sensorineural, which means that I can often hear that something is being said, I just can't make out the words. That TV is just marvelous, I had never realized how much I'd been missing.

It's funny during the local news, or with CNN, because sometimes the captioning, since it's done live, gets behind what's being talked about and the pictures on the screen. It makes for some hilarious comedy once in awhile!

[rustydog]

11. No kidding here...

a Red Ryder bb gun!
I never thought my MOM would buy it, but she did!

[TXlib]

20. You'll put your eye out...

[bif]

12. Loinel train set

when I was about 5. I had that train set forever. Boy did I ever love it.

[Bossy Monkey]

13. Aunt Clara gave us a Grippidee Gravidee

which is beyond my limited skills to describe, but was the funnest toy ever. Pretty much a rocket ship that moved very slowly on a track. I have no idea what the fascination was, but we thought it was terrific. On retrospect, it might have something to do with the fact that we broke it while it was still new and exciting. Oh well.

[JNelson6563]

14. Just a few years ago my daughter,

who was probably about 11 or 12, gave me a snow globe of Cinderella.

As a little girl I fell in love with that story. Loved the Rogers and Hammerstein one and the Disney. I clung to that story for hope as a little girl in a sometime desperate situation. When my duaghter was little we watched it together and I told her how special lit was for me.

The first year she was old enough to shop with just a friend, with her own money, she bought me that. I cried. It is one of my prized possessions and will be always. *sniff*

:-)

Julie

[Chovexani]

16. A video game called Final Fantasy, when I was 11

When I was 11, I got a brand new, little-known game for the NES called Final Fantasy. It might sound crazy, but that one act literally changed my life. It was my gateway to role playing games, both the console and paper and pencil variety, and it introduced me to a lifelong love of writing. The game inspired me to make little stories about the characters, long before I'd ever heard of the term "fan fiction". Even though I was always a kid with a wild imagination, I only got my first A on a creative writing assignment in the Fifth Grade, for a story I wrote about Matoya the Witch (a character in the game). I wrote more and more stories about games to come in the series, and then about other games, and eventually I got the bent to start writing about original characters. Someday I hope to get my very own fantasy epic published. That is, if I can ever get past this writer's block in book #2. :)

I've got friends in gaming/sci-fi fandom with similar stories. My best friend actually got her start drawing characters from the Zelda games, branched out to anime characters, and is now going to art school. She's a phenomenal artist, btw. Whenever I hear people say video games are mindless trash, I think of stories like this.

[Boot]

17. 1973 Christmas present: top-of-the-line Lionel Train Set

From my dad, I received the best model railroad set that Lionel made that year... came with a big Illinois Central GP-9 locomotive, 6 freight cars (including a log-dump car), remote control track switches, and a big transformer.

I used to set to start up a big model railroad that I had going for 10 years.

[TrogL]

21. My son broke my train

0-2-7 Lionel. Someone stole the transfomer for it and I finally found one last year. This year he did something to the train and it won't run. The transformer's fine - it puts out power. But as soon as you put the train on the track it sucks all the juice. I'm assuming there's a short somewhere.

[underpants]

18. Every Christmas my mother suddenly claims we are Jehovah's Witnesses

She HAS to know we know she' slying.

[Chovexani]

19. ROFL

Mom is a slick one there. :) I have honest-to-goodness JW cousins that live around my way, and they always manage to stroll up to our house Dec. 25 wanting some of my mom's Christmas ham. :evilgrin:

[VelmaD]

23. joint present for me and my brother...

When I was about 9 or 10 and he was around 7 they got us a basketball goal. We were both basketball nuts as kids. Both of my parents lettered in b-ball in high school and all 4 of us played in city leagues.

Anyway, we had such a good time putting it up on the house the day after xmas. Making sure it was exactly the right height and then painting the free-throw line and lane on the driveway.

We had so many hours of fun in front of that goal. Playing pickup games with the kids in the neighborhood, practicing free-throws til it got too dark to see, spending huge chucks of quantity time with each other and with our parents.

My folks just had the driveway repaved and I nearly cried when momma told me. Because now it's all gone. The basketball goal had been taken down years ago but if you looked really hard you could barely make out the remains of that free-throw line that we must have repainted a thousand times.

Can't believe I'm getting all maudlin over a basketball goal. :-)

[GoddessOfGuinness]

24. A gold spray-painted macaroni picture frame

with my older boy's picture in it, when he was 7 years old.

Made me bawl like a baby. :-)

[kodi]

25. parole

long story.

[LWolf]

26. A collection of supplies:

buckets, blankets, brushes, halter, bridle, saddle...to go with the horse I spent a year working to pay for. Final payment: February 10th, when I was 10 years old.

[Swede]

27. A t-shirt from a friends 5 year old

It was so unexpected,it choked me up,and I'm trying to be this cool big tough guy. Hard to wipe tears away when he's hugging you tight and kissing you. Sometimes what you give comes back tenfold.