Christmas gifts are funny things. Half of them vanish into memory by New Year’s. A few hang around for a while, getting played with until they break. And every so often, one becomes part of a person’s inner architecture, the kind of gift that shapes how they play, how they think, or what they eventually become.
For creative people, especially, gifts matter in a particular way. We remember the objects, yes, but more than that, we remember what they unlocked. Imagination. Skill. Confidence. Obsession. Sometimes responsibility. Sometimes just chaos.
So I asked our writers a simple question: what was the best Christmas present you ever received? The answers range from quietly formative to unforgettable in the moment. Some are tender. Some are practical. Some involve learning to ride, learning to listen, learning to create — and at least one involves a potato achieving escape velocity.
Athena Thorne: My mom gave me a replica Strat guitar when I was maybe 14 or 15. I was self-taught on an acoustic at that time, and I had a blast with the new guitar and a tiny, grungy amp. I started my first band at 16 and kept up the hobby into my 30s. Writing, playing, and singing were a fantastic creative outlet for many years. (And no, you never heard of any of my bands. It was all for fun.)
Chris Queen: My favorite childhood Christmas gift is the only one I really remember. I was 5 years old in 1977, and I distinctly remember sitting on the floor of our apartment when I opened a watch. But this wasn’t just any watch. It was a Star Wars watch. I can still see it now: grey band, R2-D2 on one side of the face, C3PO on the other, and that inimitable Star Wars logo across the top. When I pressed a button on the side, red LCD lights displayed the time. I loved that watch.
Jennifer Rust: Each year, my parents would wrap every single gift – even the ones that would make a big splash. My Barbie Doll Dreamhouse stayed in the box. Dad didn’t put it together until Christmas afternoon. Same with the Easy-Bake Oven.
The year I was six, I came down the stairs to find my favorite present unwrapped. A single bow decorated a white Schwinn kid’s cruiser, its white wicker basket decorated with pink roses and handlebars ending in pink streamers. I learned to ride it in the cul-de-sac behind our house. Mom guided me with her hand on the seat, walking behind me, until I could take off on my own. I’ve never found a bike as wonderful as that one.
Sarah Anderson: A few days before Christmas, I fell in love with a six-week-old puppy on our local shelter’s website. I knew she was mine. When I went to adopt her, though, everything went sideways. Another couple nearly took her home, and a rescue was considering her mom and sister but hesitating on the puppy. Then, just as I was asking about adopting her, the shelter director stopped me and said they’d discovered she was very sick and might die. They couldn’t, in good conscience, let me take her.
So they guilted me into adopting an older dog named Honey, who’d been there a long time. I felt terrible for her, so I agreed to a trial. It went badly — she nearly killed my mom’s dog — and that was that. The one bright spot was that the receptionist at my vet’s office fell in love with Honey and adopted her.
So Christmas was miserable. I sulked like a toddler. I cried and cried. I knew that puppy was supposed to be mine.
The day after Christmas, my mom told me to come with her. She drove straight to the shelter. They felt so bad about what happened that they let me adopt the “sick” puppy, as long as I signed paperwork saying I wouldn’t blame them if she died.
She was fine. Stubborn as hell. She became my sidekick as I grew into adulthood. People talk about a “soul dog.” She was mine.
She was also a total pain in the a**.
Eric Florack: My grandmother gave me a big Magnavox AM/FM/turntable. The turntable was more than passable, and the FM sounded good. The AM was hot as a firecracker, able to pull in stations from 800 miles away with ease. You can’t find radios like that anymore.
That set was essentially the beginning of my lifelong love of radio. I spent hours listening to Top 40 stations out of Chicago, New York City, Philadelphia, and Toronto. By listening to the big-time jocks on those stations, I learned what great radio sounded like. I knew what I wanted to sound like.
To this day, I wonder if she knew how much that big thing meant to me.
Victoria Taft: I got a brand-new cardboard box filled with my own paper clips, pens, pencils, and paper. It was the coolest thing in the world. I played office and school, using the box as a desk and a place to store my treasures.
I don’t know that I ever mentioned this to my daughters before this week, but when I did, my youngest laughed and told me she was doing the same thing with her own girls.
Paper clips are everything.
Jamie K. Wilson: My first truly formative Christmas gift was a Radio Shack Tandy computer. I don’t even remember which model it was. That machine wasn’t a toy; it was a doorway, and it made writing so much easier! Looking back, it’s obvious how much of my adult life traces back to that moment.
But the best Christmas present I ever witnessed wasn’t mine.
My mechanically gifted brother gave my father three separate packages. First, Dad opened a can of . . . hair spray. Then a box of potatoes. Finally, a four-foot length of PVC pipe with something attached to one end. He looked at my brother.
“Thank you, son,” he said carefully, “but what the hell is this?”
My brother grinned. “A potato gun.”
So we went outside. Immediately. Because of course we did.
You have not truly celebrated Christmas until you’ve watched a potato trailing blue flames sail clean over the neighbor’s hill in the general direction of their cattle and vanish from sight.
What ties all of these gifts together isn’t price, polish, or Pinterest-worthiness. It’s impact. These are the presents that did something. Each one opened a door — to music, to storytelling, to independence, to craft, to caretaking, to work, to play. Some launched careers. Some launched imaginations. Some simply became so thoroughly a part of life that it’s impossible to imagine things turning out the same way without them.
That’s the real magic of a great gift. Not that it’s impressive, but that it’s alive, that it becomes part of the family mythology. These gifts grow with you, follow you forward, and help shape who you are.
However you celebrate this season, may your Christmas be full of stories worth retelling — preferably ones that don’t require an apology note afterward. And if some of those stories also include laughter, minor chaos, or neighbors wondering what on earth just happened — well, that’s part of the tradition too.
Merry Christmas, y’all! If you have great Christmas present stories to tell, I’d love to see them in the comments section.
Editor’s Note: Merry Christmas from all of us at PJ Media! You can support our work with a special Christmas discount this year.
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