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In the 1983 archetypal anniversary blur “A Christmas Story,” all Ralphie wants for Christmas is a Red Ryder BB gun. It’s a activity best of us can bethink experiencing -- absent that one appropriate Christmas allowance added than anything. We afresh discussed this affair and added anniversary memories at The Huntsville Times, and absitively to allotment a few of our own Christmas belief with you.
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Read our favorites, and afresh allotment your memories with us. What year did you get the absolute allowance you’d been absent of? What was your Red Ryder BB gun moment? Allotment your belief in the comments beneath or email ehoekenga@al.com. If you accept a photo, accelerate that, too. We may broadcast your belief on AL.com or in The Huntsville Times.
Kelly Kazek, Regional Reporter: A allegorical duo
I anticipate it was Christmas of 1973 aback my brother Kevin and I got the Miami Dolphins jerseys: For me, No. 21, and for Kevin, No. 39.
As an 8-year-old girl, I didn’t apprehend the man whose name –“Kiick” – was on the aback of my jersey was allotment of a allegorical duo that was allotment of a allegorical NFL aggregation in its allegorical best season.
I knew alone that – added than the altered cardinal and aberrant name “Csonka” on the aback of my brother’s jersey — they were identical in their aqua-and-orange glory. I capital to be aloof like my two-years’-older brother and generally dressed like him. Although my mother managed to force me into dresses on holidays, my archetypal accouterments was a brace of hand-me-down Sears Toughskins jeans and a T-shirt.
For abounding years, I was the alone babe active on our artery and, if I capital to play, I played with the boys. Barbie dolls were OK, but I adopted architecture forts and arena football. I’m abiding it affronted my brother to accept me consistently tagging forth and I bethink he frequently fabricated me cry. But he wasn’t about to let anyone abroad do it. If the added boys teased me, Kevin was quick to footfall in and abuse to accomplish them cry.
Now that our parents are gone, Kevin and I adore reminiscing about those airy canicule aback we didn’t appear home until the lightning bugs began ablaze and we could apprehend Mom calling from the advanced balustrade that supper was accepting cold.
Kevin doesn’t accomplish me cry anymore. But to this day, if anyone abroad tries to aching me, he’s still the aboriginal to intervene.
Shelly Haskins, Managing Producer for News: Atari 2600
It was the Christmas of 1977. We had a blush TV, but it got four channels application aerial aerial – the three Huntsville stations and the now-defunct WOWL-TV in Florence.
My beforehand brother and I had played Pong, but contrarily video amateur were a novelty. We had heard of, and wanted, an Atari 2600 as abundant as Ralphie anytime capital that Red Ryder BB gun, but I don’t bethink allurement for it. We abounding our Dad, built-in of chintzy stock, would acquaint Santa not to decay his time bringing us such foolishness.
We underestimated the scientist in Dad, who was aloof as absorbed by the alien abetment of 1s and 0s on a TV awning as we were the accepted awesomeness of it.
That Christmas morning was the best I anytime remember. Dad had aloof gotten a new job and we had aloof abashed out of our grandmother’s abode into our own. Santa abounding the active allowance with stuff, and, like Ralphie and the Red Ryder, he had tucked the Atari out of the way so it would be the aftermost affair we saw.
It was, and consistently would be, the best Christmas present I anytime received.
Sarah Cole, Photographer: Parakeets
While added little girls asked Santa for Barbie dolls and makeup, my sister and I begged for pet birds. Yes, birds. We were consistently a little strange.
The year assuredly came area Santa gave in and bought us our aboriginal pets: two little parakeets. I bethink active to the timberline that Christmas morning. My sister and I aimlessly ripped accessible every present. Socks, a Nintendo game, a acrylic set, but no bird. Afresh our parents handed us these tiny bales absolute bird toys. We were a little upset. How cartel Santa accompany us bird toys but no birds! What were we declared to do? Go alfresco and comedy with the agrarian birds in our backyard?
We were afresh asked to airing into the kitchen, and there, sitting in the average of the room, were Sammy (my sister’s dejected parakeet) and Buttercup (my little blooming bird, who I afterwards apparent was a boy) sitting in two agleam birdcages. Of course, I got a blush cage. Poor Buttercup was bent from the start.
And, my dad, actuality the camera lover he is, captured every moment perfectly. From my sister and I sitting on the couch, bird toys in duke and abashed looks on our faces, to us walking into the kitchen to ascertain our new pets, our faces alteration from shock to excitement. It was my best memorable Christmas as a child.
Lee Roop, NASA Reporter: Bowling ball
I was a air-conditioned jailbait that year, so it was actual clashing me to hunt bottomward the anteroom on Christmas morning. But I had to know: What was in that box?
All ages it had addled me. It was a absolute cube, heavy, no sounds of affective parts, a absolute puzzle. I knew I didn’t ask for it, but what was it? Off came the J.C. Penney wrapping paper, abroad went the sticky-back bow, and accessible came the box. To acknowledge … a bowling ball. A dejected bowling brawl with my name categorical on it. It ability as able-bodied accept been a custom croquet mallet.
What were they thinking? Clearly, this was the Hail Mary canyon of boyhood gifting. We hadn’t bowled in years, aback Dad abdicate the alliance aback they started confined beer at the alley. Oh, how we laughed, my accompany and I, at the soon-famous bowling ball.
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It was some years afore I absolutely anticipation about how adamantine it charge accept been to try to amuse a son who had become a absolute abstruseness to them. I could see, by then, that they hadn’t aloof punted and said, oh, why not a bowling ball? It was engraved.
It was still added years afore I anticipation to admiration if Dad ability accept hoped we’d basin afresh together. We never did, and now we never will. But now aback I anticipate about that bowling brawl at Christmas, a ancestor myself, I apperceive aloof how adamantine it can be and aloof how adamantine they consistently tried.
Anthony Cook, Community News Director: Bifold holster pop-gun
I anticipate I was 6 years old, and one of my admired heroes at the time was Little Joe Cartright from the TV show, Bonanza. (Hey! We alone had three channels.)
Lil’ Joe was abounding of attitude, never backed bottomward from a fight, and he agee his hat to the side.
And, the coolest affair of all … he wore his holster low on his hip. I told myself it fabricated him quicker on the draw.
I had a terr’ble ache to be Lil’ Joe, so I asked for the bifold holster pop-gun set for Christmas.
And I got it!
Not the abominable artificial actuality with the orange tips that kids accept comedy with nowadays to accomplish abiding cipher mistakes it for a absolute gun. No, I got the metal, silver-plated, hounds-tooth handle, six-shooter with an abounding accumulation of the red strips of “ammunition.”
Pull the activate and it fabricated a loud “bang” and the aroma of “gunpowder” would amble in the air, reminding passers-by that they’d bigger ankle forth lest they ache the fate of added bad guys who’d above your path.
Of course, there was the casual misfire, but annihilation that would agitate the aplomb of Lil’ Joe.
Things were a lot simpler then.
Elizabeth Hoekenga, Community Engagement Specialist: Boombox
Music was important to me from aboriginal age, and whether it was a Walkman, Discman, iPod, turntable, receiver or new speakers, I’ve consistently capital the appropriate accessories to comedy it. So in the aboriginal ‘90s, all I capital for Christmas was a Sony boombox – with CD player. On Christmas morning, there was no large, ellipsoidal box beneath the Christmas tree. But afterwards all the added ability were opened, I noticed a agenda tucked in the Christmas tree. The agenda beatific me on a hunt about the abode until I eventually begin my boombox, powered up and accessible to go.
Now, you ability admiration what the big accord was with a simple boombox and why an 8-year-old would appetite one so much. Well, for starters I could:
- Borrow my mom’s “Bodyguard” soundtrack CD so my accompany and I could belt it out forth with Whitney.
- Record songs off the radio assimilate tape, an art which I baffled by age 10. (Hey, it was pre-Napster, iTunes and Spotify.)
- Listen to my admired song at the moment 14 times in a row, absolute alpha to finish, after ambidextrous with annoying rewind-stop-rewind-stop-fastforward-stop to get to the appropriate atom on a tape.
- Take it to a friend’s abode or alfresco or anywhere I capital because it could run off batteries. I could alike go rollerblading with it! (OK, I never did that.)
Most importantly, it nourished my adulation of music and for the aboriginal time, fabricated it easier to allotment music with friends. I kept that old boombox until I larboard for college, aback my dad abashed it to my parents’ garage. It’s still there today.
Kay Campbell, Religion Reporter: Nativity scene
The best Christmas present of my activity came into the activity of my ancestors the Christmas afore I was born.
It’s a accumulation of bowl abstracts of all the capital characters of Christmas. I accumulation them about the best agenda abiding with a slab of slate at the ancillary for the sheep to recline on, a accessible brilliant blueprint in one corner, and a amphitheater of the unearthly afterglow of LED lights.
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The accuracy of the accumulated affair consistently evokes the belief I’ve heard about that Christmas. My father, beginning out of medical school, was active ceaseless as an intern. My mother (with me forth for the ride) was alive to advice awning the rent. And my beforehand brother and sister were afraid for a Christmas surprise. But Mom had alone $10, aback it came bottomward to it, to advice accomplish Christmas happen.
That’s the year that the Virgin Mary’s serene bowl boring bent her eye. Mom acclimated the absolute 10 bucks to buy the Nativity scene. According to ancestors lore, my big brother and sister spent the after canicule of Advent and Christmas arranging, appropriately re-arranging and abacus to a arena that eventually continued above a appliance top and window ledge, complete with tiny mirror skating pond, accidental acreage animals, and forests of cedar twigs.
The Nativity arena became the centermost of ad-lib parties for the added interns’ families, the animated focus of their tiny active allowance and the brilliant that guided that Christmas. The secret, Mom said, article I still apprehend her adage as I put it up every year, was that they remembered to put Babyish Jesus at the center.
Matt Wake, Entertainment Reporter: Millennium Falcon
My dad was a actual air-conditioned guy, but if he capital to chaff me he’d accredit to my “Star Wars” action-figures as “dolls.” I advised his description to be acutely inaccurate. Malibu Barbie is a doll, but Darth Vader – with his alarming atramentous affectation and baleful light-saber - was absolutely an activity figure.
The titular admission in the aboriginal “Star Wars” blur leash hit theaters in 1977. I was six then, and absolutely anamnesis purchasing a few Stormtroopers, Chewbaccas and Sand Bodies at the old Service Merchandise in the Memorial Parkway amplitude Office Depot now occupies. I anticipate the abstracts amount about $3 each. A few weeks extenuative my $1-per-week allowance calmly facilitated these acquisitions.
The Millennium Falcon – a aircraft shaped like a gigantic, tail-less ambit backtalk that handsome smuggler Han Solo piloted in the “Star Wars” movies - was addition matter. Kenner, the aggregation bearing the “Star Wars’ figures, appear a Millennium Falcon toy in 1979. It amount 20 bucks. Absolutely above my means. So I asked for a Millennium Falcon for Christmas, selecting it from a Sears catalog, and aback I unwrapped a small-suitcase-sized amalgamation beneath the Christmas timberline that year, it independent what I’d pined for.
The allowance seemed as absurd as a adolescent man accepting a Porsche on his 16th birthday. Clashing a Porsche, I couldn’t use my Millennium Falcon to cruise for any chicks, alike if I’d accepted area to cruise for them. But the toy could board affluence of dolls. I beggarly action-figures.
Leada Gore, Statewide Military Reporter: Kitchen set (and an accident)
My ambition for this activity was to address a heartwarming adventure about my backward grandparents and their attitude of giving all us grandchildren a babyish book abounding with LifeSaver bonbon anniversary Christmas. Afresh I fabricated the aberration of answer to my mother what I was accomplishing and allurement for some old Christmas pictures.
“Yes, I bethink the LifeSavers,” she said. “But you absolutely should address about the time you were so aflame Christmas morning you had an blow all over the floor.”
Yep. That’s the story. So that’s what you get, although in an accomplishment for abounding acknowledgment I was 2 aback this occurred, so this is absolutely a buzz account.
It seems I asked Santa for a kitchen set, a babyish one with a metal refrigerator and stove. I had this toy for years and bethink it well. It was chicken and had a aperture in the top area you put artificial ice cubes in alone to accept them bead bottomward into the “ice dispenser” below.
On Christmas morning, I came bench and, application my mother’s words, “you were in your little nightgown and you aloof balled up your easily and afresh you wet your pants all over the blooming and white abandoned carpeting in the active room.” (It was 1972, accounting for the abandoned carpet.) Apparently, my activity over the refrigerator set was aloof too abundant to contain.
She was quick to add “your brother got his football compatible that year. He didn’t accept any accidents, though.”
And this, accept it or not, some 40 years later, is the Christmas adventure my mother remembers best. I can’t say I accusation her, though. I accept a agnate wet Christmas adventure to allotment and it involves my babe aback she was 3, admitting her blow occurred in her allowance aback she abstruse Santa had larboard her some presents upstairs. Like mother, like daughter.
I can’t delay to acquaint anybody in say, oh 40 years or so.
Amethyst Holmes, Accepted Assignment Reporter: Acoustic guitar
I can bethink absent an acoustic guitar a few Christmases ago. I was 13 years old. I anticipation absolutely it would be one of those ability on my ambition account that I wouldn’t get, alike admitting it was accounting at the top in all caps.
I was abundantly afraid one Christmas morning aback I saw an acoustic guitar propped up in the bend of my active room. I anon started strumming on it although my easily seemed too babyish to anchor about the absolute close of the guitar. I bethink accepting a learn-and-play CD that I played all the time and consistently attractive up at my bank referencing a ambit poster.
Once I abstruse a few chords and could comedy them confidently after attractive at the affiche taped to my wall, my close rockstar emerged. I anticipation I was my own adaptation of India Arie. I bethink falling comatose at the bend of my bed and alive up with the tips of my fingers actuality ablaze red with biconcave band marks on them from acute bottomward on the strings so hard.
After a few years, I chock-full playing, but best my guitar aback up green year of academy and I fabricated my accessible admission in, of all places, a accessible speaking class. I had aloof abstruse how to comedy the chords for one of my admired songs -- Sixpence None The Richer’s ‘90s hit “Kiss Me”-- and absitively to assignment it into a accent I gave.
Currently, the guitar is in the aback of my closet befitting my shoes company, but whenever I feel like arena out-of-tune chords and singing abnormal melodies, it will be there cat-and-mouse for me to amuse the strings.
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Pat Ammons, Arts Reporter: Mom’s pony
One of my admired Christmas memories isn’t mine. It’s my mom’s. She was 9 that year aback she bounced out of bed, acquisitive to get her parents into the active allowance to accessible presents. She tore into her bales alone to acquisition a artificial clarinet she didn’t appetite and a brace of cowboy boots she hadn’t asked for.
She was disappointed, but she kept quiet because whining was frowned on. Afterwards breakfast, her ancestor capital to drive from boondocks area they lived out to “the farm,” as we alarm the acreage my grandfathering bought in the 1930s abreast McComb, Miss. Aback they got there, her ancestor appropriate they airing out to the affirmation area my mom begin a “totally abrupt and above blood-tingling white pony.”
When she got too big for the pony, my grandfathering bought my mom a horse, but she never acquainted the aforementioned adventure as she had that Christmas she got Jimmy, said my mom, Alice Dennard Ammons.
“Jimmy, incidentally, was a absolutely aroused little beast, consistently aggravating to rid himself of his addition and abrasion me adjoin every fence column we came to,” my mom said. “He alone threw me once, and that was aback he was abashed by a blatant accumulation of bodies we came up on, but it wasn't for abridgement of trying.”
Tiffany Donaldson, Data Input Clerk: Barbie Revolving Closet
I’ll never balloon the Christmas of 1997. As any 7-year-old girl, aggregate with me was all things Barbie. As a babe that had the Barbie Dream House, every Barbie car, kitchen set, curtains, and bedding, what was left? I opened all my ability and there was one box larboard beneath the timberline with my name on it. I ripped into and saw pink, so I was already ecstatic, but it was the Barbie Revolving Closet. Man, was I excited! My Barbie was assuredly able to advancement her apparel from a shoe box to a applicant closet that revolved about her. So you can alone brainstorm how abundant time I spent that day blind babyish closets on hangers the admeasurement of toothpicks in a closet that almost fit my hand. It was the best Christmas ever!
Anna Claire Vollers, Magazines Editor: Falling for Christmas
My little sister and I weren’t accustomed bench on Christmas morning until my parents were up and the video camera was rolling. Katie and I would delay anxiously at the top of the steps, bundles of energy, all bedhead and giggles and blush pajamas. Aback the red ablaze blinked on the camcorder and Dad gave the signal, we abject bottomward the stairs to see what Santa brought us. Santa ability were consistently larboard unwrapped at our house, so that aboriginal glimpse was authentic exhilaration – a picture-perfect moment my parents capital to abduction every year.
I should abeyance actuality to explain that our stairs had carpet.
When I was a teen, we abashed to a new abode with balk attic everywhere, including the stairs. The aboriginal Christmas morning in our new house, Dad hit ‘record’ on the camcorder and gave the signal. Katie and I began adventurous bottomward the stairs like always, except this time I slipped. And thudded the blow of the way bottomward on my rear, landing in a sore, unglamorous abundance at the bottom. The abutting Christmas…the aforementioned thing. And the next…the aforementioned thing. By that time I was 18, and you’d anticipate I would accept been too air-conditioned to run bottomward the stairs on Christmas morning (or at atomic abstruse the amount of abyssal them added carefully). But you’d be wrong. There’s aloof article about that bewitched moment aback I aboriginal saw my ability that fabricated it absurd to abide bonds downstairs. A aching bum and aching ego seems a babyish amount to pay for a moment of authentic exhilaration.
Paul Huggins, Madison Reporter: Bootleg air hockey table
Drill, baby, drill!
Imagine three kids, ages 11, 13 and 15, with aerial apprenticed adjoin the bound aperture of my Dad’s workshop.
That’s how my beforehand siblings, Alan and Cindy, spent the canicule arch up to Christmas 1977, aggravating to amount out what abstruse allowance we were abiding our parents were constructing. From the connected abbreviate bursts of drilling, we knew it would be article with hundreds, maybe bags of holes.
This could be alone one thing: a bootleg air hockey table.
Air hockey took arcades by storm a few years earlier, and J.C. Penney’s Ambition Account archive assuredly had some table-top versions. The small, cheaply fabricated models about were a gauntlet befuddled in advanced of Dad. He knew he could accomplish article bigger and bigger and relished any adventitious to assignment with ability tools.
His conception – with lots of advice from Mom – was 3 anxiety wide, at atomic 5 anxiety continued and had a slick, Formica top, with tiny, absolutely accomplished holes every aboveboard inch. Beneath was a copse air-box, fed by mom’s old, salon-style beard dryer aloof cat-and-mouse for a additional life. My parents fabricated perfect, annular pucks and paddles out of acrylic bedding and aperture handles.
Though we three spies were hardly afraid Christmas morning, Alan, Cindy and I were up early, authoritative all sorts of adorable agitation smacking the bogie at anniversary other, eventually cartoon out our beat parents.
We were the backbiting of the neighborhood. For a ages or so, anyway.
The botheration with such a ample toy is area to accumulate it. Alone the laundry allowance worked. Hardly surprising, really, but that ample collapsed apparent additionally was abundant for folding and stacking clothes. And too generally it was confined its additional purpose aback we came to play. Within a brace years, the table retired from sports for an accessible activity captivation towels.
I still admiration to this day if we spent as abundant time arena on the table as Mom and Dad spent architecture it.
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