just what I always wanted what is it

Christmas.
Thinking about it -- best holiday recollections are very simple moments and that overall sense of anticipation and mysteriousness.
The awe of all those presents
under the Tree
in the dark
in the early morning.

And then there's always the True Meaning of Christmas --
the goal being to Live that, year-round,
but of course we live with the knowledge that it will be "Merry Christmas" on the 25th, and then Back to bombing people into the Dark Ages (or the Stone Age, however that saying goes), the next day. Or Monday.

Merry Christmas!
(Bombs - away!)
Peace on earth, goodwill toward men!
(Back to business.)

One of my earliest memories: was in the living room, was not in kindergarten yet -- at least a year before -- and the really tall Christmas tree which we had decorated, and our calico cat urgently tap-whacking at a dangling tree ornament with her paw, and then monitoring it with the typical catly attitude of, "how dare that ornament swing around like that?" when she's the one who just hit it -- it's as if cats fake themselves out -- playing "pretend" to themselves...

I thought it was so great -- so cute and beautiful, to watch her -- so went and told parents -- because others should enjoy this, too...then there's all this
flurry of hurry and worry...
Is the cat knocking down ornaments?
Is anything broken?
etc. etc. -- Immediate exodus to living room....
No harm; all well.
Think I learned in that moment,
"If you are going to tell somebody something, you had better tell it right or they won't "get it."

------------------------------

In our family we had a joke where -- you open a present, hold it up, and say,

(jubilantly): "It's wonderful! Just what I've always wanted!" - then

(stealthily, off to the side): "What is it?"

Was based on something which actually happened once when somebody-or-other's relative got carried away with the habit of saying, "Wonderful! Just what I've always wanted!" and belatedly realized they actually didn't KNOW what the thing was, and -- asked.

So -- you stayed alert to an opportunity for,

"Wonderful! Just what I've always wanted!

(What is it?)"

One Christmas when I was in pre-school years, there were under-the-tree presents, and then there was one more that I had to be taken out to the garage to see.

(A garage-present?? What kind of present is in the garage?"

Sled.

It was a sled-situation.

Merry Christmas, man! Merry Christmas.

-30-