Mac Aljancic: Ghosts of Presents Past

The Christmas gifts of our childhood can tell a lot about who we were (and are), as well as where we came from. I remember my late, wonderful grandmother-in-law, Thelma, telling me that as a child back around 1930, she got three things one Christmas: a baby doll, an orange, and a chocolate coin. How would that go over with an 8-year-old in 2022?

Today, you can get on the internet and find most any item you can imagine with just a few clicks, and it will be your front porch in a matter of days. When I was growing up back in the 1970s, Amazon didn't exist. There was, however, something even better: The Sears Christmas catalog! Let me describe it for all of our young, confused readers: It was basically a magazine as thick as a big city phone book packed with pictures of items to order. Four-to-six weeks later, your neighborhood postman — who you knew by name — would drop it off at your house.

Oh, you don’t know what a phone book is. Or a magazine. Or a postman.

Anyhow, back then, we Gen-X kids would flip to the toy section and circle everything on our wish list. I was always quick to find sports pages, and the NFL in particular. At that time, it wasn’t always easy to find Browns' stuff. For some items, stores and magazines would only carry the gear of the high-profile, successful teams like the Raiders, Dolphins, and —ugh — the evil Steelers. Capturing anything with a Browns’ logo often felt like Indiana Jones finding a lost treasure, but mom — or Santa — usually came through. Through the years, I got my Browns lamp, jacket, Greg Pruitt jersey, radio, bike, snow cap, belt buckle, and even a ring. I should have made my little brothers kiss it as a Fredo-like sign of respect, but I hadn’t yet seen The Godfather.

My "back-up", second-favorite team as a kid was Dallas. One December, my mom and grandma were at Value City when they saw a rare find hanging from the rack: A Cowboys coat! I had grown out of my beloved faux-leather sleeve Browns’ letterman’s jacket by then, so I was due for an upgrade. This was such a great find that, while walking the aisles, mom actually held the coat instead of putting it in her cart, just in case any suspicious poachers were on the prowl.

When 8-year-old me pulled that blue jacket out of the box on Christmas morning, Mom got an unexpected reaction. Instead of leaping for joy, I asked this frustrating question: “Why did you get me a Colts coat?!?” Mom unfortunately used her Columbo-like deductive reasoning to connect the horseshoe on the white helmet to a mode of transportation of a cowboy. How she didn’t know the famous silver helmet of Roger Staubach, Tom Landry, Tony Dorsett, and those cheerleaders, I will never know. Thus, I glumly wore my Baltimore Colts coat at recess for the next couple of winters.

That same Christmas, Mom more than redeemed herself by getting one of my all-time favorite gifts: A beautiful green Mattel Football 2 hand-held video game. While the shrill beeps and red-dash graphics seem caveman-like in comparison to today’s smart phone apps, this was addictive, cutting-edge, technological gold back in 1978. I spent endless hours on my bed with it on cold winter days, and my school friends and I would have some epic battles during lunch and indoor recess!

About 15 years ago, I was walking my kids through the toy aisle when I saw a retro-version of this exact same game on the shelf. That was in my cart in about two seconds. Once I touched those buttons, it was like riding a bike. My shake-and-bake Greg Pruitt moves and Brian Sipe passing skills came back to me in a flash. My son, Drew, even got the bug and played. His millennial X-box upbringing, however, was no match for my old-school Atari training, and he never beat his old man.

May each of you have a blessed and wonderful Holiday season. Moms, just be sure to know your sports logos. Just like the top of your Christmas tree, the Cowboys have blue stars!

This article originally appeared on The Times-Reporter: In Mac Aljancic's weekly column he remembers some of his gifts