It’s been an odd few days. Firstly I was meant to be on a plane back home to Sweden right now but here I am in the small bedroom that I occupied as a six year old writing on a piece of technology that I used to see in science fiction television shows. As the snow falls deeper outside I gaze upon the landscape that I used to survey as a child. The fields look familiar, the trees have grown taller and new houses have been built but all in all it’s hardly changed at all.
Inside things have changed, the vast amount of decorations have become less as the children have grown into adults yet the magic of Christmas still possesses a certain charm over our house. Yet the magic of Christmas as I have grown older has become somewhat tainted by the over commercialism that it seems to have become. Of course my parents were in the same boat as I am now. What seemed like magic from Santa obviously had to come from their hard earned wages when I was a child.
But these days it seems that all of the lovely little surprises that children had have grown into one large overpriced item that the child hand picks and often even opens days before Christmas even arrives. Now I’m not saying that the magic of Christmas has gone but maybe it is just age that has made me change my opinion on how spoilt children seem these days. Yet looking back maybe the more expensive present one receives the more people will tend to look after it.
I asked a question on Facebook last week about what was the best Christmas present people had ever received. For me it was my first ever home computer (The ZX Spectrum 48k). Now by todays technological standards it seems something pre-historic but opening that shiny box and seeing that rubber keyboard, the black and white TV and the recordable tape recorder just made my eyes water constantly that Christmas day. I remember playing a car racing game that was so old compared to today’s games that there were not even any more cars to overtake, yet my friends and I spent hours competing to see if we could break that magic lap time.
No doubt in twenty years from now children of today will be blogging about how old the IPhone 4 looks or how it was novel to download apps from a store, time does change people, we grow old and our perception of the monetary value of items becomes more realistic.
I know that I will have many Christmases to come but there was a certain element of my childhood that made hunting for the Christmas presents in the house the week before leading up to Christmas all the more exciting. The magic of that Christmas morning of 1984 will never be replaced in my eyes but I know that I will have plenty of opportunities to do so in the future with children of my own.
Until then the Ipad is down, the IPhone is switched off and the HD TV is silent. I’m enjoying playing the games of 1984 on an emulator! Happy days!
