For I Have Felt His Presents...

For Christmas this year my daughter is hoping for Swan Lake Barbie and various associated accessories. I'm not mentioning this in a bid to drum up a few more presents for her (although do feel free to nip down to your nearest Argos (sorry Si!) and ask for the list for Curnow) but because it is the first Christmas where she has really wanted something. I'm not trying to present my daughter as some kind of sainted individual, operating on a higher level that eschews transitory earthly possessions, but in previous years there have been lots of things that she would have liked for Christmas, rather than anything specific. Last year she got Flower Fairy Barbie (I feel somewhat disturbed at how knowledgeable I'm becoming on the subject of Barbie) but would have been equally happy with Daphne (from Scooby Doo) Barbie or Doctor Barbie or Vet Barbie or even something from a huge range of non Barbie-related toys. This year, having fallen hook, line and sinker for the insidious power of TV advertising, my daughter has her sights very firmly set on the Swan Lake variety. It has wings that glow you know! Erm...

Children having a definite 'something' in mind is somewhat of a two-edged sword for parents - on the one hand, it removes the uncertainty over what to get the little darling for maximum delight and maximum brownie points; but on the other, it means that if Woolies has sold out of that particular object of desire then you're stuck!!! I feel great sympathy for any parents who were caught up in the great Teletubby shortage of the late 90s, for precisely that reason.

I vividly remember the first time I knew exactly what I wanted for Christmas, and (as you've probably guessed, perhaps accompanied with a slight sinking feeling) I'm now going to tell you all about it. In general my memory isn't all that good, but I do recall with some certainty what I got for Christmas from quite a young age - not details such as what I got from Uncle Bert or Great-Cousin Ursula, but the 'main' present from Father Christmas (or Mum and Dad as the case may be). I remember getting a Lego Fire Station when I was really very young - certainly prior to starting school. This was in the days, if you'll indulge yet another ramble down the Curnow Memory Lane, before Lego sets came with little people, so there were no firemen in the set. There were however three different fire trucks, one of which (the largest) had an extendable yellow ladder on a turntable mounted on the back. It really was pretty damn fine, and my brother that year got a Lego Space Station, also rather snazzy, which came complete with rocket launcher and moon buggy.

In subsequent years I got a farm, three teddy bears in a train, and a sort of piratical equivalent of Action Man. This latter was part of a set - my brother got a hook-armed pirate, complete with Fu Manchu moustache and Yul Brynner head; and mine was a rather swarthy figure (not that I would have called him swarthy when I was five) called Jake Peg Leg who had (you may have already guessed) a peg leg. The peg leg's sinister significance, to coin a phrase, lay in the fact that it was hollow and held a treasure map. Anybody who has had any experience of small children will probably nod sagely when I add that the treasure map got lost very quickly.

But all this talk of playtime delights past is just a precursor to the first time I knew, and that's K-N-E-W with an unshakable iron-clad certainty and determination, what I wanted for Christmas. It was 1977, I had watched "Star Wars" at least twice already, and I had seen in Bulloughs department store... the Palitoy Cardboard Death Star!

Anybody old enough to have had one themselves will need no further qualification of this statement, as you lucky people will already know what a thing of wonder this was. Those who have no idea what I'm talking about... Well, even if you are tragically unfamiliar with late-seventies kids toys, I hope you're at least passingly aware of Star Wars (and if not, shame on you) and so I will hopefully now make the child in you drool as I elaborate.

In essence the Palitoy (the British equivalent of Kenner Toys I believe) Cardboard Death Star did exactly what it said on the tin - it was a Death Star, made of cardboard. It was a hemispherical playset, probably two feet or so in diameter. The walls came flat but were assembled into a sort of 'X' shape onto the circular baseboard. The 'X' created different areas within the space-station (on two levels; it had an upstairs and a downstairs) so that the lucky, lucky child could re-enact key moments from the film. There was Princess Leia's detention cell, beneath which was the garbage compactor - this came with a sliding wall so that the famous crushing scene could be played out. There was a chute from the upstairs corridor down to the compactor too, just as in the film. Granted on the playset the chute wasn't actually next to the cell but was instead down a long hexagonal tunnel and through a room full of stormtroopers, so it wasn't actually that handy a way of escaping from the detention area, but what's a little artistic licence among friends? There were also two landing bays (wide open areas, front and back) and a dark control room.

What really made it, though, was the amount of detail and care put into the thing. The cardboard flats were covered in drawings of equipment panels, stormtroopers and various other bits of Imperial paraphernalia. One of the docking bays had a drawing of a large floor lift on its, well, on its floor plus a picture of some stormtroopers running out of a doorway on the wall. The downstairs control room had dozens of Death Squad Commanders (an action figure lamely relabelled as 'Star Destroyer Commander' in the wake of "The Empire Strikes Back" - they're the guys with the mushroom-shaped hats and the black gloves, if you're still struggling to picture them) sat at their control desks, ready no doubt to obliterate the planet Yavin. To paraphrase "Genesis of the Daleks" even the walls had a part to play, painted up to make the space station appear fully-manned.

Even the famous chasm scene wasn't forgotten - the cross over point of the 'X' left a central shaft, which had three or four thin doorways leading into it. The bottom of the shaft (on the circular base) was a mirror, cleverly making the shaft appear to go down into the bowels of the station. Admittedly on a practical level this shaft was virtually inaccessible to all but the tiniest of tiny fingers, but the thought was there. In a nutshell, then, this was a toy amongst toys and just like the planet Alderaan I was totally blown away.

On a side note I remember Mum and Dad trying to subtly talk me into thinking that perhaps the Palitoy Landspeeder might be an even more exciting toy to get for Christmas that year. The Death Star was more expensive, of course, and all these years later I can do nothing but sympathise (and indeed probably duplicate at times) their attempts to sway me - unfortunately for them, although I may be indecisive in a great many things, I know a good toy when I see one. Not that I'm knocking the Landspeeder mind you (somewhat ironically I got enough money from loving relatives over Christmas to be able to buy one in the New Year) but it was no Death Star.

And so the childhood years went on, with me still quietly convinced (or at least firmly persuaded) that there was a real Father Christmas. In 1978 I got a Palitoy Cantina Playset - a disappointment after the previous year it has to be admitted, more plastic and less cardboard and a too-narrow western-style door. I don't recall what I got in 1979, rather oddly. Perhaps I was too busy enjoying season 17 to think about Christmas, and after all "The Horns of Nimon" is almost a present in itself isn't it. (An argument I shall be using ever and again during the next decade or so, as I ceaselessly campaign for its release onto DVD).

But now we finally come to the revelation promised last week - the details of my learning the truth about the non-existence of Father Christmas. It was, as Homer Simpson might say, at the start of that turbulent decade known as the 80s. During the Summer holidays we saw "The Empire Strikes Back" (who didn't?) and although my memory may be a little shaky, I'm fairly sure that I didn't actually lay eyes on any of the associated toys until after the film came out. That may well be the case - the relentless landslide of merchandising may have started with Star Wars but its nature has become much more aggressive over the past twenty years. On the other hand maybe Mum and Dad were craftily keeping me away from the 'dangerous' shops for fear of another Death Star Playset scenario (actually this begs the passing question, why was there never a Cloud City set?).

If it was (which to be fair I rather doubt) an attempt to hide the toys from me, then as a plan it failed miserably. The details are now of course lost in the mists of time, but during the Summer holidays for some reason we went to Redruth and while there we ventured into a toyshop. And there I saw it! The only serious rival to the peerless Death Star Playset, the Cyberman to its Dalek, the Palitoy (boy, those guys have a lot to answer for) - The Palitoy Millennium Falcon!!

In my mind's eye that toyshop was jam-packed full of a myriad of new and exciting Lucasfilm-licensed toys that I had never seen before, hundreds upon hundreds - the reality is probably that there were maybe five or six different max, but certainly more than enough to overwhelm and overload my child's senses. But whatever else was there the thing that caught my eye and held it was, the Millennium Falcon.

You can of course guess what I came away from that shop with can't you. Well, actually a Princess Leia in Bespin Gown action figure (lovely!) but more significantly I came away (in mid-August remember) with a burning flame of wonder, and the certainty that for Christmas I wanted the Millennium Falcon!

Now I know it's rather impolite of me to talk about money, but I've started now so I'll have to finish. Again I can't remember the exact details, but I believe the Millennium Falcon was something like twenty-four pounds - which (and if this doesn't finally convince you that I'm getting old, I don't know what will) was a lot of money in those days. So after presumably attempting to shake my faith in my new-found idol, or at least hoping that I might simply forget about it, Mum and Dad faced up to the fact that I really did want that piece of junk for Christmas (and lest we forget, this was the ship that made the Kessel run in less than twelve parsecs). Consequently, they explained to me that if I really, really wanted it then I would have to save up some money towards it. I can't recall how exactly they conveyed this scheme, which is a shame, as I should love to know how it was put to me - I'm sure they didn't show me faked copies of Father Christmas' Profit & Loss account, or stock market predictions that things were going to be unfeasibly tight for Santa Corp that year; but however it was floated, I accepted (perhaps that's it - yet another ludicrous twist in the Father Christmas story, that he can't afford it, that I blindly accepted) that I would have to save up some serious money.

And so I did-- I feel the need to pause here a moment. I don't know what people's opinions on the above is - personally I think that Mum and Dad were very sensible to do as they did. For one thing, it worked as a way of proving whether I really did want the Millennium Falcon or not. For another, if there's one thing I can never quite fathom it's people getting themselves hugely into debt (or into trouble) by overspending at Christmas - I can understand the temptation, yes, but never the giving into it. It's surely not worth it. We certainly weren't the richest family in the world when I was little (or indeed now) but we never went without anything, or at least nothing that really mattered, and if the only way I could get the Millennium Falcon for Christmas was to invest in it myself, then I'm glad I did. I didn't complain about it then, and I actually think it was a very good idea. In a nutshell, then, if my crude recounting of the situation has led to any raised eyebrows in my parents' direction then please lower those brows straight away, and shame on you!

So, back to the point...

...which is that I diligently saved up towards the Millennium Falcon. I believe I may have suffered a slight tumble off the wagon in October when I spent a little of my nest-egg on a Rebel Soldier action figure, but in general I stuck to it. And then in early December I came into the kitchen to find Mum, Dad and brother all there. My brother had just had it explained to him (I'm not sure whether it was out of the blue or, as more likely, an explicit confirmation of something he already 'knew') that there was in fact (again, brace yourselves) no Father Christmas. And so it seemed, apparently, a good moment to tell me the same. I suppose I was already tending towards that conclusion (although the unbeatable evidence of Mrs L. did stop me from actually reaching it) and this was just the clinching, official announcement of the truth.

I do remember that moment you know, vividly, even now. What I don't remember with as much clarity is my reaction to it. I seem to recall feeling a slight sense of sadness, the same feeling I always get now when it stops snowing. I love the snow, but when it stops you know that before long it'll be slush and then it'll be gone - although the snow is still there, once it stops falling the magic that brought it has finished. I seem to think that I had a little twinge akin to that. I'm quite sure I didn't rush upstairs to barricade myself away from the awful truth and spend the next two days crying or anything like that. But I'm also fairly sure that I felt a sense of having been let into a 'grown-up' secret, and spent the next few weeks wondering who else at school knew, and who didn't.

I don't know whether the moment you learn that there's no Santa Claus is supposed to be one of those major life-experiences that we seem to hear about nowadays, although it wouldn't surprise me to learn that there's now a confidential telephone helpline providing counselling and support for children when they find out. To reiterate the point I tried to make last week, I didn't enjoy Christmas any the less from that moment on - indeed, that particular Christmas was tremendously exciting because of course I finally had the Palitoy Millennium Falcon with its opening cockpit, rotating gun turret, lowering ramp, secret compartment.... For those of you who missed out, let me assure you that it was a thing of wonder, a thing of wonder!

After last week's column which in its rambling way was trying to make some sort of point, I hold my hands up and openly admit that I have no real agenda this week except to wax lyrical about two of the finest Christmas presents I ever had. I know Christmas isn't just about presents (no, I do know, honest!) and indeed part of the above is (I hope) a testament to the parents who supplied them as well as to the gifts themselves. Whether Swan Lake Barbie will have the same unforgettable impact on my daughter's memory this year remains to be seen, but I still maintain (call me a grinch if you will) that Father Christmas doesn't really do anything for us. And certainly for me, it was George Lucas and not Santa Claus who made my Christmas!!!

Ho ho ho!

And may the Force be with you!

14th December 2003