Dear Santa, uh, I'll have to get back to you

I seem to have crossed over into a new stage of life. I don’t want anything for Christmas. On one hand this could mean I have reached a level of contentment in my life, a sort of serenity in which the base desire for material goods has been supplanted by higher thoughts leading to greater understanding of what is truly important in life. On the other hand it might mean I’m old.
When you’re a little person, with the wonder of Santa Claus fresh in your consciousness, it is easy to make a Christmas list only slightly longer than the collected works of Leo Tolstoy. This is not a sign of greed. This is a sign of the belief that the world is full of possibilities, that there is magic at the North Pole, and that the latest Major Matt Mason action figure will make life complete.
I can personally attest to that last fact. When I tore the paper from the green headed alien, Callisto, adding to my collection of Sgt. Storm, Astronaut Doug Davis, and Lt. Jeff Long there was a sense of joy not rivaled by many things in the life of quiet desperation pursued by most folks who work for a living.
As we get past the enchantment of those early years, Christmas often does get slightly tainted with greed. We want stuff for the sake of stuff. After the days of action figures, slot car race tracks (which worked until New Year’s Day) or for the girls, the Crissy doll (which had a knob on her back to retract her hair back into her head and a button in her stomach which made it possible to pull her hair out to a greater length - that was just weird) teenagers tend to want the latest and coolest gadgets and part of this desire is simply for the boost in status amongst their friends.
My stint in this time of life was before Blu-Ray, before MP3 players, before Nintendo, before DVDs, before CDs, before cell phones, before video tape players, before the wheel, oops, went just a bit too far there. I very distinctly remember getting a cool radio. Yes, I said a radio. It was AM and FM. It was designed so it looked like a bottom heavy circle, but it had a hinge of sorts which meant you could swivel it so it looked like a bloated “S”. With this ooh-neat-cool-wow radio I could listen to Casey Kasem tell me Debby Boone was at the top of the charts for the nine hundred and twenty-seventh week with an intensely insipid love song or Dancin’ Don Hall send out good night kiss dedications on KWHK (never to me, sigh).
Later the Christmas list shows signs of maturity. You start asking for things you can actually use. The ultimate sign a person has grown up is when he wants socks beneath the Tannenbaum. What was once the crummy present you resented wasting the time it took to unwrap goes from representing an unfeeling great aunt with a twisted utilitarian sense of gift giving to something else entirely. As a college student I saw each pair of socks as one more day I could avoid going to the Laundromat.
During the first few years of being an honest to goodness grown up it is still easy to make lists of desired stuff. Much of the stuff was placed on the list because it would make life a bit more interesting, fun, or easy to do. My lists would contain a smattering of things not unlike items from lists I made in other stages of my life. I would ask for toys because I thought it really didn’t count as Christmas if there wasn’t something to play with down there on the floor amongst the tattered paper and bows. I would ask for the latest gadgets partially for the coolness factor and partly because they were the toys of people over ten. I would ask for socks because I still preferred putting off laundry for as long as possible.
This Christmas I really don’t want anything. If I was forced to write what I wanted it would sound sappy. I want my children to be happy and healthy. I want my wife to be well taken care of and never to feel she goofed up by marrying me. I want my friends to be successful in what they pursue. For me, I want to expand my horizons as a writer and continue being with my wife, children and friends. Oh, and a couple of pairs of socks would be nice.