When it comes to a little boy’s dream of receiving a firearm for Christmas, Ralphie Parker has nothing on Brian Spicer. The North Strabane board of supervisors’ chairman campaigned long and hard before receiving a 22-caliber, single-shot rifle. And no one had to tell him to be careful or he would shoot his eye out.

Whether they receive it or not, most adults have at least one gift in their Christmas past they recall begging of Santa or their parents. Some kids had their wishes granted early. Others, like Spicer, had to wait. Raised in Vermont, he became familiar with hunting rifles at a young age, but was made to wait until he was 12 to have one of his own.

“Everybody hunts in Vermont and you’re brought up in the hunting atmosphere,” he says. “But because of the nature of the gift, it had to wait.”

But the rifle was worth the extra time: “I was out on Christmas Day in a foot of snow shooting that gun,” he says.

Spicer can be considered one of the lucky ones – his Christmas wish came true. Other children, like Canonsburg Borough Manager Terry Hazlett, couldn’t leave it all up to Santa. “I asked my parents over and over for a record player,” he says, but to no avail. A then-10-year-old Hazlett began bidding for the player after his performance in a school musical. To pass the time while waiting to go onstage, each student was asked to bring a record to listen to.

Hazlett recalls being teased by classmates after showing up with “uncool” 78s. “I had to have [a record player] after that,” he jokes. “Now I have about 40,000 45s.”

Yet Christmas came and went, but no record player appeared under the tree.

Undeterred, Hazlett began saving up and, by spring, had enough to purchase a Wildcat Portable Phonograph player, with speakers attached, and three newly-released records. Years later, when he was in high school the player broke, Hazlett says, but the records remain intact. He was lucky enough to stumble across a similar Wildcat at a garage sale a few years ago and bought it for old times’ sake.

Artistic Yearnings
Nostalgia brings back memories not of one gift, but of Christmas tradition for Cecil Township Police Chief John Pushak. “I guess when I was a kid the thing that sticks out in my mind ... even more than presents that I opened, I remember looking forward to getting crayons and a coloring book in my stocking.

“Not that I have any artistic ability at all,” jokes Pushak, who also coordinates the DARE program for Canonsburg Borough and Cecil and North Strabane townships.

The art supplies appeared in his stocking every Christmas until he was 9 or 10 years old, and Pushak continued the tradition with his children. He enjoyed the giving more than they enjoyed receiving, though, he says. “They were more into technological things.”

Technology was not a bad progression for the chief. These days Pushak downloads pictures onto his computer for his granddaughters to color online for the holidays.

Electronic toys are not new to kids’ wish lists, though.

Dave Helinski, principal of Canon-McMillan High School, recalls being caught up in the international space race, the Apollo shuttle launches and Johnny Astro, created by Topper Toys. “It was the silliest little thing,” Helinski says.

Johnny Astro was only a few inches high and lived in a transparent space capsule taped to the bottom of a “space vehicle” – a 9-inch white balloon. Kids could send the balloon into orbit from a launch pad on any level surface using a joystick. “I can remember just thinking that was the greatest thing in the world,” says Helinski, who was 7 or 8 years old during the height of the space race in the 1960s.

“I was really into the Apollo thing. Most people my age, you were a kid watching it happen. It was the greatest thing ever. I wanted to be an astronaut like everyone else on the block.”

Helinski no longer launches Johnny Astro – the manufacturer’s Web site states most of the balloons disintegrated with age – though he wishes he still could.

There were other gifts under the tree that year, but Helinski can’t begin to remember what they were. Johnny Astro was at the top of his list and he made sure it was on Santa’s.

“It was definitely a Santa thing. I can remember there was an automotive place at the one mall by my house, Joe the Motorist’s Friend, where you went to see Santa. It was tradition. I know I asked Santa for it there.”

Santa’s Surprise
For Rev. Joe Patterson, pastor of First United Methodist Church of Canonsburg, Santa was a Christmas wish. “I enjoyed the surprise so much I didn’t want to know,” Patterson says of his gifts. Each year he begged his parents not to tell him anything to ruin the surprise, he says, and they went to great lengths to preserve Santa’s magic.

When he was young, Patterson says his family lived in an apartment. When asked how Santa could leave presents without a chimney to enter, Patterson’s father told him Santa had been given a key.

One year Dad borrowed a sleigh from a neighbor, dragged it across the snow and made sure Patterson and his sister, who were about 5 and 7 years old at the time, would see Santa. Another year, when Patterson noticed all the gifts had come from Sears, his father explained that the baby boomer generation needed so many toys that Santa had to employ additional manufacturers – Sears and Roebuck.