Look, I'll admit...I'm pretty "Bah, Humbug" about the holidays, but there was a time I was much more warm and fuzzy inside.  A time when I ate rainbows for dinner and crapped kittens and sprinkles.  During those times, I received some pretty special gifts that I still remember to this day (though I may not have them anymore).  Here they are in no particular order:

-Lion Earmuffs (that came packaged in a real cage!) 
I was probably eight or nine and I LOVED those things...they had little lion heads and wrapped around themselves to fit in a tiny black cage that had a key so you could lock and unlock it.  I was a pretty imaginative kid, so I think I wore the earmuffs less than I just sat and played with them for hours.  Loved.

-Kitchenaid Mixer 
This gift was totally unexpected one year (since they're not the cheapest of kitchen appliances), but I got it at a time when I was trying to be super domestic (and failing miserably), and I used that thing just about every day.  I guess it made me feel better about my kitchen skills.  Somehow, it has since disappeared.  I'm not sure how one misplaces a twenty pound mixer, but I did.

-JCrew T-shirt 
My family wasn't the richest of families growing up, and I remember being in high school and never having "brand name" stuff.  I mean, it was fine, but it was sometimes hard to watch my friends with new clothes all the time.  One Christmas, my grandma must have known that JCrew was the coolest thing ever to wear circa 1995 and got me a really cute long-sleeved grey t-shirt from there that had a tiny red "JCrew" written on the front.  It wasn't super pretentious, but it made me feel better that next week in school.

It's funny how it's never the super-extravagant gifts that one remembers, but the ones that particularly speak to you at a certain time of life. 

What are some of your favorite Christmas gifts?
Posted by The Naked Redhead