Associated Press medical writer Lindsey Tanner, in a recent article, writes that old-fashioned Christmas gifts are better for children than “costly electronic games and flashy digital gizmos.”
Don’t tell that to the kids or the manufacturers and sellers of modern gifts. But the article, drawing on a report by the American Academy of Pediatrics, makes sense. It cites studies suggesting “the heavy use of electronic media may interfere with children’s speech and language development” as well as leading to obesity because they give up physical activity playing with the devices.
The report recommends hands-on playthings that spark imagination and creativity, including those that can be shared with parents.
“A cardboard box can be used to draw on, or made into a house,” said Dr. Alan Mendelsohn, co-author of the report.
Come to think of it, how many times have you observed a small child playing with the box a certain toy came in rather than the toy itself?
But no parent wants to give a kid an empty box for Christmas.
Tanner’s article reminded me of a Christmas many years ago when I was 5 or 6 years old.
It was around the time the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor brought the United States into World War II. The country was still in the final months of the Great Depression.
We lived in the country, but my father had a job in town, and we were better off financially than the family that lived on a farm across the road from us.
My brother and I always got a visit from Santa Claus, but the twins across the road, a boy and girl two years older than I, didn’t get much for Christmas, except maybe some fruit or occasionally an item needed by the entire family.
In fact, it was the boy — Thurmond was his name — who at some point told me there wasn’t a Santa Claus, that my parents were providing those gifts. I didn’t believe him, but I did wonder why he didn’t get as much for Christmas as I did.
At any rate, that particular Christmas, I was hoping for and expecting to get a new red wagon from Santa. I had an old one that probably was a hand me down from a cousin or a friend, but a couple of the wheels had come off it.
Thurmond had an older cousin, James, who visited him frequently. James was not a good influence on either of us, sometimes intimidating us and putting us up to mischief.
On a visit a few days before Christmas, though, he was in a more charitable mood. James and Thurmond helped me repair my old wagon to where it would function again, and I can still reflect on the sense of accomplishment I felt as a small child.
One of them even suggested I didn’t need the new wagon I had informed them Santa Claus was bringing.
I didn’t agree with that, and I got the new one. I don’t remember what happened to the old one. I would like to think I gave it to Thurmond, but I don’t recall that I did.
Some 25 or so years later, my wife Virgie and I stayed up most of Christmas Eve night putting together a doll house for our daughter and a service station for our son.
I never was good at assembly, having failed several times at attempts to build model airplanes. So, putting together the parts of the toy service station was frustrating work, not nearly as much fun as repairing a broken wagon, with the help of two older boys.
I had suggested we leave the doll house and service station in the boxes and let the kids help put them together. But Virgie would have none of it. Santa wasn’t going to leave anything unassembled in her opinion.
Judging from that report from the American Academy of Pediatrics, I was right.
