Welcome to Day 10 of Blogmas 2025, where I continue to prove that yes, I can write about Christmas every single day for 25 days straight, even if it kills me (spoiler: it might). For those just tuning in, Blogmas is my annual December marathon of holiday-themed posts, because apparently I hate having free time in December. This year, I’m using AI-generated prompts to guide my topics, which is how we’ve arrived at today’s challenge: What was the best Christmas present you’ve ever received? Tell the story.

Before I dive into this, I need to come clean about something: I’m terrible at gifts. Not just giving them—though I’m spectacularly bad at that—but the whole gift economy in general. Some people have gift-giving as their love language. Mine is more like… I don’t know, sarcasm? Avoiding phone calls? The point is, when it comes to presents, I’m the guy who draws a pretty decent Christmas card and shoves an Amazon gift card inside because the thought of actually shopping for something specific makes me break out in hives.

I know, I know. It’s cynical. It’s probably some deep-seated psychological issue stemming from childhood. But somewhere along the way, I got it in my head that receiving a gift creates a debt—not just a “thank you” debt, but an obligation to reciprocate with something equally thoughtful, equally meaningful. And since I’m about as thoughtful as a brick when it comes to gift selection, the whole enterprise fills me with dread.

All of which is to say: asking me about the best Christmas present I ever received is like asking a fish about its favorite bicycle. But if I had to pick one—if you put a gun to my head and demanded I identify a single Christmas gift that actually stuck in my memory through four decades of holiday amnesia—it would be the Nintendo Entertainment System I got for Christmas 1987.

Or was it 1988? Honestly, the years blur together when you’re seven (or eight?). But let’s go with ’87, because that sounds right, and more importantly, I’ve already committed to it in this paragraph.

The Context: Life Before Nintendo

To understand why the NES was such a big deal, you need to understand what gaming was like before Nintendo conquered America. I had an Atari 2600, which in 1987 was like having a horse and buggy while everyone else was driving cars. Sure, the horse got you there eventually, but you looked pretty stupid clip-clopping down the interstate.

The Atari 2600 was actually amazing for its time. Pitfall, River Raid, Yars’ Revenge—these were classics. But by 1987, playing Atari was like watching black and white TV while your cousin was experiencing The Legend of Zelda in full 8-bit glory. My cousin had gotten an NES the previous Christmas, and every visit to his house was an exercise in barely suppressed envy.

He had Super Mario Bros., Duck Hunt, Gyromite (which nobody played but everyone owned), and eventually Zelda, which was basically like owning a portal to another dimension. I’d watch him play, occasionally getting a turn, usually dying immediately because the jump button physics were completely different from anything on the Atari. Then I’d go home to my 2600 and play Combat against myself, pretending the blocky tanks were having epic battles when really they just looked like someone had drawn them with their feet.

The Campaign for Christmas

Getting an NES wasn’t just about asking for it once. This required a sustained campaign of psychological warfare that would make Madison Avenue proud. It started in September with casual mentions: “That new Nintendo game is pretty cool.” By October, it had escalated to leaving the Sears Wish Book open to the electronics section, the NES circled in red marker with stars drawn around it. By November, I was cutting out newspaper ads and leaving them on the kitchen counter with helpful annotations like “ONLY $149.99!” (which in 1987 money was basically a million dollars).

The problem was, I knew we weren’t rich. My dad worked for the railroad. My mom worked for the water department. An NES wasn’t just expensive; it was “maybe we don’t take a vacation this year” expensive. So while I campaigned hard, I also tried to manage my expectations. Maybe I’d get more Atari games. Maybe some He-Man action figures. Maybe socks, because parents think socks are gifts for some reason.

But I wasn’t writing to my parents. I was writing to Santa. And Santa, theoretically, didn’t have budget constraints. Sure, he had to be fair to all the children of the world, but surely he could spare one Nintendo for a kid in Virginia who had been reasonably good most of the year (we’ll ignore that thing that happened a couple weeks into second grade).

Christmas Morning, 1987 (Probably)

Here’s what I remember about that Christmas morning: the box was too big to wrap properly. It was under the tree, covered in what looked like an entire roll of Santa-themed paper, with joints and corners that didn’t quite meet, like someone had tried to gift-wrap a coffee table.

The tag said “From Santa,” which should have been my first clue that Santa wasn’t real, because the handwriting looked suspiciously like my mom’s, if she’d been writing with her left hand after three glasses of wine. But seven-year-old me didn’t care about handwriting analysis. Seven-year-old me saw that badly wrapped box and knew—KNEW—what it had to be.

The rule in our house was that we could open stockings first, then had to wait for parents to make coffee before attacking the tree. This was torture. I opened stocking stuffers—candy, a Rubik’s cube, some baseball cards—with the enthusiasm of someone reading terms and conditions. The box sat there, taunting me, while my parents moved at the speed of geological time, making coffee, taking pictures, asking if we wanted breakfast first (NO).

Finally, mercifully, it was time. I tore into that paper like a caffeinated wolverine. And there it was: the Nintendo Entertainment System Power Pad Set, complete with two controllers, the Zapper light gun, and a 3-game cartridge of Super Mario Bros., Duck Hunt, and World Class Track Meet.

I’m pretty sure I screamed. Not a cool scream. Not a dignified expression of joy. The kind of primal shriek that makes dogs bark and parents question their life choices.

The Immediate Aftermath

Setting up the NES was a religious experience. The cables, the channel selector switch, having to tune the TV to channel 3, the way the cartridge slid into the console with that satisfying click—it was all part of the ritual. My dad, who usually treated technology like it might explode, actually seemed interested. He even played Duck Hunt, though he held the Zapper like it was an actual gun, arm fully extended, one eye closed, taking forever to line up shots while the ducks flew away.

My mom tried Super Mario Bros. exactly once, walked directly into the first Goomba, handed me the controller, and didn’t play another video game until she discovered Tetris on the Game Boy. This was fine. More Nintendo for me.

I played that thing until my eyes burned. I discovered that if you used your hands on the Power Pad you could easily outrun “Cheetah” in the 100-meter dash. I learned that the Minus World existed (though I could never get there). I shot so many ducks that the dog’s laughing face haunted my dreams. I was terrible at everything, died constantly, and loved every second of it.

The Long-Term Impact (Or: How Nintendo Ruined Me for Gift-Giving)

Here’s the thing about getting the perfect gift when you’re seven: it sets an impossible standard. Every Christmas after that was measured against the Nintendo Christmas. Did the gift inspire immediate, primal joy? No? Then it wasn’t as good as the Nintendo.

This is probably where my gift-giving anxiety comes from. I received the perfect gift once—a gift so perfect I still remember it nearly 40 years later while forgetting basically every other present I’ve ever gotten—and I’ve never been able to give anyone else that feeling. I’ve never made anyone shriek with Nintendo-level joy. My gifts inspire polite thank-yous, not primal screams.

So I stopped trying. I draw nice cards. I include gift cards. I opt out of the arms race of trying to find the perfect thing, because I know the perfect thing when I see it, and it was a gray plastic box that played 8-bit games and cost my parents way more than they should have spent.

The Truth About Perfect Gifts

Looking back, the NES wasn’t really about the Nintendo at all. It was about my parents—who weren’t rich, who had bills and all the crushing responsibilities of adulthood—deciding that my joy was worth $149.99 plus tax. It was about them conspiring to create magic, badly wrapping an oversized box, writing “From Santa” in disguised handwriting, and pretending to move slowly on Christmas morning just to build anticipation.

The Nintendo was amazing, don’t get me wrong. But thousands of kids got Nintendos that year. What made mine special was the context: parents who probably shouldn’t have bought it but did anyway, because sometimes making your kid shriek with joy is worth more than fiscal responsibility.

I never got another gift that matched that Nintendo. Not because nothing else was as good—I’m sure I received plenty of thoughtful, expensive, meaningful gifts over the years. But because you only get one first perfect gift. You only get to be seven once, believing in Santa while kind of not believing, living in that magical space where video games are portals to other worlds and parents are secret wizards who can make impossible things appear under trees.

The Epilogue: What Happened to the Nintendo

I still have it. Sort of. Only now it’s the NES Classic. You know, the one that came with 30 games pre-loaded onto the system. Of course I hacked it… So now it has over 100 games. Shh… don’t tell anyone.

When that music starts—that first note of the Super Mario Bros. theme—I’m seven again. I’m in my parents’ living room on Christmas morning 1987 (or ’88), and everything is possible. My parents are younger than I am now. My grandparents are still alive. The biggest problem in my life is getting past World 8-1.

That’s the real gift, I suppose. Not the Nintendo itself, but the memory it carries. The perfect preservation of a perfect moment, accessible anytime I’m willing to turn on that retro console.

And that’s why I’m terrible at gifts. Because I’m not really trying to give someone an object. I’m trying to give them a feeling, a memory, a moment of perfect joy that will last 40 years. And you can’t order that on Amazon, no matter how convenient the shipping.

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So what about you? What Christmas gift lives rent-free in your memory decades later? Was it the gift itself or the moment surrounding it? Drop a comment below—I’d love to hear about the presents that defined your Christmases, even if (especially if) they seem silly in retrospect. After all, one person’s Nintendo is another person’s Easy-Bake Oven, Big Wheel, or Sea Monkeys.