Welcome back to Blogmas 2025, that magical time of year when I commit to posting holiday-themed content every single day until Christmas. It’s like an advent calendar, but instead of chocolate, you get my rambling thoughts about all things festive. This year, I’ve enlisted the help of AI to generate daily writing prompts because apparently, after twenty years of blogging, I’ve finally run out of original ideas. Today’s prompt asks me to compare my Christmas wish list as a kid to my Christmas wish list now, which should be fun considering one list was written in magic marker and the other mostly exists as a private Amazon wish list I’m too embarrassed to share with anyone.

The Golden Age of Wish Lists

Let me paint you a picture of late November in the early 1990s. The leaves have fallen, there’s a chill in the Virginia air, and somewhere in our mailbox sits the holy grail of childhood Christmas planning: the Sears Wish Book.

If you didn’t grow up with the Sears Wish Book, I’m not sure I can adequately explain its significance. This wasn’t just a catalog. This was hundreds of pages of pure possibility, delivered straight to your door like some kind of capitalist Christmas miracle. The moment it arrived—was it November? I can’t quite remember, but it felt like it showed up right when the Halloween candy was running low—everything else stopped.

The ritual was always the same. First, you had to flip past all the useless adult stuff. Pages and pages of towels, bedding, and sensible clothing that no self-respecting kid would ever circle. Who was asking for flannel sheets for Christmas? Not this guy. No, we were on a mission to find the toy section, and when we found it, that’s when the real work began.

My sister and I each had our designated magic marker colors. I can’t remember exactly which colors we claimed, but I know we took this seriously. This wasn’t just circling random items—this was strategic planning. You had to circle enough things to give Santa (and by extension, your parents) options, but not so many that you looked greedy. It was a delicate balance.

My lists were pretty consistent year after year. He-Man action figures were a staple—Castle Grayskull wasn’t going to defend itself. G.I. Joes were essential because knowing is half the battle, and apparently, the other half involved tiny plastic soldiers with impossibly small accessories that would immediately get lost in the carpet. Transformers made regular appearances because what kid doesn’t want a toy that’s actually two toys? More than meets the eye, indeed.

Then there were the Nintendo games. Oh, the Nintendo games. I’ve already written about the year I got my NES—that was the Christmas that changed everything. But once you had the system, you needed the games, and those Wish Book pages featuring rows of Nintendo cartridges were like a menu at the world’s best restaurant. Super Mario Bros. 3? Circle. Mega Man 2? Circle. Some weird game you’d never heard of but it had a cool cover? Circle it just in case.

Before the Game Boy revolutionized portable gaming, we had Tiger Electronics handheld games, and let me tell you, those things were fire. Sure, they could only play one game, and sure, the “graphics” were basically LCD segments that blinked on and off, but when you’re eight years old and you can play an approximation of Double Dragon in the back seat of the car? That’s living the dream.

LEGO sets always made the list. Hot Wheels too, because you could never have too many of those little metal cars. The beauty of a kid’s Christmas list was its pure optimism. Price tags didn’t matter. Practicality didn’t matter. Storage space didn’t matter. You wanted what you wanted, and you trusted that the magic of Christmas would somehow make it happen.

Once the Wish Book had been properly annotated with our color-coded desires, the next step was the mall. Specifically, Santa at the mall. This was where you’d hand over your list to the big man himself, that jolly old guy with the fluffy white beard in the red suit. Looking back, it’s kind of weird that we just handed our deepest material desires to a stranger in a mall, but that was the system, and we didn’t question it.

The Modern Reality of Wanting Things

Fast forward to 2025, and my Christmas wish list looks a lot different. For one thing, it barely exists in any physical form. There’s no magic marker involved. No catalog to circle things in. No trip to see Santa at the mall—which would be super weird at 45 anyway.

These days, my “wish list” is mostly an Amazon wish list that I maintain throughout the year, not really as a hint to others but more as a reminder to myself. “Oh, that book looks interesting.” Click. “That LEGO set seems cool.” Click. “A new phone case because mine is falling apart.” Click. It’s less of a Christmas wish list and more of a “things I might buy myself if I ever have extra money” list, which, let’s be honest, is a very different energy than the wish lists of my youth.

Yes, you read that right—LEGO sets still make appearances on my adult wish list. They’re a lot more complicated now than they were in 1989. We’re not talking about a bucket of random bricks anymore. We’re talking about 3,000-piece architectural marvels that come with instruction manuals thicker than some novels I’ve read. My childhood self would be thrilled to know that I’m still willing to play with LEGO. He’d probably be less thrilled to know that I now worry about things like “display space” and “does this match my home office aesthetic?”

The rest of my current wish list is decidedly practical. Gift cards have become the MVP of adult Christmas lists. Amazon gift cards, because who doesn’t buy stuff from Amazon? PlayStation Store gift cards, because video games are expensive and I’m not made of money. DoorDash gift cards, because sometimes cooking is hard and I’m lazy. Kroger gift cards, because groceries are a necessity and have you seen the price of eggs lately?

And cash. Cash is never a bad thing. There’s something beautifully honest about just asking for money. No pretense, no wrapping required, just pure monetary value that I can use to pay bills or maybe, if I’m feeling wild, buy something fun.

The thing that really gets me is how fundamentally different the process is now. As a kid, making a Christmas list was an event. It was tactile—the weight of the catalog in your lap, the smell of the markers, the satisfying feeling of circling something you really wanted. Now it’s all digital. Browsing Amazon just isn’t the same as flipping through the Wish Book. There’s no anticipation in scrolling through endless pages of search results. The algorithm shows you things it thinks you want based on your browsing history, which is both convenient and somehow deeply unsatisfying.

What We’ve Lost and What We’ve Gained

I kind of miss that old Sears Wish Book. I miss the simplicity of wanting things without immediately knowing their price. As a kid, you could circle a $200 LEGO set with the same enthusiasm as a $0.99 Hot Wheels car because money wasn’t real to you yet. It was all just stuff you wanted, and Christmas was the magical time when wanting might turn into having.

Now, every item on my mental wish list comes with an immediate awareness of its cost. That LEGO set isn’t just a cool spaceship anymore—it’s $150 that could go toward groceries or gas or any number of adult responsibilities. That PlayStation game isn’t just entertainment—it’s a luxury purchase that needs to be justified.

Life was simpler when we believed in magic. When you could hand a list to Santa and trust that somehow, some way, at least some of those circled items would appear under the tree on Christmas morning. There was no Amazon tracking number to obsess over. No credit card statement to dread. Just pure, uncomplicated wanting and the possibility of receiving.

But here’s the thing—while I miss the simplicity of those childhood wish lists, there’s something to be said for the grown-up version too. Sure, asking for gift cards and cash isn’t as whimsical as asking for Castle Grayskull, but there’s a freedom in it. When someone gives me an Amazon gift card now, I get to experience a little bit of that childhood magic again. For the value of that gift card, I can want things without the immediate burden of cost. It’s like a temporary return to that Wish Book mentality—”Oh, I can just have this thing!”

And honestly? The fact that LEGO sets still make my list at 45 says something about maintaining that connection to childhood joy. My tastes have evolved—I’m more likely to want the LEGO Architecture Studio than the LEGO Pirate Ship these days—but the core desire is the same. I still want to build things. I still want to play, even if playing now comes with an instruction manual and a recommended age of 18+.

Who could have imagined, when I was circling Nintendo games in that Wish Book, that video games would evolve into what they are today? That the simple 8-bit adventures would become sprawling open worlds with graphics that look like movies? My childhood self wouldn’t believe that I can play games on a TV, a computer, a phone, or a handheld device that makes the Game Boy look like a calculator. The wants have evolved with the technology, but the core desire—to play, to escape, to have fun—remains the same.

The Magic Hasn’t Disappeared, It Just Looks Different

Maybe that’s the real difference between childhood wish lists and adult ones. As kids, we believed in magic that came from outside ourselves—Santa, our parents, the mysterious forces that somehow made presents appear. As adults, we’ve learned that we’re usually our own Santa, and magic is something we have to create ourselves.

But during the Christmas season, especially when I think about those old Wish Books and magic markers and trips to see Santa at the mall, I remember that the magic wasn’t really about getting everything on the list. It was about the possibility. It was about imagining a world where anything could happen, where wanting something was enough to make it real, where a fat man in a red suit could somehow visit every house in one night.

I might not make physical lists anymore, and I definitely don’t visit Santa at the mall, but every December, when I think about what I’d like for Christmas, I’m still that kid with the magic marker, circling possibilities in a catalog of dreams. The dreams are just a little more practical now, and they come with free two-day shipping.

What about you? What was on your childhood Christmas wish list? And what’s on it now? Are you team “practical gift cards” or do you still ask for toys? Let me know in the comments below—I’d love to hear how your wish lists have evolved over the years. And who knows, maybe some of you still have those old Wish Book catalogs tucked away somewhere, magic marker circles and all.