Christmas Catalogs

I think the lady who lived in this apartment before me did all her shopping through catalogs.  I know on line buying is the way to go these days but I think for her it was catalogs. Over the three years I've lived here I've received quite an amazing variety. This week alone I've received six, all with Christmas themes and that got me thinking about the Christmas catalogs that used to come in the mail when I was a child.  Now those were catalogs!  Nice and thick and full of marvelous things to long for.  They were even called wish books. My cousin and my brothers and I spent hours pouring over those colorful, glossy pages.  Sears, Montgomery Ward and J.C. Penneys had everything you could wish for.  Sadly the catalogs that come to me these days have lots of Christmas decorating ideas and clothes for the season but none of the really fun stuff. Where are the cap guns in Roy Rogers holsters, the doll houses complete with a tiny family, the puzzles and games that came in boxes, the baby dolls?  Last year I spent some time with a 10-year-old great nephew slowly paging through a Lego catalog and enjoying an earnest discussion about which kits would be the most fun to put together. It was fun to see a child enjoying a catalog.  I do expect I'll be getting a great long wish list from him sometime soon.  I guess the flip side of being a child wishing for marvelous things is to be an adult and be able to grant at least a few of those wishes. Remembering is fun but living in the now is better.