Whatever our age, we all see Christmas as the time for writing letters to “Santa”, enumerating the things we have been wanting all year. Over the years, Santa has gotten more letters requesting the Red Ryder BB gun and the Easy Bake Oven than any other toys.
The Red Ryder BB Gun is a BB gun made by Daisy Outdoor Products and introduced in 1938, named for the comic strip cowboy character Red Ryder. The BB gun is still in production despite the fact that the comic strip was canceled in 1963. The Red Ryder BB Gun is a lever-action, spring piston air gun with a smoothbore barrel, adjustable iron sights, and a gravity feed magazine with a 650 BB capacity. The Red Ryder BB gun was featured in the popular 1980’s film A Christmas Story, where the main character is desperate to get one, but is constantly thwarted with the warning “You’ll shoot your eye out”. The movie’s fictional BB gun, described as the “Red Ryder carbine-action, two hundred shot Range Model air rifle BB gun with a compass in
the stock and a thing which tells time,” does not correspond to any actual production model.
America’s first working toy oven, was turquoise and had a carrying handle and fake stove top. It was invented by designers at Kenner Products (now a division of Hasbro). In its first year, 1963, over 500,000 lucky kids talked their parents into spending $15.95. By its fifth birthday, the EASY-BAKE Oven was a household name. In 1965, Hasbro introduced the Kid Dinners for the oven which were mini TV-dinner-like trays partitioned into three sections to hold beef and macaroni, peas and carrots. In 1968, General Mills created very cool miniature boxed versions of its Betty Crocker products for the EASY-BAKE Oven. The oven is still in production almost 50 years later.
Now it is 2010 and the hot items are the Xbox, the iphone, and the ipad. No matter what the item, we all have something we desire.
So how do we transform this to make it a reminder of the birth of Jesus Christ?
When you make your wish lists, just remember that all these things will never bring you complete fulfillment. But there is One who is the Desire of all people, whether they know it or not, who will bring fulfillment. Haggai 2:7 (NKJV) ‘…and I will shake all nations, and they shall come to the Desire of All Nations, and I will fill this temple with glory,’ says the Lord of hosts. The Christ Child is the “Desire of All Nations”!
[Along with our Christmas wish list, our family also makes out a “Grown-Up Christmas List” which is composed of our personal spiritual desires for our lives for the coming year. Each family member has a copy of everyone’s requests so we can pray for each other. Each year at our birthday party for Jesus we take inventory of our lives to see the results of the prayers throughout the year.]
