To a child, the anticipation of Christmas morning is filled with wonder.
The day arrives, and those brightly wrapped packages that have been sitting beneath the tree, taunting with their anonymity, will finally be ripped open.
Growing up, my two older brothers and I were always guaranteed to have one specific present under the tree on Christmas morning. It wasn't an annual pair of slippers, nor was it a particular chocolate treat as you might expect.
My mother did almost all of the Christmas shopping; there were plenty of practical gifts such as new sweaters and gloves, pyjamas and board games. She would occasionally follow the prominently placed gift suggestions that were left around the house.
Late in the fall when the Christmas catalogs began arriving in the mail I would dive into them filled with toy lust. As I flipped through the pages featuring the latest toy weaponry, plastic castles with sets of knights ready to do battle, games and what the toymakers were hoping would be that year's craze, I would circle the most desirable products. Then I carefully left the catalogue out, opened to the appropriate page.
My father paid little attention to these efforts to entice him to visit the toy department. He already had his shopping list for us; it was the same one as the year before.
Christmas morning began with the charge to the Christmas tree. Just as we expected, every year as we entered the living room we would find three hockey sticks laid out on the floor.
We were not on any sport team and the sticks were just standard Canadian Tire issue but that meant we were set for the next road hockey game.
While we weren't allowed to wear the new gloves or clothes out for the game in front of our house, those gleaming new sticks were just waiting to be abused. At the first opportunity we'd be out there grinding them against the pavement chasing that wet tennis ball as we took on the neighbourhood kids.
