I don't remember. We never got a whole lot, but I always got a doll when I was little.

I got a walking doll when I was little. I loved that doll. The other favorite was a teddy bear which I had for many years. I'm not sure when it disappeared but I still miss it. And I'm 60!

My Tiny Tears doll and a wooden crib.

Two items top my list. One was a Patty Play Pal doll and another was a red Schwin bike. I also remember paint by number kits, especially horses.

Horseback riding lessons!!!! I wanted a pony, but in hindsight, this was a much better gift. I began riding at age 7 and continued until I was 50. All those wonderful years shared with my horses was a gift for which I will be forever grateful.

Ladypat....I just mailed the boys Christmas list to Santa...and Amiee wrote one also because the boys enjoy her doing this with them. While out I of course read the lists...Amiees said whatever you have mom spend on the boys...I expected Tims and Chips both to list a few toys and book...but instead they both said Dear Santa. I have been good and I make all A's in my school classes. The only thing I want is a baby chihuahua puppy to love.

My heart cried at this. I figure they both discussed this and decided they had a better chance if they ask for the same.

Best Christmas gift I ever got as a child was a barbie dream house. LOL

Real rhinestone tiara, got that the same year as my first real roller skates and wore both for pictures my mom took on Christmas day, with a burgundy long-sleeved dress that had one of those fluffy multi-layered petticoats underneath for 'volume'. ;)

I wore that tiara with regular shorts and t-shirts, with the flower girl dress in purple silky-satin which was only 'retired' when it was nearly worn to pieces and the zipper no longer went up, with school clothes and while roller skating. I remember seeing the big retail glass shelved case with so. many. tiaras. in it at the dance supply store my mom used to take me to for leotards and ballet shoes every year and begging her to just let me try on one of them (she always said no at the store) so I had no idea I'd get one for Christmas.

I was very ill with pneumonia, at Christmas, when I was 6. I had seen a child's roll top desk in the Montgomery Ward catalog (in those days, one was either a Sears family or a Monkey Ward family), that I desperately wanted. To my amazement, I got it for Christmas. It came with a revolving little chair. I used it until I was way too big too fit anymore. Both my children used it. I finally parted with it a few years ago, as DGSs were not interested in it. Kind of broke my heart to see it go. Hope some child is enjoying it as much as I did.

I was never a girly girl who liked dolls. One year I got a Walking Doll and my brother got some John Deere tractor equipment. That doll stayed in the corner all her life and I played with his farm equipment.

I remember asking for a typewriter one year and I got it. I was ecstatic.

I never ever asked for anything for Christmas as a child. Gifts were simple things like pajamas, a hand held mirror/brush set, music box, hand lotion and scented soaps. The one that stands out the most is a red purse when I was four. I never felt deprived.

The best gift of all was a house full of company, and if some brought musical instruments, we would sing along and even dance. That was the best. My most cherished memories are not of things that were purchased.

I bet most of us charish our memories of family and friends much more than things.

Anglophila--you made me smile with the "Monkey Ward" comment--my sweet Grandad always called it that! When Wards opened their first store in Alaska, it had an ESCALATOR! That was pretty big news for Alaska! Thanks for making me smile this morning!

My brother pretty much spoiled the concept of Santa for me the year he woke me up on Christmas eve night, had me follow him down the hall to peek through the louvered slat hall door at our parents as they readied everything for the next morning (I think my dad grumbled about the difficulty of getting all the tiny parts and pieces of the Barbie townhouse thing in place while my mom shushed him). Naughty brother. The next morning I told them I knew that Santa wasn't real, but we kept up the pretense a few more years since I was only...6 years old I think.

As an adult, I came to fully appreciate just how much work my mom put in with sewing things for me and getting me to piano lessons, dance classes - this in addition to her full time teaching job. Just the year of the 'snoopy' costume alone she deserved a medal for the hours she spent at the dining table using her 1979 Elna sewing machine to construct from obnoxiously faux poly-fur material, my dance recital costume. Honestly I dodged way worse than the few times getting pricked by straight pins while she checked the fit progress over and over - it was a miserable costume and thankfully that year she had decided to not let any of the other mothers pressure her into helping make the costumes for students whose moms did not sew. She was fine if it was just a matter of attaching sequined elastic or some other such minor thing, but the year of the faux fur material and required a multi-pieced pattern making just my costume was more than enough for her to endure. She has also been a life-long taker of many photos, so many...many years ago she had all of the pictures from albums and in negatives turned into digital files, it was incredible to see just how many photos she's taken over all the years. I just wish that she was in more of the ones from when my brother and I were young. There are tons of us with our dad and other family, but few taken with my mom in the shot with us, she's just usually the one taking the picture.

I was 6. A Cinderella figurine with a watch.

But my most memorable Christmas was when I was 8. My father got a 6' tall hand blown wine bottle, filled with a dark red wine, for my sister. She was 18 & complained no one treated her like an adult. I remember her breaking the bottle....in half. Red wine everywhere! As I recall she thought it was a gag gift & wasn't real....

My parents weren't big spenders at Christmas when we were growing up. They often bought a big family gift, which was generally something that didn't interest me. One of the things I really wanted as a child was one of those Lego sets with the mini figures (our few sets were basic blocks, no animals or figures or other fancy parts). Then one year I got the big castle set that Lego had back in the day. It was surprise and the best gift ever. It's still here with me, along with many other Legos collected over the years. As a matter of fact, its parts are in a tub about 4 feet behind me at the moment, as my own kiddo plays with all the Legos just about every day :)

When I was very young, every girl wanted a bride doll. I've had this thought that maybe our mothers taught us to want bride dolls, since so many of their generation had been War Brides. They never got to have the big white wedding. I did have a supermarket doll, lovely Louise or lovable Louise or somebody like that LOL. My Aunt Pansy ( who had gotten married in a chiffon flapper dress, ecru with big pink cabbage roses!) made Louise a beautiful wedding dress and Veil and dressed her in it and brought her to me on Christmas. I was absolutely Starstruck. When I was older, my favorite present was a bicycle, a gift from my grandfather. My brothers had gotten bicycles for their birthdays in November, and for my birthday shortly afterwards, I had gotten a pink dress. Can't remember what precipitated it, but one day I just broke down and bawled at the unfairness of it, which was totally unlike me. I wasn't allowed to complain. When Papa bought me the bicycle, my mother, a good example of what every mother should not be, chided him, "you don't need to spend your money on her." For the first time in my life, I had my own power, and I was free; I could ride anywhere, and did! To this day, I cherish the ability to take myself where I want to go.

I never got much for Christmas but I do remember one year getting two little twin dolls in a small bed with a pink? blanket.

Days of the Week underwear. I thought they were so fancy and beautiful, and packaged so prettily, all in their proper order. Maybe I was a weird child.

There wasn't money for much when I was growing up...war years. But like Nicole, I got a Cinderella wrist watch one year. I had admired that watch every time we went to the drug store.

My grandkids get so much that it makes me rather ill..just rip into the paper then in to the next one. So darned spoiled!

Days-of-the-week underwear! I haven't thought of those things in a hunnert years lol. Why did we worry about whether we wore Monday on Monday? Phoggie, a neighbor absolutely put a stop to the insane amount of gifts lavished on her children. Each set of grandparents is allowed to give one thing, and she and her husband get one thing. Whiny kids are reminded, "Jesus only got 3."

Fun stories. I remember always being excited for the great day to finally be here! My favorite Christmas gifts were probably three troll dolls when I was about six. One of them had hair that turned colors when it was humid! Well, it was supposed to, but her hair shrunk to almost nothing when I dunked her in the bathtub. She became grandma troll and I made her wigs from yarn.

It surely wasn’t funny then, but when I was 7 or so, the three of us older girls were hiding out in my big sisters room and we could hear “Santa” cursing with frustration as he put our new bikes together. To his credit, he had 3 to do and was up all night working on them so we’d all be surprised. I don’t think he ever knew that we knew what he’d done for us but come Christmas morning, we made sure he got a lot of hugs and kisses.

A farm set with a lithographed red barn, and all the animals, fences, and even the farmer. I remember the Sears Christmas catalogs..........what a wonderful day it was when it arrived in the mail.

For me, it was a Gilbert Erector Set. I spent hours building things with it and learned about truss design.

An iron that really warmed up. It was barely warm but for me it felt soooo real and grownup. I must have been about 7 YO. Never got an Easy Bake oven but no psychotherapy was required over not getting one.

A bicycle. And as Sylvia Gordon said, it was freedom! My best rides were just along the little paved country roads through woods, past ponds, pastures, railroads, dairy farms, vegetable farms and back home again. As a young child I dreamed I could fly; as an older child I pretty much could fly-- on my bike.

I always loved my presents, even though I didn't get many. My parents put a lot of thought into getting me something I wanted, as opposed to a lot of things. I think one of my most favorite presents was an Invisible Woman. I spent hours taking her apart and putting her together again. I did get a stereo one year, my mom probably regretted that.

@ lcmd_gaz Wow, I got that same doll one Christmas and I loved her to bits. Her name was also Amosandra, shortened to Amosandy. I was very young (I'm now 73) and the only people in my little circle were my own family, so not a lot of experience with people of a another race. I thought she was just the most beautiful doll in the world. The year I received it from Santa I also got a wooden doll clothes trunk (made by my Dad), a second-hand dolly buggy (repainted by my Mom), and a whole wardrobe knitted by my Nan.

So many thanks for the memory.

Best loved gift was the Madame Alexander "Meg" doll from 'Little Women" -- in 1955, it was that odd composition material, so much nicer than the later vinyl ones. She was the large size, about 12 inches. I adored the books, so this was very special (I grew up in Concord Massachusetts, so Louisa May Alcott was rather like a neighbor, lol). The following Xmas, under the tree, there was a small wooden trunk, with an inserted tray inside, filled with clothing that my mother had secretly worked all year to sew -- a pale blue real silk peignoir, a black taffeta gown, a pretty pink day dress with white rick-rack trim, some hats and a fabulous parasol -- black with pink silk lining and black lace trim. Where my mother ever found a parasol skeleton to make this, I can't imagine. Or the time to do all this, with 5 kids under the age of 9.

I still have that doll and the trunk of clothes, of course. Also the matching "Laurie" doll...

I was never allowed to play with any of the Madame Alexander dolls that the grandparents used to give me for birthdays and Christmas. They were beautiful but the rule about not touching them because they were for display on my shelves only meant that I never really got attached to them, so when at 19 and my cat became very ill the dolls were the only thing of relative value that I could quickly go sell in order to pay for whatever treatment might provide a cure that was the precisely what I did...sadly I could have sold them for thousands and thousands but it would never be enough to save my cat. Instead I ended up only parting with a fraction of the amount I received from the sale to put her to sleep. Even today I would sell them all over again under similar circumstances...tangible items that I couldn't touch from relatives I always had a distant kind of relationship with -- the sort of presents that no matter how much they cost become 'just stuff' with which it is better to take a chance and sell in hopes of being able to save a creature I physically and emotionally have a close bond with no matter how slim the chance may be.

Put me in the Easy Bake Oven camp. The other was a two foot Emmet Kelly doll my favorite aunt and uncle gave me. The oven only lasted a few years, but I cherished that doll til I lost it in a fire when I was 20. Still makes me sad, as I thought so much of the ones who gave it to me.

nickel, lol@troll dolls! My sister had a whole mess of those things and she made clothes for them. :)

Easy Bake ovens bring back memories. I think I was 8 when Santa brought me one. Of course I couldn't wait to bake a cake but it required a light bulb which of course mom did not have. We lived in town so I walked up and down the quiet street looking for a store that would be open and might be selling light bulbs LOL...no one was open and I trudged back home disappointed. Not once did I even think about all the lights in the house..there must have been a dozen bulbs in the house. LOL. Mom was smart she wasn't about to let me make a big mess Christmas morning with 4 kids to supervise and Christmas dinner to prepare.

My sister! Her middle name is Noel.

Easy bake was the gift I didn't (never) get from Santa I always wanted.

Igmd_gaz and justlinda, wow -- that picture of Amosandra clears up something for me. When my daughter was little, my husband's Aunt gave her "a little black baby doll" similar to her own favorite doll when she was a girl (also in the late 1940's, also in a rural area where there were essentially zero black people). It was a pretty little thing, about the size and shape of the one in your picture. I will ask when we see Aunt over the holidays if her original baby doll's name was Amosandra and if she came from the Montgomery Wards catalog. Quite probably, yes to both.

A friend of mine got one of those life-size walking dolls, and she told me that one year the eyes rolled back in the doll's head, and it started walking toward her with arms outstetched, eyes rolled back, and she and her sisters shrieked with terror.

Grandma sewed me a pretty nightgown and matching robe every year. I loved that the best. The best toy I ever got was a circular plastic cart with big wheels on each side called a krazy kar I think and I could get that going so fast and make tight turns or spin. Wish they made them for adults. That was right before the big wheel came out. I rode that toy till the wheels wore out.

Jenn Codename: Danger.....that is a sad story, and it reminded me of one my mother told me. She was born in 1904 and was illegitimate, and I am sure an embarrassment....considering the time, and place...and was given away when she was four years old. She was never adopted but was considered a foster child....although I don't believe there was ever any paperwork or anything about it like there would be today. She said her foster parents had no other children and no idea how to treat a child. They were, however, well to do in the community, and had the first horseless carriage. Her foster father was a carpenter and had a big farm, as well. So, they weren't without money. Her first Christmas, her only gift was a vase. What a gift for a 4 yr old! (I have it today). Then another gift, another year was a doll in a box. She wasn't allowed to play with it, or take it out of the box. It was fastened into the box. One day when she was alone in the house, she took it out of the box, to find out that it didn't have clothes on behind the back of the doll. She couldn't get it back in the box, and when her foster mother came in and saw what she had done, she whipped her.

A lemon tree when I was 12. I also loved to bake so maybe that hand mixer I got when I was 11. The hand mixer hardly worked but I was aloud to make cookies occasionally with it so I was happy. That was about 20 years ago, and I kept that mixer for 10 years! It barely worked after a year of using it.

I had the days of the week panties too and thought they were fancy. You're a little tot and had the ruffle panties and then your too big for them and the choices are plain white cotton ones with the ugly elastic or the pretty pastel ones with a bow and the days of the week in the fancy box with the bow. Girls want pretty underthings! Today I sew fancy Victorian and Edwardian petticoats, drawers and chemises. Even my corsets are in fancy fabrics with abundant ribbon and lace. I remember vintage lacy bras, matching half slips with beautiful lace and fancy garter belts with seamed stockings. I have some plain no show natural colored stuff but it's not pretty and fun to wear like the vintage stuff was. I don't think I ever got fancy underwear as a gift but if I had gotten some, I would have been happy.

Another gift I liked was a red Panasonic twist radio called a toot a loop. That radio went everywhere with me.

I think I got turned off on dolls b/c of the “can’t play w/them” rule. My grandma had a cabinet full of dolls, I wasn’t allowed within two feet of the cabinet, ha. I distinctly remember a doll dressed as a nun. I was mesmerized by it. The dolls ended up in the garbage as nobody wanted them when granny was ready to part w/them.

Mom adored dolls and her fave was Roberta, a baby looking type of doll which she had in her bed til day she died. Brother threw in in the trash when she passed.

I had a fake Barbie, Ken, Midget and I loved sewing outfits for them more more than playing w/dolls themselves.

my fave neighbor had an incredible collection of Madame Alexander dolls which went into storage but she eventually abandoned storage and I guess dolls ended in the trash.

I had Muffie dolls when I was a kid and played with them constantly. Had vast wardrobes for them as well :-) My older sister had a collection of Storybook dolls but those were NOT played with. She was quite a bit older than me so well beyond the "doll" years. Have no idea what happened to them but they are apparently now quite valuable.

I was too early for Barbie - she didn't come on the scene until I was in junior high. Not at all cool to be messing with dolls at that age!!

nickel_kg, do a web search for Amosandra Doll. A whole bunch of sites come up.

Thanks, Igmd_gaz, I will. What a nice connection to find!

@marilyn_c

my heart hurts for the child your mother once was.

@kittymoonbeam

there’s just something about corsets, I have a small collection of about...12-14? Most are for special wear, 4 are daily wear but the 5th just arrived in the mail so after I ‘season’ it, I’ll be able to retire one of the older dailies.

I remember Ward's dolls as well, in fact just the other day I was on their site and noticed they still have a great selection of dolls! I sent this to my sister and we had a nice time reminiscing.

Marilyn, your Mom's story is tragic, I hope she went on to have a happier life. My favorite toy was a red cash register that came with fake dollars and coins. I always told my parents that I was going to work when I grew up, not stay home. Well I did both.

What a nice surprise lcmd-gaz. That link sure brought me back to about 1949-50. Thanks loads.

Igmd_gaz and justlinda -- I did get to ask my aunt about her childhood doll and yes it was Amosandra! She was so pleased that others remembered Amosandra with joy. Thanks again!

A world atlas.