On the Eighth Day of a Feminine Christmas

I cannot listen to Doris Day singing Toyland without weeping.  Babes in Toyland was the first movie I ever saw and I remember it well.  My mother took my older brother and my sister and I to the old dark theater in town and the entire experience remains one of my first childhood memories.

Most of our presents came from the Sears and Roebucks Wishbook.  Long before Christmas, we had dog-eared the catalog to pieces and often fought over whose turn it was to flip through it.  Of course, we never received everything we wanted from the Wishbook, but our Christmas yearnings began with its delivery to our front door.

My older brother loved Christmas.  Up before dawn every Christmas morning, his excitement was infectious.  Sometimes he could not contain himself and did wide spins around the living room in the days leading up to the holiday.  He loved toys but with adulthood, he has naturally curbed his enthusiasm.  Well, just a bit.  His little boy self has stayed firm in my cache of Christmas memories.  Thus, Doris Day’s stirring Toyland…

Toyland! Toyland!
Little girl and boy land
While you dwell within it, you are ever happy then
Childhood’s joyland
Mystic merry Toyland
Once you pass its borders, you can ne’er return again

When you’ve grown up, my dears
There comes a dreary day
When ‘mid the locks of black appears
The first pale gleam of gray
My dears, the first pale gleam of gray

Then of the past you’ll dream
As gray-haired grown-ups do
And seek once more
Its phantom shore
The land your childhood knew

Mystic, merry Toyland.  Yes, we were very happy there…