JIM HENDRICKS: The perfect gift’s not hard to find

It comes every year. As sure as Black Friday, it comes. The dreaded question.

“So,” it starts, conveniently cloaked in feigned offhandedness, a deftly applied technique of the season, “what do you want for Christmas?”

It’s a question that, each year, seems more and more perplexing because things that can be bought mean less and less.

That was not the case for me when I was a kid. I knew what I wanted before the Sears Wish Book even arrived.

Generation Z (I think that’s the most current “today’s generation.” Generation X, after all, is so baby-boomerish now, and I somehow missed out on Generation Y altogether. I suppose I should, at this point, apologize profusely to those Y’ers who I callously overlooked, but to do so would stretch out this parenthetical aside to the point of distraction, so I guess I won’t) has no idea what a Sears Wish Book is, in that it includes at least two seemingly obsolete words — “Sears” and “book” — and disappeared ages ago, way back in 2011.

(By the way, as long as I’m taking occasional parenthetical tangents, I might as well mention that I recently stumbled onto a truly marvelous word that really is obsolete — grubble. Grubble is what you do when you’re blindly trying to dig something like your car keys — excuse me, your car fob — out of your pocket or when you’re fumbling around in the dark looking for something, sort of like Congress people hunting for tax change legislation votes. It is indeed humbling to realize that I have been grubbling much of my adult life — for keys, not legislative votes — and simply didn’t realize it.)

Anyway, for Generation Z’ers, a Sears Wish Book was sort of like Amazon, if Amazon was printed on slick color paper in catalog form with a “search engine” index section and was delivered to your mailbox instead of your in-box.

(Here’s some ultimate weirdness … I checked and you actually can buy old Sears Wish Books on Amazon, though they’re kind of pricey. Certainly that was parenthetical aside-worthy.)

Anyway, the Sears Wish Book, usually with a cover depicting kids happily anticipating a visit from Santa, was filled with images that got the creative writing juices flowing. Pictures were circled on dog-eared pages so that you didn’t forget anything important.

Even those of us who didn’t write letters to Santa and opted instead to drop by the hexagonal building with the wire Christmas tree on top in the parking lot of the old Midtown Shopping Center to see Santa in real life and make a heartfelt personal appeal wrote down our Christmas list. We did not want to risk becoming so overcome with awe at an inopportune moment that we might forget something vital. It was bad form to grubble around for Christmas items in front of The Big Guy, who might think you didn’t really want that red Huffy with the high-rise handlebars, 20-inch wheels and banana seat.

As critical as all that seemed at the time, there are only a handful of toys, bikes and the like that stand out in my mind. Any year, an electric train or bike would be at the top of my list, and one year I got a cobalt blue go-cart that I rode until I literally wore the wheels off of it.

The best gifts, however, didn’t cost anything, and they all involved family. Singing Christmas carols around the piano at my uncle’s house on Christmas Eve, then going to see the Christmas lights and ride the train at Jimmy Shiver’s place. Holding a candle with a paper skirt on it that never quite kept the wax from burning your fingers during the candlelight service at Newton Baptist Church. Loading everybody into the car on Thanksgiving night and riding up to Albany to see the Christmas lights that had been turned on for the first time at dark.

Label it nostalgia if you like, but memories are perfect gifts. Gifts you couldn’t get out of a Sears catalog back then. Gifts you can’t find on Amazon or in a store today. Gifts you never have to grubble around for. You don’t have to worry about size, color or receipts. There’s no way they would ever be exchanged. And they never go out of style or become obsolete.

Another one of those will be fine. Perfect, in fact.

Email Jim Hendricks at [email protected]. Follow @ABH_JHendricks on Twitter.