The author, at age 1 1/2, plays with a Jack-in-the-Box, one of the toys that Santa brought him that year.

I need to start off this week with a note of caution that’s sort of a cross between a “spoiler alert” and invoking one’s parental right to decline to answer a particular question that children of a certain age might ask while helping to wrap Christmas presents or trimming the tree.

Who knows? After some reworking, that parental right may just become a candidate for, say, a 35th amendment. Or maybe a 40th.

But for now, my caution is directed toward readers with children who are old enough to have picked up the art of reading and comprehending, but are young enough to still believe that what we often call “the magical spirit of Christmas” is personified by a chubby, white-bearded, red-suited, pipe-smoking sleigh jockey who – logic and science notwithstanding – flies around the world and drops off brightly-wrapped presents at the homes of the good little boys and girls, all within 10 or 12 hours.

If your child or children fall into that category, do me a favor and once you’ve finished reading, use this page to light your yuletide fire. The last thing I want is to be known as the mean guy who leaked the secret that burst even one child’s magical bubble.

OK, boomers, a show of hands: Who (besides me) can remember those few and fleeting childhood years when you’d be willing to swear on a stack of Charles Dickens novels that this Santa Claus guy really did spend Christmas Eve flying around with presents he and his dedicated band of elves spent the last 11 1/2 months building, wrapping and tagging for global delivery – sort of like an ancient version of Amazon?

You see, I had proof that the big guy did in fact visit my house. No, I can’t say I ever actually laid eyes upon him, but this is one of those rare cases where enough circumstantial evidence existed to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.

First, there were a bunch more presents under the tree than there were when I went to bed Christmas Eve. And when we emerged from our respective bedrooms into the pre-dawn Christmas morning darkness, little sister and I discovered that our stockings, hung on the fireplace mantle with care, were considerably fatter than when we last saw them.

But the key piece of evidence – the deal-sealer, if you will – always sat in plain view on one end of the brick fireplace hearth.

The glass of milk we poured and the cookies we arranged on a small plate before retiring offered the proof: The glass was empty, only crumbs remained on the plate, and, oh – the carrot sticks we left for Rudolph were gone.

Yep, the big guy was here all right. No question about it.

And he was quite generous, as I recall, leaving a variety of presents for each of us, even Mom and Pop.

I might have wondered how Santa knew that Pop liked Chivas Regal, or where he heard that Mom needed a new robe and slippers. Oh, yeah, of course he knows – he’s Santa!

Boomers especially will probably remember some of the popular toys that found their way under their trees. I recall a tricycle, then a couple of years later a two-wheeler with training wheels. Pretty standard fare for our generation.

I recall a toy called “Odd Ogg,” a sort of robot into which you rolled plastic balls to get it to move forward or backward.

How about “Mr. Machine?” He was a maybe foot-and-a-half tall robot that was transparent so you could see all his gears spinning as he “walked,” swinging his arms and legs propelled by a wind-up key.

One year I got a replica Army truck, complete with a trailer carrying a giant search light that you could turn back and forth and raise up and down with a wired remote.

One year, either little sister or I got a game called “Operation,” which many probably recall. And another year, Santa brought the family a toboggan – who requested it I have no idea – and one day during vacation week we decided to try it out down at Nashua Country Club.

Flying down the old second hole, Mom somehow spun off the thing and fractured her tailbone. No more tobogganing for Mom.

Santa also brought me an Etch A Sketch, the same year he brought sister an Easy-Bake Oven.

One of my all-time favorites was a “Deluxe Playmobile,” a small-scale battery-operated replica of a car dashboard and windshield that had an amazing number of moving parts and flashing lights, including windshield wipers, turn signals, speedometer, a horn, heater and vent switches, a clock, and a push-button radio that lit up but wasn’t an actual radio.

A few board games made their way under the tree over the years, as did different types of dolls for sister. I remember getting a cap gun one year, a pistol that you loaded with caps that went bang when you squeezed the trigger, but didn’t fire projectiles.

I have this clear, but fleeting, memory of Santa leaving me another type of toy gun when I was 5, maybe 6 years old. It was a battery-operated replica machine gun and quite huge, but mostly all plastic so it wasn’t all that heavy.

It came with an adjustable tripod, onto which you fastened the barrel so you could swivel to aim high, low, right and left. It had two handles, each with a button at thumb level, which the “gunman” had to push simultaneously for it to fire.

It made a pretty loud (Mom and Pop said “very loud”) rat-a-tatt when fired, accompanied by muzzle-flashes and a barrel that slid back and forth. I remember sitting on my bedroom floor behind the controls and firing away – like the cap gun, it launched no projectiles – at imaginery targets on the wall, closet door, windows and whatever else found its way into my viewfinder.

Here’s a memory-jogger for you: Barrel of Monkeys. So simple but so much low-tech fun.

Of course you remember building stuff with Tinkertoys and Erector Sets, making messes with Play-Doh and Mr. Potato Head (with real potatos, not the plastic sequel), winging your Super Ball against the wall to see how many things it can knock over in one throw, zooming your (wired) remote control race car around the kitchen to spook the cat and, better, test Mom’s dancing skills.

On this special weekend, I take this opportunity to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and happiest of holidays.

Dean Shalhoup’s column appears weekly in The Sunday Telegraph. He may be reached at 594-1256 or dshalhoup@nashuatelegraph.com.

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