Christmas is just better when you're a kid. Like five, six, or seven years old. The anticipation is insane. The wonder and delight at waking up Christmas morning are real. It's a time for drunk, happy adults and sugar-binging children and it made you believe there was some mystery and magic in the world that you never sensed at any other time of the year. Then along comes that jerk kid who figured out too soon what was up with the whole Santa charade and made it his mission to go around ruining it for his more naive friends. [Editor's note: I was that jerk kid.]

But before someone managed to stick a pin in your childhood, we're betting you have a memory of something Santa brought you that was on the level of Ralphie's Red Ryder carbine action, two-hundred-shot, range model air rifle. You woke up, unwrapped it, and your head exploded. It was the object you'd been waiting for your whole life up to that moment. And it was glorious.

We asked ourselves, as well as some friends in the S.F. writing community, what was that one great present for you? Feel free to share your own in the comments. And Merry Christmas to everyone who celebrates it.

Brock Keeling
Editor, SFist
"Megatron, who transformed into a gun. How controversial and badass is that, a pistol for a child! What makes it so memorable was that I didn't even want it in the first place. All the other little kids in the neighborhood got Optimus Prime that year, which is what I had thought I wanted, but mom had the foresight to get me the Transformer that would stand out at recess. And boy did it. I enjoyed playing with it for a month or so until a neighbor kid stole/broke it. Bastard. I also got a doll a couple of years earlier that I loved and cared for like a real baby."

Anna Roth
Food Editor, SF Weekly
"When I was five or six I wanted a Princess Pony — the prettiest of the My Little Ponies — SO badly. I knew my hippie parents wouldn't buy me one (they believed in blocks over Barbies) so I asked Santa. And there it was on Christmas morning!!! Princess Sparkle had tinselly hair and jewels and came with a glittery comb and she was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. She was my most treasured toy, for a few months at least."

Marcia Gagliardi
Tablehopper.com
"I will never forget when I was six or seven, I got my first cassette player, an Ampex. And to make sure I had something to play Christmas morning, my dad sat in our car Christmas Eve and recorded the soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever on the tape player, while it played on our Cadillac’s 8-track. Hilarious. (I remember there were a couple moments when my dad coughed a little on the recording, so funny.) It’s also the year I figured out there was no Santa, because I found the 8-track stashed in my mom's Kitchen Aid mixing bowl later that day. Oh, the tears! But I carried that tape player everywhere. The first real cassette I got was Andy Gibb, Shadow Dancing. Oh yeah."

Jay Barmann
Co-Editor, SFist
"A TV in my room. It happened pretty early, like around 4th grade, because I was a spoiled only child with a father who had no patience for sharing televisions. I remember waking up and it was already there, set up at the foot of my bed and not under the tree, and I thought, 'Thank god he didn't listen to Mom.' (I had ruined the Santa thing for myself sometime around second grade, and this was clearly the work of my dad.) My love affair with television started earlier than that of course, lying on my parents' bed down the hall watching Silver Spoons and wishing I could get my hair to look like Ricky Schroeder's. But now I could hole up in my room and not have to watch stupid Knot's Landing with my mom if I didn't want to. And, sure, TV is probably responsible for the fact that I didn't actually enjoy reading a book on my own time until about four years later, and the fact that I skipped reading all the things bookish kids my age were reading, like The Lord of the Rings and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. But I thank HBO and NBC for helping hone my sense of humor, and for basic cable not turning my brain to mush so much as turning me into a bottomless well of useless pop-culture trivia and John Hughes references."

Schuyler Bailey
Senior Editor, 7x7
"Hands down, my Easy Bake Oven. This was on the top of my list for several Christmases, and when Santa finally delivered, I lost my mind. Never mind that it was likely a fire/burn hazard for an under-10-year-old, and the 'baking' involved adding water to an unidentifiable powdery mix, and the only successfully solid treat was a brownie (more wet cardboard than chocolate) — it was everything."

Eve Batey
Editor and Publisher, SF Appeal
"This is me, Christmas of 1974, with one of my favorite Christmas gifts ever: my own record player. As you can see from the photo, Santa (for it was he who left this gift under the tree) also brought me a bunch of 45s. I think they were the usual kiddie stuff: I seem to recall a cover of 'Teddy Bears' Picnic,' and I remember how that Fitness Fun record you can see in the picture exhorted listeners to 'punch.' Take that, Billy Blanks.

My parents had a pretty nice stereo and turntable, but it was off limits to three-year-old me (as it should have been!). Getting my own record player represented a new level of autonomy, something that I always craved. I listened to it constantly, and used it to provide the accompaniment to the many "shows" my parents sat through like the saints of patience that they are. When I got older and was more in the LP-listening age group, the record player got passed on to my younger sister, and Santa brought me a combo turntable/stereo thing. But I'll never forget that first intoxicating feeling of being in charge of my own musical destiny. Life was never the same after that."

Joe Starkey
Editor, Thrillist SF
"I know it outs me as the huge nerd I try to pretend I'm not, but I remember I got an X-Men Cerebro Control Center for all the X-Men action figures I had. Basically the boy equivalent of a Barbie Dream House (which I probably secretly also would have loved). I unwrapped it and immediately started playing, refusing to open any other gifts. Or clean up. Or get dressed for the guests that were coming later. And now I have the TV show theme song stuck in my head."

Beth Spotswood
Culture Blogger, SFGate
"The best Christmas present I ever got was Wonder Woman Underoos when I was 5 (1983). I had my heart set on a highly flammable tank and underwear combo inspired by everyone's hero, Wonder Woman. My bedroom was downstairs, and I had strict Santa instructions not to venture into the living room until everyone was awake. When I woke up on Christmas morning, I simply couldn't help myself. My mother still recalls being woken by hysterical screaming. 'WONDER WOMAN UNDERWEAR! I GOT WONDER WOMAN UNDERWEAR!' I wore them everywhere."

Rose Garrett
Co-Editor, SFist; Associate Editor, Eater SF
"I had a very strange habit as a child: I'd wake up pre-dawn, carefully excavate my stocking, examine my loot, and then repack it so that when I officially "woke up" a couple hours later I could feign surprise. One morning, however, I got up at about 3am and found a while menagerie of plastic animal figurines laid out across the floor and enacting all sorts of animal kingdom-esque scenarios. There were adult and baby lions, tigers, giraffes and elephants, and some other species I don't even remember. I don't think I have ever been that excited since then, and I abandoned pretense and immediately started playing with them. Good job, parents!"

Daisy Barringer
Contributor, SFist
"Having snooped in every corner of the house, I already knew I was getting a big stuffed bear on Christmas Day (my mom had him crammed in a drawer in her armoire), but still... walking down stairs and seeing him by the tree, that made it real. He was mine. I named him Chewy Alfred Brownie Bear. And, yes, I still have him. AND YES HE IS REAL."

Paolo Lucchesi
Editor, Inside Scoop SF
"I got a bug zapper one year. It actually provided endless hours of entertainment."

Marke Bieschke
Publisher, SF Bay Guardian
"When I was seven, I got a Merlin, the Electronic Wizard handheld electronic game (basically like Simon, but with more variations) that was so yummy I tried several times to eat it. There are teeth marks. I kind of knew about Santa, but kept quiet for fear of getting fewer presents. And I was right too!"

Allie Pape
Editor, Eater SF
"My mom is the best gift-giver ever, the kind of person who'll overhear you mention some little thing in May like a favorite mug that went missing due to some sketchy Craigslist roommates, then deliver the exact same mug, meticulously sourced on eBay, to your stocking in December. But she really topped herself when I was 15. The present I unwrapped was a large metal suitcase, and as I opened it up, out fell a stack of butterfly ballots. My mother had somehow managed to acquire an authentic 2000-era Palm Beach County voting machine, complete with ballots from the contested election. (It turned out that she had been visiting my grandmother, who lives outside of West Palm Beach, and seen a story in the paper that the county was selling them to avoid controversy before the next round of voting. She promptly went down and snapped one up.) For a Florida native and political junkie (I'd been wearing a homemade Nader 2000 shirt that said 'Bush and Gore Make Me Wanna Ralph' to school for much of the preceding year), it was a pretty perfect gift. I had the machine set up in my room for the rest of high school, and would challenge visitors to play 'Vote For Gore,' a game that more than two-thirds of them ended up losing by either voting for Buchanan or leaving a hanging chad behind. The suitcase (into which the machine folds up) is still in my SF apartment, for anyone wants to try their hand."

Andrew Dalton
Editor, SFist
"When I was in 6th or 7th grade, before I'd ever been to San Francisco, my parents came out here for a conference and left my brother and I at home with my grandparents. They kept calling home to tell us about all the great Italian food they were having in North Beach and how they fell in love with this cute little place they found that put tons of garlic in everything. (The Stinking Rose. Which: ugh. Now they know better at least.) Since it was December, there was the expectation that they'd come home with some gifts. I don't really remember if they brought anything else back, but my mom was apparently really excited about this stick of pepperoni she got at Molinari's. Except, come Christmas, she couldn't find it anywhere. It simply vanished. Now that I live here, we have a running joke that everyone gets cured meats from San Francisco. And we're pretty sure the dog ate the pepperoni."

Sally Kuchar
Editor, Curbed SF
"Since I fancied myself as some type of equestrian, my mom and stepdad ended up renting me a horse to take lessons with. After a few weeks, I ended up falling off the horse and it trampled me. I tried to ride again, but was too scared. Typing all of this has made me really depressed. Thanks, SFist."

Photo: Ebay