Our writers recall their most memorable Christmas gifts – and the people who gave them

“The fastest, coolest kid in the schoolyard”

I remember one of the best gifts that my grandmother ever gave me for Christmas. It was a 1987 Huffy, a BMX-style bike with a curved seat post and hard plastic seat with perforated holes.

She bought it for me because for a whole year I had no interest in the 1970s-era Schwinn that one of my neighbors gave me after I learned how to ride a bike. I rode that Schwinn with my older sister and two cousins in the neighborhood. Then older kids laughed at me, and I began to hate it.

My new Huffy was everything. It didn’t even matter that it wasn’t the Huffy Sigma, with plastic white discs covering the spokes, or the BMX model with five-spoke alloy wheels.

While riding it, I felt like I was the fastest, coolest kid in the schoolyard. I could pop a wheelie or do a sliding stop on the back brake, like a scene out of “The Goonies.”

I still have that bike. It’s in my grandma’s house – which may be about to be torn down. I keep it not simply because it’s always hard for me to say goodbye, but also because it reminds me of her.

I always made a list of big brand-name popular toys, not really knowing they asked too much of my grandmother’s budget. Huffys were cheaper versions of better BMX bikes she couldn’t afford. But she wanted to see me smile. That’s how Christmas worked in our house.

That Huffy was the surprise of my childhood. It brought me such joy. So I keep the bike to remember a feeling long lost to me, and the gift giver, who is no longer here.

– Ira Porter / Staff writer

Lyrical legacies from the Mesozoic: my stuffed poet Gronk, and his transcriber

My first stuffed animal was a handsome green dinosaur I named Federal, and we were inseparable. His neck plush and fuzzy outer shell, however, were not. So when Federal developed a rip from too much affection, Mom sent him to a farm upstate to play with the other dinosaurs.

That was a mistake, it turned out. I wasn’t really an indulged child, but you’d better believe that I demanded