By Stan Leech
If you grew up in the 60’s and 70’s, you know what really started the Christmas season. It didn’t begin with the first cold front. It didn’t start with a tree going up in the living room. It didn’t even start with Bing Crosby singing White Christmas on the record player.
It started with the Sears & Roebuck catalog.
That big, heavy book would land in the mailbox sometime in the fall, and my brother Brad and I would snatch it up like it was made of gold. Forget the tools, the drapes, and the kitchen appliances – we went straight for the toy section…even more specifically, the NFL pages.
There were pajamas, bedsheets, jerseys, pennants, and most importantly – helmets.
Most boys in our little Texas town were Cowboy fans. In fact, everybody was a Cowboy fan. Roger Staubach, Bob Lilly, Calvin Hill – those names were legendary. But Brad and me? We were thinking a little differently. I wanted something that would stand out on South Pecos Street, something that made people say, “Now that’s cool.”
I was the sports nut in the family. My heart belonged to the Miami Dolphins of Bob Griese, Jim Kiick, and Larry Csonka. They were smart, they were tough, and that teal-and-orange leaping over a sun helmet logo was unlike anything else. Plus, they were dominating the NFL in those years.
I even remember wearing my Dolphin tie tack on Super Bowl Sunday – proudly – in the middle of a church sanctuary filed with Cowboy fans. It happened to be the Super Bowl when Dallas played Miami, which made my tie tack even more noticeable. I enjoyed every second of the attention.
Brad? He didn’t care who the quarterback was or how the team was doing. He just loved that fierce Viking helmet – deep purple with the bold white horn curling along the side.
The weeks crawled by.
One afternoon, I took a sneaky peek in the trunk of the family car. My heart sank. There was no way those helmets were in there. I braced myself for disappointment.
That year, we were spending Christmas in Goldthwaite. Grandma Alice had a small living room with a simple, beautiful tree. On Christmas morning, we ran in and started opening gifts…but there were no helmets under the tree.
We kept unwrapping – shirts, socks, games, and candy – all good things, but not the thing I had been dreaming about since the day the Sears catalog arrived.
And then it happened.
My dad walked in holding two boxes.
Dolphins. Vikings.
Christmas was complete.
I tore open my Dolphin helmet and wore it immediately. Brad did the same with his Viking helmet. We wore them all day – through breakfast, through lunch, and even when Grandma tried to talk to us. That Christmas became one of those “forever memories” – the kind that stays crystal clear half a century later.
Fast forward about 52 years.
Both our parents had passed, and it was time to clean out the old house. Brad was up in the attic when he found them – our two helmets, carefully packed away. They looked almost exactly as they had that Christmas morning, except the Dolphin helmet’s white had faded into a warm yellow from years of Texas attic heat.
Brad brought them down, set them in the garage, and we just stood there smiling. Without saying a word, we each grabbed our helmet – him the Viking, me the Dolphin – and took them home. Mine now sits upstairs with other special keepsakes. Every time I see it, I’m ten years old again.
It’s funny what people attach to Christmas. For some, it’s a song, a smell, or a movie. A lot of folks – for reasons I’ll never quite understand – call Die Hard a Christmas movie. I just smile and let them have it.
For me, it’s a Wonderful Life. The older I get, the more I understand it. It’s not about tinsel or presents – it’s about the truth that each of us touches far more lives that we realize, and the joy that can be found in the people we love, even when life doesn’t go as planned.
So, what’s Christmas for me? It’s family, It’s Grandmas Alice’s living room in Goldthwaite. It’s the joy of opening the one gift you thought you weren’t going to get. It’s a worn old Sears & Roebuck catalog. And yes…it’s a Miami Dolphin helmet.
But more than any gift I ever found under a tree, Christmas is about the greatest gift ever given – the birth of Jesus. That quiet night in Bethlehem changed the world forever. Helmets fade, toys break, catalogs get thrown away…but the hope, peace, and joy of that first Christmas remain, offering life that never fades.
Merry Christmas.
More from Stan Leech’s Faith & Leadership column: For another 1960s West Texas memory, read The Snow Story, on the rare snow of 1967. For a Brownfield supper from the same era, read Find the Butavan.
