Six experts on education try to remember what it was like to be a child
It sometimes feels like Christmas has disintegrated into a time of more hassle than God could ever possibly have imagined. For parents, in particular, it's often a time of rising debt and mounting panic. It's hard to imagine who could possibly be having fun, and how the kids are feeling. By the time they have their presents opened and the dinner puked up all over Granny, magic and enchantment are the furthest things from Mum and Dad's minds.
But there was a time when Christmas meant incredible excitement for most of us - when you went down to the Christmas tree and, there it was, that one present you'd waited for all your life. And lurking there somewhere in the back of our minds is a memory of that really special toy, the one we'll never forget. E&L asked some of the people who regularly feature on these pages about their favourite toys when they were children.
Marie Murray, senior clinical psychologist
`I recall looking forward to the Bunty and the Judy Annual. You'd always get one each year and that was what I most looked forward to. I loved books and the idea of having a stock to read was bliss. "One year I remember Santa Claus brought me a disguise kit. I had a false moustache, hats, wigs, false eyebrows and real theatrical make-up - actual grease paint, and special cream to remove it. My friends would come over and we'd all get dressed up, put on the real make-up, and become all sorts of people. I got so much fun out of it. "I was young enough to enter into the magic of it, I'd say about eight. We'd put on plays for everyone. It was a superb present, you could be anyone you wanted with it. It was one of those toys which gave your imagination free range - it was really wonderful.
"It lasted quite a while after Christmas, until the make-up all got used up. Maybe I moved on to other things, I can't remember what happened to the whole kit."
Fionnuala Kilfeather, national co-ordinator of the National Parents Council (Primary)
`Well, if it can't really be anything else, it has to be a pair of wellies! "Not so much the wellies but what I got up to in them. We grew up in the Dublin suburbs, and there was a little stream at the end of the garden.
All day every day, winter and summer, myself and my two brothers played in the stream, making little boats which went sailing off away, and building dams. "We'd get all sorts of little bits of wood and spend hours building dams. It is one of my happiest childhood memories - it went on for years and years. We eventually became extremely proficient dam-builders, developing incredible engineering skills. "So much so that one day we built the best dam ever, blocked off all the water, and flooded the neighbours who lived just upstream. And that was the end of that."
Norah Gibbons, director of childcare at Barnardo's
`The thing I remember getting most enjoyment out of was a little tea set I got one year from Santa Claus. "It was a tiny delph tea set, white with a little blue line around it. I must have been about seven or eight years old and it was such as wonderful gift. There were four tiny cups, matching saucers and plates, a tea pot, a sugar bowl and a milk jug, and I absolutely loved it. "It was a perfect opportunity to get everyone to play with me. There were 11 of us all together, and getting an adult to play with you was pretty hard work. But everyone who came in had to play. They had to sit and pretend they were getting their tea and cake. "I remember my granny, who was quite a business-like old lady, couldn't really play at all. She kept saying `I want a real cup of tea Norah', and it was a big disappointment. "But I used to bring my parents their breakfast in bed in the tea set, little bits of corn flakes and tiny pieces of bread! I also had all my younger brothers and sisters playing. I was in charge - which was very important - and I would sit them all down pouring little cups of `tea', which was just milk, and little pieces of Christmas cake.
"It was the kind of thing that you could spend hours making-believe with. You entered a whole fantasy world and you could be anyone, while at the same time it wasn't totally removed from reality.
"It lasted quite a long time. We lived on a farm and I remember in the summer taking it up the fields. I'd imagine it went bit by bit. There were too many of us for anything to last all that long; whatever you had was yours, but it was for sharing, so nothing was kept for all that long."
Peggy Walker, national adviser with the Irish Pre-Schools Playgroup Association
`The one toy that sticks in my mind is a little scooter I got when I was about six. It would probably have been at Christmas time, and so certainly from Santa Claus - I believed in him until I was 12!
"It was a little wooden scooter with black tyres and red wheels. Where we lived there was a hill down to the gate, and you could have a good scoot all the way down the hill. There was all the excitement of the speed, and the fact that you could lift your second foot off up the ground, and stay in control. "Being the eldest of six I had to share it with at least two others. I used to take my brother up on the back of it with me. I'm sure we fell off now and again, but I don't remember. "We really had great fun on it. It got handed down within the year, but it stayed in the family until it fell apart."
Inez Bailey, director of the National Adult Learning Association
`I should give you an educational toy as my favourite memory I suppose, but the truth is, the best toy I ever had was an orange space hopper. "I thought I'd never get one, and when it arrived from Santa the year I was about seven or eight, I was ecstatic. It had a little black face drawn on it which I used to adjust and enhance now and again. It lasted me years. I just kept blowing it up anytime it went down. "I was the youngest child and I used to get everyone else's hand me downs - I never had my own bike, for instance. But this was mine. I used to go off bouncing around the place on it while the others were on their bikes. I could take it anywhere and I'd use it as a seat when I stopped. "It gave me an opportunity to be independent, which was really important to a youngest. I'd have to say it was the most precious present I ever got. I really believed it had come from Santa Claus - I just couldn't believe I'd really got it at all! "The other toy I had which I loved was a game called Boggle. But being the youngest I always felt I wasn't any good at it. The others used to laugh at me when I misspelled words - I'm sure a psychologist would say that's how I ended up getting into literacy! But I got the hang of it and I did get pretty good at it and I actually started to love it. "Toys which have anything to do with stories and words are always a great gift to get. I wasn't a great reader but I remember one year getting Aesop's Fables and thinking they were wonderful. They were short, there was a point and you got to the end pretty quickly. I was more of an active child: I wasn't into stories which took three days or more to read, so this book was just brilliant for me."
Tony Tracy, education officer of the Film Institute of Ireland
`I grew up in the 1970s in a Dublin suburb when the whole place was full of building sites and housing estates being built. "I'd say probably the best fun I had was playing on the sites. You'd get paint and blocks and mess around building stuff, getting covered in muck - I went home once with paint on my anorak and got into terrible trouble. But generally I'd arrive home with planks of wood, nails, bricks and paint, and spend hours building things out the back.
"I remember one of the best presents I ever got was a blue Triumph 20 which I got from Santa Claus which I was seven. It stayed with me until I was 13 - much to my embarrassment! But we used to spend hours and hours out on the bikes. You knew everyone on your road, and we'd all take off for the day with our lunch cycling through the mountains. "I remember loving cycling through all the various estates and getting lost on purpose, so as to have a bit of an adventure. We even used to draw maps of the estates around us and go exploring. "As we got older, we devoted our time to the bikes. We'd head off down to Joe Daly's bike shop in Dundrum every Saturday to get bits and pieces. I'd the coloured-y tassles for the handle bars, the things for the spokes on your wheels - and I even remember getting one of those radios you had on your handle bars!"
Peter Byrne, director of the National Youth Council of Ireland
`Way and above my favourite toy as a child was my Action Man. "The first time I got him was from Santa Claus for Christmas one year when I was about eight or nine. We lived in an Army barracks and I remember he had an American uniform, not an Irish one, which was very disappointing. Otherwise I thought he was great - I took him around for walks and showed him what life was about! "I had several of them when I was growing up. I was a real devotee and even when I stopped believing in Santa Claus my parents kept the stock coming, though I never got the jeep or the dog.
"I played with my brothers and the kids around us and we all had Action Man. We'd trenches and tanks all around us so we could pretend we were involved in anything. He came with the one outfit in those days - girls might have made other outfits for their dolls, but that wasn't really the thing with Action Man. "He just ran around with you, in your hand, or - if you were lucky enough and it was your turn to have the rucksack - he was up on your back. There was no nambypamby walking him around the place, but you might prop him up against something now and again. One year I tried to make a parachute and drop him off a wall, but that failed miserably. He didn't break though - that's the great thing about Action Man. "I'm always hoping one of my nieces or nephews will ask me for him some Christmas. I keep dropping hints, but no luck so far.
"My first Action Man had a very bad accident shortly after I got him. My friend's dog bit his head off. That's probably grand now, but headless Action Man wasn't very popular in my day. "Every second year my mother would clear out the house and send all our old toys to the kids in the orphanage down the road - or so she said. That's probably where all my Action Men ended up. I have to say, I really envied the kids down there in the orphanage."
