Pop Culture Happy Hour - Best Christmas Gift I Ever Received

Episode Date: December 23, 2025

What's the best Christmas gift you ever received? You probably didn't have to think about it; you knew it in your bones. Today, in this encore episode, we're talking about the actual, tangible gift you found waiting for you under the tree and still think about it from time to time.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Hi, Linda Holmes here. Somehow we are almost at the end of 2025. And I'm going to be honest with you, it's been a pretty challenging year for NPR and local stations. But here's the thing. Despite losing federal funding for public media and despite all the attacks we've seen on the free press, we're still here for you. We are still independent, a critical right guaranteed by the First Amendment. And with your support, NPR will not be silent. Here at Pop Culture Happy Hour, will continue keeping you company with thoughtful, engaging conversations about all the movies, TV, music, and more 2026 has in store. If you're already an NPR Plus supporter, thank you so much. We see you, and we're so grateful for you. If not, please join the community of public radio

supporters right now before the end of the year at plus.npr.org. Signing up unlocks a bunch of perks like bonus episodes and more from across NPR's podcasts. Plus, you get to feel good about supporting public media while you listen. End the year on a high note and invest in a public service that matters to you. Visit plus.npr.org today. Thanks. What's the best Christmas gift you've ever received? Was it the laughter of your children, the love of a good friend, a smile on your partner's face, maybe a dusting of snow glittering in the Christmas Eve moonlight?

Yeah, well, we're not talking about any of that nonsense. We're talking actual, tangible Christmas gifts here, specifically that one gift you found waiting for you under the tree and still think about from time to time. I'm Linda Holmes. And I'm Glenn Weldon, and on this encore episode of NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour, we're talking about the best Christmas gifts we've ever received. Joining us today is our fellow co-host Stephen Thompson. Hey, pal. Hello, Glenn. Hey there. And also here is Andrew Limbong. He is the host of NPR's Book of the Day podcast and a reporter for the Culture Desk. Welcome back, Andrew. Yo, yo, yo, yo. Hey, what's up?

Hey, a mercifully brief intro here because this subject needs no explanation, no explanatory comma. I say, best Christmas gift you ever received, and you probably didn't have to think about it. You knew it in your bones. Most people do. Linda, did you kick us off. Yeah, I did know immediately. When I was probably, I'm going to say I was about 12 or 13, I received a small Casio keyboard, Cassio electronic keyboard from my parents. I got one of those too.

Which was a gift I really, really wanted. And based on my very inadequate research, it probably at the time cost about $100, which is like $300 now. That was a very expensive present for me. That's probably one of the most expensive presents I ever got as a kid. And I really wanted it. And I had taken a couple of years of piano. So I was like moderately competent with like, you know, picking out tunes and stuff like that. But were you able to set those piano performances to run?

Rumba? Well, Rumba, Tango, waltz, soft rock. Soft rock. And in fact, this is when I learned what a Beguin is, because Beguin was one of the rhythms. And what I love about this gift looking back is that this was a time when I think DIY creativity really kind of took root in me. Because, you know, now, of course, anybody can do this. Any kid can do this. They're apps that can do this. They can make all kinds of sound effects and voice effects. And, you know, you can, create a song in about 20 seconds. But at the time, this was really, really cool to me. And I kind of stayed that person. Like, I was realizing I still, like, I still do crafts. I still like to make like mugs and t-shirts and stuff like that. I am that person. At the time of the 2020 election, I made myself a shirt that said I never wanted to know this much about the Michigan

Board of State canvassers. And I still like stuff like that. And so I feel like my parents were most willing to splurge because it was a creative thing. And I think they recognized that as something that I really cared about. And music is something that I really cared about. And the other great thing is my mother was always one of these moms who, like, she doesn't want you to know as soon as you see the package that you got the thing you've been asking for for like, you know, all year. So she wrapped the AC adapter. And that was what was under the tree. We will talk about the importance of obscuring the best gift of all time. Yeah, so where was it hidden?

Was it in like a closet or something? Yeah, she had it, I think, in their bedroom closet. And so once I opened the AC adapter, I was like, what is this? And you didn't snoop? You were not a snooper? No, I would never. Oh, man. You're kidding me?

I would never. That devil you say. Heaven forfend! I was a super snooper. I had everything ruined for me. Me too. You know, Liddy, it's interesting to me that you draw the line between getting that Cassio keyboard and crafts and DIY and not becoming a DJ, for example.

Like, it's not, it's, that's the through line for you. Why do you think that is? You could have been the next screlics. Because I think that's how I processed it, right? Like, my feeling was this was a way to make stuff. This was a way to make up stuff. And I was already, like, I already wrote stories and I already did that kind of thing. I certainly did not have it in mind that I was going to be a DJ.

I did have it in mind that I might, like, study music. I liked music. I liked singing. I liked, you know, chorus and stuff like that. But I think it was, it mostly had to do with like, I want to make up stuff, you know. I remember when I got my keyboard and Linda, you and I are a similar age. And I remember getting a keyboard and thinking, will I be the next Harold Faltermeyer? Will I be the next Paul Hardcastle? You know, there were a few hit songs that were like a guy at a keyboard going, da, da, da, da. Right. It was early synthesizer time. you know, like in terms of popular music. I mean, I think I probably imagined myself, like, impressing people by playing music, which, of course, was never going to happen. It was like, you know, the episode of Friends where Ross talks about his sound, and then he plays this, his little synthesizer.

Yes, I know. It was probably, you know, I envisioned much as Ross did, greatness through my music, but that never came to be. But greatness came in other ways. Oh, geez, I hope. Thank you very much, Linda Holmes. Andrew, how about you, man? All right, so my family, we're very aggressively Christian in that Christmas was about like going to church.

I was just thinking the midnight mass go to church and then get up and go to church on Christmas morning is a brutal turnaround time. Double-difts. Yeah. And so I never got any like big ticket items for Christmas. I think one time my parents gave me some pens, you know, I got some socks when you know, that's that kind of thing. Pens, socks and prayer. And the Lord. Yeah, yep, that's the truth.

Christmas every kid dreams about. Welcome to Lutheranism, everybody. Join, come on in, you know. But we had a family friend who was a little older or a lot older. It's hard how memory works. But I was with her at the mall at Sam Goody, the music store. And I think she was just like taking care of like me, right? Some kid and was like, oh, what do you want for Christmas?

And so because my parents weren't around, I asked her to get me Enema of the State by Blink 182. And it is the, what I know. This is painfully on brand for me. It kind of is. I look at my life, the expanse of the Andrew Limbong experience. And it is one of those formative bits of culture that, like, I don't know, I think we've got a clip of just, like, the first couple seconds of the album. This is off of dumpweed. This is just, like, hitting those, like, needles in my brain.

Shorts punk. And then, like, Travis comes in right here with these, like, still scodrums, you know? And far be it We don't have to repeat the chorus of the song because isn't particularly

aged well but there's a lot of firsts this album has for me it's not my favorite blank record it's not I think their best one either

but I think it's the first like CD I got where the songs on the album were better than the ones that were on the radio Oh sure that's important

you know it was one of those like oh there's like other stuff here you know like I said it was very transgressive so it was the first he ever had to hide for my parents. I was going to ask.

That's the thing. You know, it's my first memory of deciding to be a type of guy. Oh, sure. You go through, like, different, like, types of guys. And I was like, I think I'm like this kind of guy now. And you were. And I was. And I was kind of.

I was also very goody-two shoes, you know what I mean? So it was sort of floating between the two. Me too. That's why I didn't stoop. And I don't know. I think I can pretty much draw a pretty clear line from, like, liking Blinkwynity 2 to liking Fugazi to getting into like non-profit journalism, you know. They're a gateway band.

It does make sense. Yeah, it was. And I'm reading a AV club review here written by a Stephen Thompson. Oh my gosh. And it says, quote, despite the moronic title, Blink 182's well-publicized love of scatological stupidity, generally takes a backseat to self-aware tales of doomed relationships. I think that was pretty much me from like 10 to 30. You know, that's a good, that's a good description. Is it got a logical stupidity, you mean?

Yeah, yeah. I'd make a fair amount of pee-pee-poo jokes, I think. One thing that Blink 182 always did really well is they understood that there's a part of adolescence that never entirely leaves us. I mean, it's called Enema of the State. Yes, it is. All right, thank you very much. Andrew.

Stephen Thompson, your turn. All right, the year was 1983, which I think, you know, age 11 is a really nice year. to get your best Christmas present. My parents went all in on the concept of not only the buildup to the big present, but they actually created ritual around it. We did a treasure hunt for our big present. I was a snooper, so sometimes I knew what my big present was. Sometimes you could kind of surmise what your big present was based on a combination of factors,

such as how fervently you asked for it and how little it might have cost. So in 1983, I get to a big package, and it is a bound volume of Uncle Scrooge comics. And I love Uncle Scrooge comics. I still have my collection of all those Gladstone bound volumes of Uncle Scrooge and Donald Duck Comics. And it was like the latest volume. And I was like, oh, you know, that's a perfectly fine gift. You know, I like these comics. I'll look forward to digging into this.

Rip it open. and kind of feign super excitement and there's another little card tucked in between the books and that card said, this is not your final present and it was another clue. It was a

clue that was pretty much the direct location of my actual present, which was a Calico Vision. Oh! No! The Calico Vision was basically the gateway technology between the Atari

2600 and the Nintendo. You could also say Sega Genesis, something like that. Well, and there was also Intellivision in there for a while. Intellivision was kind of at the same time as Atari, along with Odyssey. Anyway, I could, believe me, I could talk about this for a very long time. But the Kaliko Vision was a really clear, obvious step up from the Atari 2600. The gameplay was so much more sophisticated.

The music was more sophisticated. The games were a little more complicated, but not as complicated as they are now, where I feel like I would have to learn a new language to play them. I had a friend with a calico vision and I coveted it so, so desperately. But, like, that was what, like, wealthy dowagers bought. Like, nobody. Who buys a calico vision in this economy, in the economy of the early 80s? But my parents blessed them, bought me a calico vision.

And then were subjected to hours upon hours, upon hours upon hours, of the music, the endlessly looping music from the video game, the Smurfs. Oh, my God. And as we wandered around as that little smurf, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Oh, boy. It was about a 15-second loop. My parents, I'm sure, regretted that gift greatly.

But when we talked about this topic, it took me 0.1 seconds to know that the best gift I received as a child was my calico vision, in part because like Linda's parents, they got crafty about it. They steeled me for disappointment and then went in there, Zah, you got what you wanted. David, two questions for you. How many Kalikovision controllers did you burn through? Because those things famously flimsy. I am glad you brought this up. The worst thing about the Kliqa vision came out around the same time as the Atari 5200. And what they had in common was the controllers were made of, of garbage.

Yep. So a lot of ColicoVision play today is done on emulators, but I still love mine, still have mine, the controller still kind of work. Okay. Follow up, have you passed on the tradition of doing the treasure hunt to your kids? And if so, are they, did they handle it with cheer and holiday joy, or were they surly? And, like, said it was lame. So I am a lazy, lazy monster.

And I did not, I did not continue it. That was one tradition I had meant to pass on to my kids. The other that I recommend, even though I haven't done it with my kids, we had a bed present. You would go to bed and you would wake up and there'd be a, my parents would have sneaked in like the tooth fairy and deposited a gift at the foot of our beds. We did that with stockings. Our parents would put our stockings in our room. How many gifts are you guys getting? I don't understand this culture.

I was going to say, cut to Andrew, like, I got a pen. We were a largely secular family, Andrew. What is going on? It's like multiple kids. I got a stakely. We didn't get a ton of things. Like, I suspect the year I got the keyboard, I didn't get much else from my parents would be my guest. That's the way that works.

My parents' entire personalities were kind of built around obsession with pop culture you love. I was raised by a family that made me very well suited for this job. My parents were comic book obsessives, and they were professional comic book fans. And so if I expressed an interest in something, in collecting something, in trading something with my friends and reading something or watching something or playing something, my parents at least really wanted to indulge that gift. That's the language my parents speak is obsession. Yeah.

And I think one of my mom's love languages is gifts, you know. So I think that was one of the reasons with me is my mom just loved shopping for presents. And I remember one year, she was a teacher. And one year her class did one of those adoptive family things where you get a list of things that a family needs and the ideas that like each kid brings in one of or two things on the list, whatever. And for whatever combination of reasons, her class, like, didn't really do the assignment. And so there were a bunch of things left on the list. And right before Christmas, my mom, like, went out and bought everything on the list so that

the family would get everything that was on the list. Like, some people just really like buying and giving presents. And I think, I think that's the other reason why I usually got several Christmas presents from my parents. I think we've seen a throughline here of all of these favorite gifts ever kind of are on. on brand, as Andrew pointed out. I'm going to continue that tradition. The Joker, holy cow.

It's Batman sold separately and the Wayne Foundation, a crime-fighting lab, assembly required. The top floor is Batman's penthouse. Bring it down. The elevator takes Batman past the computer station down to the communication center. There's a Batman trophy room, working elevator, and a bookcase with secret hiding compartment. Working elevator. Did you pick up, Andrew, that they mentioned the elevator twice, that the elevator takes me down? And then there's also an elevator.

I'm very excited about the elevator. element. All right. So in the 70s, Migo was this company that made 8-inch action figures of your favorite superheroes. I collected these action figures. I played with them. I undressed them. I made them kiss the way all red-blooded American boys

would do. So the Bat Copter, I had it. The Bat cycle, I had it. The Batmobile do you even have to ask. The Mobile Bat Lab, which was basically a VW van, it's best not to think about that too hard. I had it. The Batcave place

set with working bat signal and bat pole and the secret entrance, just like in the TV show, didn't have that. My friend David had that. Wouldn't let me forget that he had that. That was the year famously just before Christmas when my mother read me a letter from Santa himself, saying very briefly, because he was a busy man, dear Glenn, we are out of bat caves. Which kind of threw my little seven-year-old self into a loop because, I mean, can't you just make the elderly? work harder, right? Can you just take away their lunch breaks? Get it together.

Can't you dock their pay? You've got quotas to meet. If this is a supply chain issue, I get it, but can't you just, like, shift some of that extruded plastic from one project to another? If it means I get my bat cave, maybe there's a few less snoopy snow cone machines in the world. And also, there was the fact that she had a letter from Santa, you know, physical proof that was a close encounter of at least the second kind. And I thought, I was like, I got to frame that.

You got to frame that. So cut to two years later, 1977. I was nine. I was still, you know, roiling over the, of the Batcave fiasco, came down the stairs on Christmas morning. And there it was four stories of pure bat goodness. And I urge you all to Google this play set. It was and remains a thing of beauty. This thing was nearly three and a half feet tall.

I was, what, four feet tall? So, like, and it was, you know, there was some verisimilitude because it was based on the skyscraper that Batman was actually working out of in the comics. Because he'd abandoned the Batcave at the start of the same. 70s, long story. Physical accessory, sure, it had the trophy case. It had the computer monitor. It had chairs, which I could never get anybody to sit in. But the exciting thing for me was that on each floor had a back wall that was illustrated to make it look like it went back or like that had depth. And that was illustrated by Neil Adams, who was the artist behind the revamp of Batman at the time. And it was filled with references to the TV show and the comics. And I could get lost in that for days. Oh, I remember. I think for some reason I've looked at pictures of this before because it's just the Barbie Dreamhouse. Now, did I realize, to your point, Linda, that this thing was basically a re-skinned Malibu Barbie Dreamhouse? I very much did because it could not, because my dad had spent the years up to me receiving it, making it very clear to me that he was not nuts about my action figure collection. You know, it was one thing having an indoor kid.

I think he had reconciled themselves to that, but this whole action figure thing was a little close to the line for him, which is why he always called them my little dollies. that was probably why I never had the guts to get a bat girl or a Wonder Woman, though I wanted them so bad because I would see them in the store and their packaging and they had this terrible frizzy hair. And I'd be like, girl, we could flat iron that mess, you know? I knew that would not fly. And yet, and yet, I come down. And here it is.

It's nothing but a giant dollhouse for my little dollies taking up this huge chunk of real estate in the den. I was thinking about this this morning. I don't remember him making fun of me about my action figures after that. So looking back now, it is this towering, like, I mean, three and a half feet, but towering testament to my father's ability to get over his damn self and give his kid the thing that he knew would make him happy. So here is a through line I'm picking up on throughout all of these selections we've made. There's the thing itself, which is great, but there's what it represented. Right? There's like how it figures, how it kind of, it steers your destiny in some way. And also, by the way, the thing it represents, I looked on eBay this morning, two to four thousand bucks nowadays.

Oh, dear. I look at this picture, Glenn, and I did find a picture of it. And I can completely understand how this would be an extraordinarily exciting gift for any kid, but especially you. Glenn, buddy, I know you love your parents very, very much. Yes, I do. I do look at this and I think, buddy, I wish for you to just have experienced an alternate timeline in which you and I got to be brothers. And my parents got the son they never had. Because I had the parents who were foisting comic books on them.

Wow, the art in this is incredible. I'm just looking at the... Yeah, it's beautiful. Isn't it right? And it's got references to the atomic thing in the old Batman television show. It's got references to all these other characters. there's gold from the metalman, a picture of him for absolutely no reason, who never cross over with Batman so much.

It's very intricate. It is. It is. It's very of its time, too. It very much is. Well, we want to know what was the best Christmas gift you ever received, and why was it less good than the Queen Foundation place? Find us at Facebook.com slash PCHH that brings us to the end of our show.

Andrew Limbong, Linda Holmes, Stephen Thompson. Thanks, pals. This was fun. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Glenn. This was really fun. This episode was produced by Liz Metzger and edited by Jessica Ritty.

And Hello, Come In, provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Glenn Weldon, and we'll see you all tomorrow.