I know it may sound weird to start talking about Christmas when Halloween hasn’t even come up yet. But last night, while my oldest daughter was making dinner, she put on a Christmas station on Pandora���and just like that, I was transported straight into my first Christmas memory.

I must have been maybe five or six. And when I say I “remember” it, I’m not 100% sure if it’s a real memory or something I pieced together from old photos���but it feels real. Someone dressed as Santa Claus came to our house. To this day I don’t know if it was my dad, a friend of his, or someone my parents hired���but “Santa” showed up. And to my absolute shock, I got a G.I. Joe dressed in full camouflage, plus a yellow helicopter and a Jeep with some kind of weapon mounted in the back. This was the early 80s, so getting war-themed toys was totally normal. That’s the first Christmas I can truly recall.