Our ever-changing gifts for the ages

Who hasn’t watched “A Christmas Story,” that clear-eyed 1983 classic film about a midcentury Midwestern child’s Christmas in wails?

That child would be 9-year-old Ralphie, whining and begging for the air rifle that everyone assures him will put his eye out. With the forgiveness of memory, we’ve watched it for that moment that was the pith and marrow of our own kiddie greed: on Christmas morning, Ralphie’s little brother, Randy, shrieks at each coveted gift he lays eyes on, “Oh, boy, that’s mine!”

We’ve all been there, done that — and all grown out of it, except maybe for the men of the rapacious 1980s who drove cars with bumper stickers reading, “He who dies with the most toys wins.” That sentiment, with its starchy grammar, supposedly fell from the lips of billionaire Malcolm

Forbes, who did indeed die with a higgledy-piggledy collection of toys he had given himself: Faberge eggs and motorcycles, model ships and a life-sized yacht. But as the ’90s pushback pointed out, “He who dies with the most toys still dies.”

As for the rest us, what do we want? Presents! When do we want them? [Almost] always!

Yet the sort of presents we want changes throughout our arc of years and alters with circumstance.

There’s the Age of Randy, the kid who loves Santa as a conjurer of loot, and measures the success of the holiday by volume, a good bit of it destined to be forgotten under a bed by Valentine’s Day.

The Age of Hormones takes us from quantity to cool, and for parents, these are the most challenging gift-giving years. Even coolest-dad Barack Obama often wound up mortifying his daughters. If your parents chose it, it’s probably tainted goods.

Do you guys really have to take my stupid picture while I open this box? Oh my gawd — that mohair sweater. Thanks, but I wanted it for my birthday, which was three entire months ago. Nobody wears that color now. Please, please, I just want a gift card that I can use anywhere, preferably at the stores that open on Christmas night so I can Get. Out. Of. This. House.

The Age of Singlehood and College Debt can now run well into the 30s and beyond.

At a point in life when your grandparents were setting up wedded housekeeping — in 1950 the average woman married at 20 and the man at 23 — you could still be dreaming of your own roommate-free apartment and working several jobs on your way toward that dream career. In this age, there’s a crass but direct answer to the question, “What do you want for the holidays?” Want to know what to give me, Grandma? How about a little something toward my student loan?

Eventually, the Age of Changes arrives.

Marriage, house-renting [or owning, if you’re lucky], do-it-yourselfery and bringing-up-babying can get crammed into a hectic handful of years.

It’s a tall step up in the adulting world, but it’s doubtful that a modern man of the house will welcome drawersful of neckties or that the no-longerlittle woman will swoon over the “gift” of a new vacuum cleaner. Clean it up yourself, buddy — I need a gym membership.

A friend of mine complained that her newlywed niece absolutely refused the gift of her late grandparents’ exquisite china and their valuable and beautiful antique furniture. Family heirlooms may not fit into modern lives or modern spaces, but without just one or two of them, however unsightly, we lose one tangible link to our families’ intangible existence.

To give presents in the Age of Parenting is to reach the human tipping point from me to thee, from more things to fewer and better things to “Oh, nothing for me, the holidays are all about the kids.”

And then that eases us into the Age of the Boomers, populated by 50-and-ups who now — sorry, mercantile America — may want more experiences than stuff.

Having grown up accumulating, boomers now want instead to go adventuring with their iPads and instant-translation apps.

And if you’d like to know my gift wishes for the holidays?

First, please obey the inflexible rule, ironclad from the Iron Age to the era of deplorable designer dogs: Do not give anyone but your own kids a pet as a surprise. Ever.

Second: please, dear Santa, tell people to stop using “gifted” as a verb.