The Atari 2600 was the greatest Christmas present I received as a kid

I don't know these kids, but I'm very familiar with the thrill of unwrapping an Atari on a memorable Christmas morning in the early 80s.

I had great Christmases when I was growing up thanks to my parents, who were not only generous and loving but also big fans of the holiday itself.

Until maybe the late 1980s, in addition to a tree and the usual household decorations, my mom would also set up a table in the living room on top of which she would lay out various Christmas desserts, candy, nuts and fruit. It would all just be sitting there for the taking for the two or so weeks leading up until December 25th, and believe me when I say I did plenty of taking.

When I woke up on Christmas morning, my presents would usually be laid out on the couch in the living room. And they were all unwrapped, which in retrospect seems a little odd, but that's the way it was.

Well, I should say that some presents were unwrapped and some were wrapped. Until I was maybe 9 years old, those unwrapped presents were the ones from Santa, while the wrapped ones under the tree were from Mom and Dad.

There would always be one expensive "featured" present. In 1984 (maybe '83) it was my Commodore 64 computer. Other years it was usually some electronic game or simply a physically large gift like an electric race track or something.

The most memorable of these marquee presents put an exclamation point on Christmas 1980 (or maybe '79...again, these years are getting fuzzy). It was an Atari 2600 video game system, and it changed everything.

Until the Commodore 64 came along, I played lots and lots of Atari games. I even had a little black case that was designed to carry 8-track tapes but in which I stored my Atari cartridges. Or at least I stored some of my cartridges, because after a while I had way more cartridges than the case could hold.

I would not only play Atari at home, I would also pack up my most popular games in that case and take them to my friends' houses to play on their Ataris. Those friends included Kevin, Mike, Todd, Ray and Dave, among others.

My friend Matt lived right across the street, but he had an Intellivision instead of an Atari. The Intellivision featured graphics and sound that were clearly superior to the Atari 2600, but the game play was sometimes lacking and it never quite earned the market share it probably deserved.

I have great memories of Christmas mornings and afternoons spent playing with everything I had received, and I will say that even at a young age, I was very grateful for it all.

It's a little more than two weeks until the big day, and even now at 55 years old, I can't wait.