If you were to buy everything listed during the song “12 Days of Christmas,” it would cost you tens of thousands of dollars.

And here they are:Arnold is great in a comedy that also requires him to be Arnold the action hero. The plot, as simple as it gets, finds Arnold and Sinbad battling to be the first to find a Turbo Man action figure after it has long sold out just before Christmas. A passing of the torch just like the Old Man in Ralphie’s story, when he tells the mother that HE had a BB gun as a child. So I relate to both the Old Man and Arnold, although in different ways. I wanted to be the Old Man, so brilliantly played on screen by Darren McGavin.

In an ad-hoc hotel room at MSU’s Butterfield Hall; the school’s version of a skid-row flophouse. Surrounded by empty Papa John’s pizza boxes, overdue VHS tapes from Campus Video, and probably a bucket next to the bed. And at the same time trying in vain to convince myself the new Rolling Stones album “Steel Wheels” was actually good. As an aside, “To Live and Die in L.A.” is largely forgotten but it is not to be missed. It was like the musical version of my stay in that horrific room, laid up by the flu, spending the holiday by myself.

Let’s pause here for a second and remember that winter recess lasted…what—30 minutes? And then the classroom would smell like wet, stinky kid socks and boots for the rest of the school day. It was like those heat mirages you see rising from asphalt on a 95-degree day. By the end of recess, the snow-covered ground at Isbister Elementary looked like a yard sale by way of Mud Day at Nankin Mills Park. And then there’d be a snowstorm during Christmas break and cover it all up until Spring, at which point none of it fit anymore anyway.

This was the year I recall receiving art supplies, books and a TV for my room. Anyway, so this is the Christmas I recall getting markers and colored chalk and pencils. Well, the colored chalk in particular. So yadda-yadda my step-sister who lived with her mother and stepfather across town came over and she, also being creative, and I chose as our colored chalk art studio…the white dining room carpet. It’s best if we don’t think about the aftermath.

The best Christmas gift my wife ever gave me is so far and above anything else it’s a no-brainer. I’d always wanted one because, like any dude, I think I take photos worthy of Esquire or Sports Illustrated. So Christmas morning comes and we’re at my in-laws house. My mother-in-law is maybe trying to distract me with offers of leftover sausage and peppers from Christmas Eve. But, I know his reaction to my reaction was a perplexed, “it’s a chair.”Anyway.

One Christmas I got my first abject lesson in doing the right thing when reacting to a gift. Thankfully it had nothing to do with a deranged nightmare of a pink bunny suit like Ralphie in A Christmas Story. My cousin Nick has my tricked-out, blazing fast, fully-operational Death Star of an R/C car with full-motion and steering wheel remote and levers and lights and switches. Of course my cousin was so engrossed in quite possibly the greatest Christmas present he ever received, he didn’t notice our exit. My cousin did indeed fall asleep, the switch was made, and in the years we spent growing up visiting each other, never a word was spoken about the Great R/C Car Christmas Mix-Up of 1978.

In the two weeks or so before Christmas I would pick a day and go to the restaurant McCormick & Schmick’s behind Somerset. It would be lunchtime and I was there for one specific thing... their Reuben sandwich. Aside from Nello’s café in Royal Oak, I can’t think of another Reuben that was better than McCormick & Schmick’s. Sadly, McCormick & Schmick’s Reuben you cannot still get. If you want a Reuben, Nello’s Café in Royal Oak serves a mean one and they’re local.

The week beginning Christmas Day in 2008 and going almost until New Year’s won’t soon be forgotten in our house. My wife and I had just bought our first house together, a little more than a year after getting hitched. The plan was to have her party (I think it was a Saturday) and then host Sunday brunch the next day. As friends trickled out, and family left to visit the in-laws, day turned to night. And then, at midnight on day three, the power miraculously came back on.

This one Christmas my now-brother-in-law Colin and I cooked up a game on our in-laws pool table and named it Poolocce. As in Bocce ball and billiards combined. “It’s the craze that’s sweeping the nation! This holiday season, if you have a pool table or your family does, try Poolocce. (And you can beverage while playing)Remember, friends... “It’s the game that’s sweeping the nation!

And, a drum kit. Kind of hard to wrap a drum kit. But, in retrospect it seems pretty likely Santa was more than helping smooth parental guilt, and I’m genuinely okay with that. One bittersweet aspect of your parents ending their marriage is, seen through kid eyes (with cross-sight accuracy), it dawns on you that you get double the birthdays, double the Christmas days. No idea whatever happened to that drum kit, in case you were wondering.

So Grandma Carr, God rest her soul, used to make these Christmas cookies that were so good they had to have been laced with some magic secret ingredient known only to her. I haven’t had a frosted shortbread cookie (with sprinkles) before or since that could touch her recipe. I can still picture that Thom McCann shoebox bursting open, cookies rolling asunder in all directions. Good times. Good times.