While I was shopping for Christmas presents at an excellent toy store called Magic Beans in Brookline today, I noticed a very small child — maybe a little over one year old — in front of me in line with her grandmother.

The child was clearly just beginning to speak, having perhaps mastered words like “no” and “da-da.”  And maybe “tape recorder,” which I’m told joined my own vocabulary right after “da-da” when my mother asked me to “say ‘da-da’ into the tape recorder.”  (Even then I had a sarcastic streak, apparently.)

This little girl was playing with some toys near the register, but when Grandma asked her to put them back, the child stomped right over to her (clearly exerting herself to walk upright at all, much less while holding toys), held up the playthings for Grandma to take, and then casually uttered two simple words, with near perfect pronunciation:

Buy it!

And that, boys and girls, is the story of how Christmas really began.