I don't know how many times I have heard that lie from the platform. I have heard that line of rubbish at Big and Great Boasting Sessions as well. The witlesses act as if they get as many toys as worldly people, just scattered throughout the year.
Now, I have seen many cases where that simply isn't true. I have been at one place while I was studying. This was the lead hounder, who had 2 daughters (one around 7-8 at the time, the other around 12). In the place I could see, there wasn't even one toy. I found no radio, no TV, no nothing. I know not what was put away, but usually when you have children of that age, you are bound to have toys left around. Not a single toy I could find there. Do those children think they get toys all year?
Another was the dingbat that dragged me into the cancer in the first place. He had 2 boys soon after I was baptized, and neither of those had obvious toys. Typically, I would know from toys being left around--this was a son of the person whose house was used for field circus a few times during the week. When those boys were 3 and 4, I would expect toys to be left around--no matter what, I never expect things to be perfectly picked up when you have children around. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of toys they had.
Still another involved a boy, around 8 when I was going into the cancer. During April recess that year, I was out in field circus as an unbaptized publisher every afternoon during the midweek. And he was out every single day, having been out all morning. Frequently, he would get swatted for the heinous crime of picking up a stick and drawing in the dirt, or finding a small pebble and dropping it into a puddle. I didn't notice any toys in his possession, either. As I didn't see the inside of his home, I cannot say with certainty that he had few or no toys. However, judging by his picking up sticks and having next to no play time, I could guess that there weren't very many.
One case where I really felt horrible for the children was when I was at a Grand Boasting Session. I was in the upper part (where the air conditioner was active), and a family with 3 children (2 girls and one boy) came in late. They were traveling each day, around 150 km each way. The youngest were 6 and 7. Among them, they had a toy binocular that came from a Happy Meal--it is well known that those toys tend to be crap, and the optics of that were extremely poor as one might expect. From the way the children played with that thing, I presumed that they had very few toys at home. I let them play with a toy calculator (shaped like a crayon with a membrane that pulls out for the keypad), and they broke it by treating it like a 7-year old boy would treat something like that. It was obvious that something like that was a real treat--I went out and found some small calculators for them to play with, obviously something sturdier. Try telling those children they get toys all year.
True, some of them have a reasonable number of toys. However, quite a few don't. Usually it's because the parents are too poor to afford them (but they have funds for gas for field circus, Worldwide Pedophile Defense Fund donations, and suit dry cleanings). Sometimes it's because they are mean-spirited. Other times, they take to heart that, if there are few or no toys at home, the children won't be crying to go in from field circus or skipping so many boasting sessions. Either way, I believe it's generally a lie that witless children get toys all year, and especially in amounts comparable to what worldly people get under the tree or on their birthdays.
And yes, worldly children sometimes get toys throughout the year as well.
...OUTLAW