It’s a baseball mitt, but on Christmas morning, it’s a mitten — warm and snug, like the summer is wedged inside.

Young boys and girls will rip wrapping paper Monday morning and discover a glove, and their smiles will be genuine, not like the ones forced onto their cheeks while holding up yet another sweater.

“A glove is an automatic emotion-evoker,” Mike Thompson said.

Thompson is an executive vice president at Rawlings, the little St. Louis start-up in 1887 that grew into a brand name. Our city has sure given the game some great gifts, from Yogi Berra to The Sporting News to David Freese to Rawlings, which has many an elf on the payroll. So many gloves are given for Christmas that, in a way, it becomes a rite of passage — for both the receiver and the giver. It’s cyclical — one day you’re flipping out with your new Ozzie Smith model glove, and the next day your son is crouched by the Christmas tree, wearing his new Yadier Molina model, calling for an imaginary curveball.

“I remember I got a Reggie Jackson Fastback — A Reggie Jackson Fastback,” Thompson said last week from his desk at Rawlings, which has called St. Louis home longer than the Cardinals have. “It was from from the ’70’s, the back was all covered and it had the single slot (for your index finger). Back then, it was way too big for me — but I didn’t care. I’m a middle infielder with this giant glove! And that was pretty cool, to hang your finger out. RBG 36, that was the model number. Reggie Jackson model. I still have that glove, too. It’s in a storage unit.”

Thompson was around 14 when he got that cherished Christmas gift — and Thompson fondly remembers when his son, Nick, was around 14, and dad gave him a glove from Rawlings’ Gamer series, camel with a black web.

The love of glove is an heirloom, shared from fathers and mothers to sons and daughters. It symbolizes catch — playing catch, having a catch, going out to throw, whatever you want to call it. And a glove is a like a membership card, the one item a kid must have to begin playing on a baseball team.

“It becomes this sort of extension of the person — it can even become part of their personality,” said Thompson, who’s in his 34th year at Rawlings. “It’s fitted to you, so it’s more personal — it’s customized to your hand. Bats come and go. A guy goes 0 for five, bat’s out, new one in. Guy can make two or three errors in his glove, he’s not changing. ... Most of the time when you get one, you’re going to have it for a while.

“And you’re breakin’ it in, you’re spittin’ in it, you’re sniffin’ it, you’re doing all those things to it, it’s like your little buddy. … With receiving of the glove is knowing you have to care for it, too. I’ve got to be good to it, so it can be good to me.”

For some kids, the Christmas acquisition of a glove causes immediate intoxication, and they scamper out to the front lawn — which is as white as a home uniform — and while a sibling makes a snow angel, they make a snow-cone grab like Mike Trout.

Of course, it’s dad or mom, bundled, throwing pop flies, each one a little higher, the parent hoping he or she doesn’t throw out a shoulder or throw one onto the neighbor’s roof.

The Christmas glove is also a glimpse into baseball season, which seems so far away, however a kid might declare it’s perfectly spaced from Dec. 25, because it gives kids enough time to properly break in their new mitts. Oils, creams, microwave, soaking in hot water – kids take this project more seriously than anything in science class.

And while Santa often picks out a glove, a parent will sometimes oversee the gift-giving, especially these days, with the evolution of glove customizing. Gloves used to be one color, like when jeans used to just be blue. Now, on rawlings.com, you can customize your glove’s colors and webbing and backing, while inscribing stitched words, names or phrases. How popular are these things? Rawlings said orders had to come in around Thanksgiving to guarantee delivery by Christmas.

“I don’t know if kids fully get it — your glove is literally made in the same production line that Bryce Harper’s is,” said Lindsey Naber, a Rawlings director of marketing. “The same craftsmanship, the same treatment, the same options.

“And Mike (Thompson) has challenged us as a marketing team to create the experience of opening a glove. We used to just ship our custom gloves in this brown corrugated unit. Now, you should see the boxes! They’re fancy. As a kid opens it, it’s like an experience. We’ve really stepped it up. It’s special, from the second they see the box. And everyone’s glove has a story.”

Thompson’s office is like a museum. Dozens of framed photos of him with famous players. Game-worn jerseys. Gloves galore. For decades, he’s been the right-hand man for baseball players’ right-hand (or left-hand) “man.”

A year ago, Thompson saw Jackson at a Rawlings’ event.

“It’s Reggie Jackson! Star power,” Thompson recalled. “And I’m sure he’s heard this 1,000 times, but I had to say it anyway: ‘Reggie — I had your glove!’”