Isn’t it funny that Santa always has the same handwriting as your mom and dad?
When we were growing up, Kevin and I always knew some things would be true at Christmas –
Gifts would be hidden in Mom and Dad’s closet. Not gonna lie to you – I totally snooped. And I bet Kevin did too. In fact, when I dragged a chair over to the closet to snoop on that high shelf, I made sure to rub out the chair-leg marks on the carpet. I don’t remember any extreme Christmas gift revelations … so no harm done.
We would have an equal number of gifts. I don’t know how close it was in dollars spent, but because of the way we opened presents, we knew we would have the same number as each other. More than Dad. Less than Mom.
We could expect a gift “from Santa” to shop up under the tree before Christmas Day. I guess we got so many gifts ‘he’ couldn’t keep track.
Mom would always be opening gifts long after the rest of us. Probably because my dad isn’t as good at organizing as my mom. He would buy her more because he lost count, or wrap things separately (where my mom might wrap several small, related things together so the gift number is the same).
Kevin and I would have to go to bed early — because my parents/Santa wanted to go to bed. They pretty much stayed locked in their bedroom all day Christmas Eve wrapping frantically. Sometimes finding gifts in the closet they had forgotten about.
My dad would get creative with the gift tags. Which my brother ultimately took to the extreme as he got older (Kevin, I’ll miss your Christmas tags this year). My dad would wrap a gift to my mom “To Beauty from the Beast” or “To Lady from the Tramp.” Or if he was feeling really cutesy, it would be “To Nancy from Jimmy T” — a James Taylor CD.
All of us always have an “open last” gift. Always a ‘big’ gift. One year I got a TV. One year my dad got money for a telescope (which he still hasn’t bought).
Ah yes, that persistent Christmas memory: we’re all siting there with our ‘open last’ gift while my mom still has a pile of gifts next to her still to open.
View all posts in the Journal your Christmas series
Hahaha… my parents were big into Santa. As we got older they did everything they could to keep up believing as long as we could. When we began to notice that Santa had the same wrapping paper, the excuse was that Santa didn’t wrap the gifts, my parents did… same excuse was given when the handwriting was recognized. Now that we are all older and know Santa isn’t real, we still like to pretend. We even still put out cookies (mainly to give my parents stamina as they finish wrapping presents into the night). But Santa gifts have started making it under the Christmas tree earlier and earlier… this is unacceptable. We give my mom a hard time if we discover one. We are all still into the magic and innocence of Christmas.
(P.S. I’m copying this onto my blog.)
I really enjoy christmas with your family. I will also miss the insanity that is the gift tags from your brother
We’ll miss having you guys here at Christmas too. We’re going to wait to open most (if not all) of our gifts until you come. It will be sad not to have Kevin here too.
Hopefully we’ll get to talk to him on the phone sometime around then.
I had Dad write most of the tags for Kevin’s gifts that we sent this year. He was kind of rushed and the gifts were already wrapped, so he wasn’t quite as creative as usual, but here’s a funny one. He had one last gift to label and he asked me what was inside. I told him it was chocolate. He stopped for a minute and said, “Well, I guess that’s not the best idea.” (or something to that effect). Apparently he was thinking of saying it was from Barack, but decided against it when he found out it was chocolate, in case someone might take it as a racial slur. So he decided to make it from “W”.
Kevin, if you’re reading this, consider it a sneak peak at your Christmas box. Let us know when you get it. We shipped it on Dec 4th.