I always knew I’d be getting presents for Christmas (and my birthday); I just didn’t know what they’d be. And that wasn’t torture; it was a big part of the fun.
(Of course, one person’s fun is another person’s torture. I consider getting hurled around at high speeds and falling from great heights to be torture, but plenty of people go to amusement parks to experience such torture voluntarily and claim to enjoy it.)
I never had the opportunity. My parents wrapped presents and put them under the tree as they bought them. I suppose I could’ve tried unwrapping them, but never did that either. We were encouraged to pick the gifts up and shake them and guess what they were. Knowing in advance would’ve taken some fun out of the game.
We were tempted when I was a kid. We really wanted to know but my mom told us she ‘trapped’ the pile of presents and she’d know if we snuck a peek or anything. And if we did, everything was going back to the store. That was enough to scare us as little kids. When we got older and started feeling and shaking the wrapped gifts to get any idea what it was, my mom decided to start giving us random numbers. We’d each get 2-3 random numbers assigned to us (that only she knew who they belonged to) and the gifts were labeled as such. So no matter what, my brothers and I didn’t know whose gift was whose. We found this particularly cruel lol
Same here. I was looking for some change to steal from my father’s tip jar and came across a few things.
Yes, I did. Why? Poor impulse control, not enough patience.
I even carefully unwrapped video games, played them, then wrapped them back up.
I don’t recall actively seeking out Christmas presents per se. But, I often stumbled upon them while investigating other items of interest.
… what can I say?, I was a curious tyke.
Mom and Dad’s closets were of particular interest to me. For my first few years of existence, their upper shelves were beyond my reach, even with a chair and a lot of determination.
Then, one year, I breached the summit and hit the mother-load.
Hello, what’s this?
Why, it looks like Christmas presents from Santa … and some of them are addressed to me!
Why the fuck is Santa Claus stashing his load in Mom’s closet (I didn’t actually think that, but something similar in kiddie-language).
The following year I was able to reach back further into Mom’s upper closet shelf and came innocently enough upon a box of letters, which I pulled down and investigated (that was my job god dammit).
Letters from Mom to Dad and others from Dad to Mom. Early to mid 1940’s. England. Interesting. That was before I was born. Let’s give them a read and see what good ol’ Mom and Dad where up to in those days…
*… oh my, Mom’s house was bombed by the Germans. Killed her dog. She and her mother went to hospital. Mom’s head was cracked open. Poor Mom … Poor dog (a German Shepard who was ironically named “Lucky”).
*
… Gosh, Dad’s 385th Fighter Squadron of the 364th Fighter Group saw some serious action. I’m proud of my dad. I love my dad and my mom.
[I continue to read]
Aww, Mom and Dad really have feelings for each other! Very sweet!!!
[I continue to read more]
Hey, wait a minute … what the hell’s going on here!?! There are some dirty words in these letters! [I had to look some of them up in our big-ass unabridged dictionary]
*
Mom and Dad are dirty birds!*
*
What does this mean???*
Does it mean I wasn’t conceived like that virgin, Mary?
*
Good god, I think it does.*
That’s the day I learned my parents were good people, but they weren’t saints.
… what I learned the following year would curl your toes.
When I was about eight a friend took me out to their garage where he proudly showed me the unwrapped gift stash his parents had hidden there. I thought even at the time it was dumb and took away the magic of Christmas Eve/Morning.
No, I never looked for my gifts.
I did and I remember even opening them and playing with them. I would then re-package them and put them back in their hiding spot. The Christmas presents never showed up under the tree until Christmas morning, some from my mom and some from Santa.
With our oldest daughter who is almost 4, when we buy we hide them and she is too young to go looking. But we also wrap them early and the presents from mom and dad go under the tree so she sees they are there for a few weeks before Christmas and knows they are from us. Naturally Jolly St. Nick comes on Christmas Eve while she is asleep and leaves presents too! (Isn’t it the most wonderful thing with kids this age?) I imagine as she grows older, we will continue to get them wrapped and under the tree early and of course hold back a few from “Santa” for Christmas morning. On one hand I hope she doesn’t go searching, I remember as a kid how the fun of finding them before really didn’t compare to not finding them and being surprised on Christmas morning. On the other hand if she does go a searching, we’ll let it pass without comment because kids will be kids. We’ll let her think she got away with something, probably the same way my own mom did with me at an early age.
Interestingly enough, my wife seems incapable of NOT giving me a present almost immediately. Even Christmas presents, she’ll start asking me weeks in advance if I want my present now. I always refuse because even as a curmudgeon at almost 50, I want the suspense of waiting and the surprise on Christmas Day. There’s still magic even if you don’t believe in Santa. 
OK, I’ve got the popcorn. Continue.
It’s been a few years and my memory for details isn’t great, but I’m pretty sure I never searched for presents. We had pretty strong perceptions of property ownership in my house and being caught pawing through my parents’ stuff would be a worldfull of trouble even if I didn’t find anything interesting. And then after a certain point it became obvious that I benefit massively from the whole “Santa exists and gives me stuff my normally frugal dad would never spring for” fiction, which is why I will profess belief in Santa to this day.
Just to add- thinking back, so far as I can remember, in the house I lived in until I was 8, I don’t think I ever even entered my parents bedroom. My great aunt lived with us, and I can bring up an image of her bedroom, though I hardly ever went in there, but my parents’ room? Nada.
I did go in their room in the next house, but only by specific request (grabbing stuff off the dresser because the had muddy boots on kind of thing). As well as not wanting to ruin the surprise, it simply didn’t occur to me to look through their room. That just wasn’t a thing I ever did (it didn’t help that the one time Mum did ask me to get something out of a drawer in there I found their contraception, while just old enough to know what it was, which thoroughly discouraged me from looking further).
Well, lookee here, Santa got me a toy torpedo! … and, when I turn it on, it goes, ‘bzzz’! How cool is that!?!
Good thing I didn’t bring it to school for show & tell. Teacher may have wanted to borrow it for a while.
Aaallllllll righty then!
yes it seems most kids did it.
One time my brother got golf clubs but my parents just left them in the box in the spare room without wrapping. It looked like an old box so we just ignored it. On Christmas they told us how the box was sitting in plain sight for the past couple of weeks.
I never did. Why spoil the surprise?
I still don’t snoop, into anything.
I didn’t go looking for them, but when I was five or so, I accidentally found them. That pretty much ended the Santa Claus thing for me.
For years after that, I couldn’t NOT find them; my parents did the worst job ever of hiding presents.
Which raises an interesting question: For those of you who answered YES to the thread title’s question, is there anyone who still does it? Like, if someone (your S.O. for example) has bought you something for Christmas, do you snoop to see what it is ahead of time?
Naw. Too old to give a flying fister about gift-getting holidays.
I never looked for them, and I’m actually kind of surprised by that in retrospect. I was a BIT of a nosy and curious kid, but I never did. I think I was also a bit of a rule follower, and I think I also assumed my parents hid presents in their walk-in closet, the attic, or our basement storage closet – all of which were areas we were explictly NOT supposed to be in, ever.
One year my sister did find a few gifts stuffed in our front hall closet, though – not sure if my parents were being lazy in hiding 'em or if that was a temporary spot and they’d forgotten to move them.
Nope. I think it was a 6-7 to maybe 12 year old kind of thing. By junior high I was too cool for such things. 