yes- me. well, it wasn’t for bad behavior. my parents figured that because they bought enough stuff for me throughout the year, that those items would cover my christmas. i was a teenager at the time so it didn’t bother me as much as it would have if i were a small child.
Being a foster parent for a decade or two, I can tell you that this happens all the time. In one case that I can talk about, the parents favored the oldest child over the younger one.
It did not matter whether the younger one was very bad, very good, or just being a normal kid, their presents always got taken away under one excuse or another & given to the older one. This happened for both Christmas & birthdays. Thus, each year the older one basically got two birthdays, theirs & their younger sibling’s, plus one huge Christmas.
The younger one never had a “real” birthday until they came to live with us. Both of them were shocked to find that, in my house, that when the younger one’s birthday came along, they got to keep their gifts & did not have to give them to the older one. That was a rude awakening, especially for the older one. That first Christmas at my house was quite a shocker for both of them as well. Again the younger one got to keep their gifts.
Interestingly, to me at least, the older one had a much bigger problem with our “favoritism” than the younger one did with their birth parents favoritism.
Fifteen years after they both left our home to start their own homes, they both recall how their birth parents “punished” the younger one for being “bad”. Neither one of them has started to do anything like that to their kids. They try very hard to be fair.
As far as either of them turning out “bad”, the oldest one had the most problems. The older one had other issues that probably are a large part of why they came close to going to jail. Fortunately, this one listened to reason & changed their ways of dealing with confrontation. Life got a lot better for them after that.
My brother actually got a bag of rocks and a bag of potatoes under the tree one year one year as the result of some now-forgotten transgression before Christmas. He did get regular presents, too, but “Santa” was trying to send a message.
Daddy always threatened us with a bag of switches. I guess to make us think we would get spanked with them. Never saw any. He was a big Marine D.I. But never laid a hand on any of us. He claimed he did. He said he was going to. But never happened.
He often told the story of his brother Truitt. Who was very bad. I think maybe he was developmentally disabled ( no one knows, he drowned at age 12) But Daddy’s mom would have him tied to a post to keep him from running off. Lock him in a room at night to keep him from wandering. He ate in the pantry while everyone else was at the table. He apparently was disturbing to everyone else at table. Daddy said he never got toys or treats or got to go into town. Not that any of them got much. His mom was real religious but Truitt never went to Sunday school or church. I used to ask Daddy question after question because it bothered me. It was just real sad. But he ran off and fell in a pond and drowned.
Hunh. I never realized you grew up in a Faulkner novel.
I know, I know my life is just one loooo-nnnn-g sentence.