Anyone here ever ruin their own Christmas by snooping around looking for gifts?
Any doper parents discover their children digging under the bed or in the closet?
When I was nine, I learned my lesson. I went snooping around for my presents and found my favorite doll that I’d had for about two years and dragged around everywhere. My mother had taken it to be ‘refurbished’…new hair, new eyelashes, professional cleaning, new dress and there she was in a beautiful box for christmas.
I told mom I found her and she raised her eyebrows and said “well, how do you feel? You ruined your christmas surprise?”
It was…devastating.
However, my parents, knowing my sister and I were obedient geek children, solved all of these problems in the future by hiding all of the gifts in the extra bedroom and warning us not to enter the bedroom because…
wait for it…
it was broken. the room was broken. And by god…we bought that excuse.
One of my brothers was a shaker; he’d try to figure out what all his presents were by shaking them. One year my Dad taped a paperback book to the inside of a box, then added a shoebox with some broken glass in it, then wrapped the big box… My brother never shook a present again.
One year, I found a fairly large package with my name on it - and a handle that wasn’t wrapped. I just knew it was my own personal portable record player (this was circa 1970).
Actually, it was a suitcase. I was so disappointed, I started crying right after I opened it. Made my mom feel really bad too - she actually gave me the receipt so I could take it back. As it happened, that suitcase served me well for years and years. I still feel like a brat because of my reaction.
I snooped one year. I’m not sure how old I was, but like jarbabyj, it turned out to be such a devastating experience that I never did it again. I don’t think my parents ever found out, but if they did, they’ve never said anything.
I specifically told my sister where I would be shopping last weekend, because I had to buy her a present. (Well, I said I would be at Wal-Mart, getting my shopping finished in one fell swoop.)
So, I’m standing in the toy aisle, looking for a plastic tea service for my three year old neice, when my sister walks up and asks to use my cell phone. With her present (a set of apple/cinnamon candles) sitting right in the top of the buggy. So, now she knows what she’s getting for Christmas, and I hope she’s happy. I’m not.
(She’s always been the kind of girl who couldn’t keep a secret. Almost every year she’s told me what she bought me before she gave it to me. I hate that.)
She would search the entire house top to bottom until she was sure she had found all the gifts, and then get to work.
She unwrapped everything, even stuff for other people, to see what was what, and then wrap it all up again.
Trouble is, she was really little, and not very good at wrapping.
It was always fun on Christmas morning to receive a gift that looked like it had been wrapped by a blind, epileptic rhesus monkey and have the chirpy little pest jump up and down squealing, “I know what that is!”
I’m an inveterate snooper. I used to look everywhere, including the attic for gifts. My parents figured me out, though, and began storing the gifts at work until right before Christmas.
My sister would do that as well, Exgineer. I never have liked the woman.
I’m pretty certain I know what one of my Christmas gifts is. It’s something that I want, and just looking at the box I think it’s that. I hope it is, but in a way I hope it’s something completely different.
My brother was a snooper, I never was. I did get in trouble for snooping once, completely unfairly. I was getting a dollhouse, and my parents came up with the brilliant idea of hiding the dollhouse under a sheet in the basement, and we were instructed not to peek at it. The basement itself was neither off-limits, because we had to go there to do some of our chores, nor broken (heh! that is a riot!).
Can you think of anything that looks more like what it is while under a sheet than a dollhouse? Pointy roof, chimney … it adds up, even when you’re 7. That Christmas, my mother took me aside and mentioned that I didnt seem very surprised, and I confessed I was expecting the dollhouse. They were very peeved and I got several lectures about snooping and honesty and lack of patriotism (ok, not actually the last one, but they were acting like this was a federal case).
I’ve never been a snooper. In fact, my husband is hiding my present in the trunk of my car, and just told me not to look in there. I told him he better take it out, because I need to go grocery shopping! It’s been in there for over a week. He, on the other hand, goes crazy if I even mention that I got his present. He must know, and shakes, inspects, weighs, etc. all packages. He often ends up telling me what he got me, because he can’t keep a secret.
Snooping spoils the fun! I prefer to wonder about it, but I actually get very few real surprises any more, our family usually just asks each other what we want.
Velma! My husband has my presents in the trunk as well. He knows I won’t look. Christmas surprises are about the last bastion of pure unadulterated joy in my life so I’m careful not to ruin it
I found a telescope I thought I was going to get one year that actually went to my sister. I was pretty excited at first and then completely disapointed.
Then another year I was caught snooping with my sister and my mother returned all of our Christmas presents and got us coal instead. We cried but it didn’t stop her since she just laughed. Wait, that didn’t happen, only the first one. LOL!
I was looking for my Christmas presents and found a lot of big Barbie houses, cars and dolls. I went nuts, I love Barbie and I couldn’t wait for Christmas morning to open them.
On Christmas, I ran to the tree and started ripping my gifts open and didn’t find any of the things I saw. I asked my mom “Where is all the Barbie doll stuff ?” My mom told me, she knew I was a snoop, so she hid all the gifts at a neighbor’s house and what I saw were the gifts that belonged to the little girl next door.
My son called me at work, in tears because he snooped and took the toy out of the box, and couldn’t get it back in. He felt terrible, and has never snooped again (of course, he’s an adult and doesn’t live with me anymore!).
I’ve never snooped. Never wanted to ruin it for myself…even as a kid I understood that concept. Even so, we did have a room in the basement with those little hook-and-eye latches on the inside and the outside, so that when Mom was wrapping inside the room she could lock it from inside and we couldn’t accidentally barge in on her. Then, when she left the room, she’d latch it from the outside, and it worked because the latch was aaaaaallllll the way at the very top of the door, and we kids couldn’t reach it even by standing on a chair.
It was always fun having this mysterious room that I knew was filled with all sorts of goodies but that I never saw the inside of during the whole month of December.
I was a snooper wannabe. I could never figure out where my parents were hiding the good stuff. I’d check their closet, under their bed, in the crawl space, and I don’t think I ever found anything. To this day I have no idea where they could have hidden stuff.
My brother, on the other hand, was pretty good at snooping, but my parents had a way out with him - his birthday is right before Christmas, so anything they knew he found out about ended up as a birthday present instead of a Santa present.
I just caught my little bast…er, son snooping in the attic the other day. Luckily, he didn’t find anything, so I sat him down for a long talk, and tried to explain how bad he’d feel on Christmas if he already knew what he was getting. Then, I took all the presents from the attic, moved them out to the garden shed, and padlocked the door. I told him that’s where they were, so he didn’t have to bother looking anymore.
dragongirl, that is brilliant…can’t wait 'til next year…
When I was a kid, Mom would always keep a supply of gifts for future use in her side of the closet. I don’t think she ever caught me looking in there but she eventually did figure it out. I was done in by a toy car that was intended for my best friend when I somehow lost some pieces to it. I don’t think I snooped in there again after that.
