I was shopping for my nephew’s Christmas present the other day, and I got to thinking about the funny things he’s said over the years, specifically two really funny (to me, at least) Christmas stories:
My sister was divorced from Josh’s father when Josh was about 3, and she remarried about a year later. As a result, there was plenty of family around to shower Josh with gifts at Christmastime (our family, Josh’s father’s extended family, stepdad’s family, etc.). The year that Josh was about 5, he was still in the “I believe in Santa” stage, so everything that my sister bought him for Christmas said “From Santa” on the gift tag. My sister had gone all out for Christmas, so Josh had no shortage of presents to tear open at lightening speed. When he got finished, he sat in the middle of his haul and looked around. He was apparently making a mental tally of everything his various relatives had given to him, and everything he’d just opened, because he turned to my sister and said “I can’t believe YOU didn’t get me anything”. Josh learned who Santa really was shortly thereafter.
Now that Josh knew who Santa was, the next Christmas had Josh compiling a quite extensive list of everything he wanted my sister to buy for him. My sister indulged him, and wound up getting him everything he’d put on his list, but she also decided that she wanted him to have a few surprises. During one of her shopping forays, she happened across whatever new Disney release was out for Christmas that year, and although Josh liked Disney movies, it hadn’t been on his list, so she picked it up for him. On Christmas morning, Josh is again tearing through his gifts, and he gets to the Disney movie. He holds it in his hand for a minute, a puzzled look on his face…and again turns to my sister and says “I didn’t order THIS!!”. Rotten kid.
My uncle gave me a Barbie “wardrobe” when I was around 5. (No clothes, more of a box with hinges that had drawers inside and hangers and a place to put Barbie in, and a snap to hold it shut.) The family story is that my two sisters (4 & 3)sisters, given the same gift, each ran and grabbed their Barbies and clothes, and happily started populating the wardrobe.
My reaction? Unwrap, open, look in the drawers, look around in dismay, “Who TOOK it?”
My birthday is New Year’s Eve so when Christmas comes my birthday is just around the corner. I remember as a kid putting the two piles of presents together and “gloating”, feeling like I got more than my sisters did.
Also, the Christmas just before I turned five was when I discovered there was no Santa Claus. We opened our presents on Christmas Eve, after getting back from the 7:00PM childrens pageant at church. So here we are, in the car and ready to leave, and Mom “forgets” something and has to run back into the house. It’s dark outside, so thorugh the crack in the curtains I am able to see her put away the milk and cookies, that would make it look like Santa had eaten them. So I knew there was no Santa and likely no Easter Bunny either, but I didn’t say anything about my discovery because I didn’t want to take the chance of spoiling a good thing.
—In the town where my mother and her siblings were raised, “Santa” used to go door-to-door, giving out candy canes. One of my uncles recognized him as a neighbor and chirped “Thanks, Joe!”
—Even as a wee one, Mr. Rilch worried about contamination. “Dear Santa: Here are cookies. There’s milk in the fridge.”
—Don’t do what my dad did and give a camera to your seven-year-old daughter who knows how to stealth around the house.
—Could have happened any time, but it happened at Christmas: “Cousin, would you like to say grace?” “GRACE!” “[sigh]Rilchie, would you like to say grace?” “Good bread, good meat, good Lord, let’s eat!” “Rilchie and Cousin, would you like to eat on the back porch?”
I thought of another one to add, although this time it’s about how bratty my siblings and I were.
When we were younger, we hadn’t yet grasped the concept of comparative value. We only understood quantity. So, in order to avoid wars at Christmas, my mother would have to make sure that we each received the exact same number of presents. There was no buying one expensive present for one child and three lesser gifts for another child…because the child with three gifts got “more” than the other.
