When I was a kid, my siblings and I were pretty bad about snooping for presents. Every year our parents would come up with more and more clever places to hide gifts, and we'd respond by improving our skills at breaking and entering. For example, one year my brother made a makeshift card to jimmy open the locked door of the room where the presents were hidden. The only year we didn't succeed in our snooping efforts was the year they put the presents in the attic. Even then we knew they were there, but we didn't have any way to get up there. My parents would also tape a bedsheet across the doorway of the living room to try to keep us out until morning, but I always snuck in anyway. Ah, traditions.

What kooky Christmas traditions does your family have?

Comments

Todd said…
I am not sure how many times it happened, but someone would wake us all up in the middle of the night and tell us that Santa was in the basement. Then, my parents would make us wait at the top of the stairs while Santa finished his business. When he was gone, we could go downstairs and see what he brought. Waiting at the top of those stairs was nearly unbearable.
December 24, 2007 at 2:14 PM
Krista said…
We watched Christmas Eve on Sesame Street even when we were way too old to watch something like that. All five girls would sleep in one room downstairs on Christmas Eve. We'd line up from youngest to oldest and charge up the stairs in the morning, usually trampling the smaller, slower ones. We'd eat Toaster Strudles for breakfast on Christmas morning.

The one thing we didn't do was look for the hidden presents. Isn't that strange? I accidentally found them one year and it destroyed me. I couldn't ask Santa for what I wanted (walkie talkies) because I knew my parent's had bought them for me already. My parent's had a hard time explaining that one to me. By the end I knew the truth about Santa and I remember how devastated I felt. Still, good times.
December 24, 2007 at 3:33 PM
Jer said…
Birthday presents were always in Mom and Dad's closet. Christmas presents were locked in the garage. They told us that Santa had to come in through the back door, because he couldn't fit in our chimney. (That explained the noise of dragging presents from the garage in through the back door.

The stairs had a door at the top, and we were locked in the basement until the parents were good and ready for us. One year, my brother shimmied up the laundry shoot and let us out, but the next year, there was a mysterious pile of bricks on the door of the shoot.
December 27, 2007 at 1:01 PM
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