I think I will always enjoy and remember the fun that my mom created for us leading up to Christmas.
My mom would wrap the presents nicely and place them under the tree. But she wouldn’t write the names on them. It was a mystery.
How could we tell whose presents were whose?
Well, there would be some sort of code to distinguish each person’s presents. One year, it was certain symbols on a label. Another year, it was the type of wrapping paper. She came up with something different every year.
We looked forward to it every year. We would try to figure out during the weeks leading up to Christmas. We usually didn’t work together, because we wanted the credit for ourselves. If we figured it out before Christmas, we would say nothing – because that’s when it was revealed to us.
My mom created this mystery every Christmas. I’m not sure if it started out to stop us from knowing who had which presents (attempting to stop us from shaking the packages, etc.), but it became a great Christmas tradition.
I do apologize for posting this a day late! Also, remember that I am doing a giveaway this month based on the comments!
I was the youngest of 4 growing up, and even after I was 18, our presents still wouldn’t come out from Santa until Christmas morning. I have such loving and wonderful parents, that the presents piles were a little too large to fit under our tree, so they would be arranged in piles in our family room. Each year as a child, my brother and I would get up early, and wait in the kitchen until it was 6am and time to wake our parents. Our kitchen over looked the family room, but it was always dark down there, and our grandma would always be up before us, drinking coffee in the kitchen. The only way we were allowed to stay there was to pray the rosary. We prayed it, once even getting through 3 full times before we were allowed to open, but when gram wasn’t looking, we would always flash a flashlight down there quick to look at the piles, trying to guess which was our. After growing up, it became easier because every year, our wrapping paper was themed along the same lines, Santa, Reindeer, Snowmen and a Bear.
This just prompted me to do my own remembrance blog post on my childhood and Christmas. Thanks a lot for that Josh!
Great story! Thanks for sharing! As parents, it’s hard to think about the impact things like that can make on a child.