Christmas Confession

Here's another holiday repeat from last year.  Hope you enjoy it!

I would think it's safe to say that everyone who celebrates Christmas has Christmas memories.  Some are good, some are bad, but all are memories.  Thanks to This Daddy's Blog post for getting me thinking about the past and remembering what I am about to confess.

The jury is out on this one.

When I was young, I was sneaky.  If you've read any of my vacation posts, you've probably realized this is not the confession.  I need to build a little anticipation here, so I'll drag it out as long as I can. 

Back in the day I was one of those kids that went hunting through the house to find my presents.  I thought I knew all the hiding places my parents used.  Actually, I did know most of them at one point. 

I'm not sure if they got wise to my hunting skills, just started mixing it up on their own, or if they forgot where their hiding spots were, but at some point I stopped finding all of my presents early.  This is probably because they started wrapping the gifts as soon as they got them, which leads me to believe they were onto me. 

The only exception to this was the big gifts.  Those I almost always found, until they started hiding them at other people's houses.  Even at a young age I wasn't willing to risk a breaking and entering charge to find my presents, so they were off limits to me.

What is a mischievous kid supposed to do in that instance when all the fun of hunting is taken out of the holiday season? 

Here's what I did - I found ways to be alone with the presents. 

Sometimes I:

1 - faked an illness so I could stay home from school. 

2 - played upstairs by the tree while the rest of the family was downstairs. 

3 - came home early from a friend's house when I thought our house would be empty.

4 - grabbed a present and took it to the bathroom.

5 - grabbed a present, hid it in my room, and got up in the middle of the night to check it out.

Sounds like someone had to try to figure out what he was getting before Christmas morning, doesn't it?

I never tried to figure them out. 

I simply unwrapped them, saw what I was getting, rewrapped them ever so carefully (being sure the paper that pulled off with the tape went back exactly where it came from), and put them back under the tree.

My work was much better than this.  Amateur.

There's the confession.  I'm sure my mom and dad are going to love finding this little nugget out like this!

Why would I open presents early?  I have no idea. 

Maybe I wanted to string out Christmas over the course of a few weeks instead of just one morning.  Maybe I just had to know what I was getting so I could plan out my morning in advance.  Maybe, just maybe, I did it because I wasn't supposed to.

I'd put all my money on that last choice if I were you.