#takingbackchristmas

The Christmas that was cancelled is a well known story around our holiday table or over a few beers.  In some ways, I’m almost embarrassed to tell it to people outside my inner circle. Many might judge me as a bad parent or a Scrooge.   Although it was painful at the time, I think my kids look back on it as a classic family tale.  If not, I’m sure they will get their revenge when I’m old and gray and they shove me in a nursing home.  Any hoo, grab a cup of hot chocolate, warm your feet by the fire, sit back and enjoy the adventure.

Many, many years ago when my girls were still young enough to believe in Santa (at least the youngest), we had an unfortunate incident happen a couple of weeks before Christmas.   As a working mom, my time was tight so, as I purchased gifts for the family, I shoved them on top of a cedar chest in my walk in closet.  Now in my defense, the clothes hanging above the chest touched the top of the chest, thus creating a perfect hiding spot for my bagged gifts…or so I thought.  My plan was to wait until the kids were out playing, lock the door and wrap all the presents at once.  After all, I had plenty of time to get them under the tree and time was limited.  Apparently, I wasn’t as clever as I thought. 

  Upon returning home from work one day, I noticed my closet light was on and the door cracked open.  Thinking I must have forgotten to turn out the light and shut the door, I dismissed this error on my part and went about my evening.  However, the next day, when I came home from work, once again the light was on and the door was cracked open.  A pattern was beginning to emerge.  So the next morning, I paid close attention and made sure the light was off and the door was closed.  Would the closet fairy return? We shall see.

To my horror, when I got home from work, the light was once again on and the door cracked open.  Someone was snooping in my closet.  Now what?  Since the items were all in bags, did they see everything?  Is Christmas ruined? Suddenly the answer appeared in front of me in the form of my youngest child.   Although she was a smart child, the emotion of Christmas overwhelmed her and common sense went out the window. Excitement  took control of her like truth serum.  With her big brown eyes and her body twirling to and fro, she blurted out to me, “Mommy, I know I’m not suppose to say anything, but……” as she hesitates to continue, “I just love the slippers you got me for Christmas!” Busted!   Better than a line up in a cop movie, the guilty (or at least one of them) confesses before the questioning begins.  Under further investigation, the little one spills the fact that the oldest found (and I use the word loosely, more like searched) the Christmas stash, and dragged her little sister into the dirty deed.  Mortified, I panicked.  What should we do?  Being an only child and from parents that went through the Great Depression, I never thought of peeking.  Who cares what color my new panties or shoes are?  It certainly wasn’t worth getting into trouble for.  

I asked my husband for advice since he came from a family of 6 children who grew up in a very small house.  Surely, with that many kids, he must have experienced an incident of peeking.  To my dismay, he couldn’t remember any slip ups.  As we huddled in our bedroom in search of a plan of action, we called his father for advice.  Surely, he would tell us a good story and offer some words of wisdom.  After telling him about the closet fairy and the confession, we asked him, “Has this ever happened to you?  What did you do?”  His response, “I can’t give you any advice, it never happened with our kids.  We weren’t dumb enough to store the gifts at our house.  We always kept them at our neighbor’s house a couple of doors down.”  There it was, the cold hard facts, we were dumb parents.  

Trying not to feel defeated, we came up with a plan to teach our girls a lesson.  We would cancel Christmas or at least lead them to think their actions caused them to lose their gifts.  I know, we are mean, but it seemed like a good idea at the time and we were desperate.  Desperate times call for desperate measures. We called the children into the living room and gave them a long lecture on peeking pros and cons 101.  “Do you realize that peeking ruins the surprise of Christmas?  What is the point of having wrapped presents if you know what is inside?  We’re calling Santa and telling him to take all the presents back since there is no point in keeping them.  Your actions have ruined Christmas so don’t expect any presents under the tree this year.”  Yeah, I know, we went overboard.  They cried and whimpered off to their rooms.

The next day, we wrapped all the presents, shoved them into several black large leaf bags and while the kids were outside telling their friends of the horrors of the Christmas Nazi, we shoved them up into the attic space, and out of sight.  Now if we can only keep a straight face, we can fool them.  We agreed to let them sweat it out and to postpone Christmas by one day, thus creating the illusion that all the gifts were indeed sent back to Santa.

The days leading up to Christmas were grim in our household.  Each day they would come home from school and check to see if any presents were under the tree.  When the lack of gifts was questioned, I reminded them that Christmas was cancelled and the gifts were indeed sent back as promised.  Yes, I lied.  Yes, I’m going to hell and I’m driving the bus.  

Tension mounted.  Finally Christmas morning arrived and the tree was bare.  No presents, no stocking stuffers, no joy.  We managed to ruin their Christmas; shame on us.   Later that morning, as all kids do, it was time to go outside, to play and compare gifts with the neighborhood.   The look on their faces was almost too much to bear.    How could they admit their shame and tell their friends they were so bad that they received nothing.  Parent guilt was also becoming unbearable.  How could we make it through another 18 hours? After a long morning of sad faces, the charade was too much and the suffering of our children too great.  We couldn’t stand another minute of disappointment in their eyes.  It’s time to turn it around and bring Christmas back. 

  While the kids continued to sulk outside, we quickly brought down the black bags and loaded the presents under the sad tree.  Calling the kids into the house, we sat them on the steps by the front door and in a final attempt to burn an impression into their minds, we threw at them one more lecture on how their peeking had ruined Christmas for everyone.  With tears in their eyes, and apologies to never do it again, we sternly told them to get into the living room.  Upon entering the room, their little hearts lit up with joy and delight to see that the presents had indeed returned. Christmas was back.  All was well in the household.

Months later, we became friends with some of the neighborhood parents, and over a few beers, this tale of woe was told.  The couple across the street began to laugh and said, “Oh, so you are the parents that didn’t buy any gifts for your kids.”  She proceeded to tell us her own tale of woe. Apparently, her kids came running home on Christmas day upset and distraught their friends had nothing for Christmas. She in turn got upset too.  How terrible of those parents to not get their kids ANYTHING. What kind of parent’s are they?  Something must be done to save Christmas! She proceeded to tell us her plan to borrow the credit card so she could run out and buy those babies a present.  To our shame, we admitted to being those bad parents.