Growing up, mom used to wrap gifts early and place them under the Christmas tree. The suspense used to drive me and my brother bonkers! We’d go to the tree and find a package with our name on it, hold it up to our ear and shake it or squeeze it to guess what was inside.
Mom would send a warning to us from the next room to “get out from under that tree,” but we wouldn’t. The thrill of the hunt was too much for us and, to be honest, the gifts under the tree were never the cool gifts; often, they were socks and underwear or gloves. Our really cool gifts miraculously appeared on Christmas Eve and would be waiting for us under the tree, scattered among the gifts that we had been messing with for weeks … until that Christmas when I was 10 or 11 years old.
Mom had told us a thousand times that the gifts under the tree that year were the only gifts we were getting. “You two better get out of there because those are all the gifts you’re getting and there won’t be any surprises.” We didn’t believe her, but we did believe our neighbor friend, Jesse.
Now, Jesse was always in trouble. He was that kid that had no use for rules, so he was fun to be around, and my mom loved him. She was kind of like his second mom, I guess, and he definitely had a much harder life than we. But, man, Jesse knew things. He knew how to smoke and cuss and drink. He knew how to give himself a homemade tattoo. And he knew how to unwrap Christmas gifts without ripping the paper.
Just One … At First
It started with him unwrapping one package just to tell us if we’d like it or not. Then, like most bad decisions, we escalated to wanting to know what it was, and, quickly, to opening the packages ourselves. One time, mom walked in and caught the three of us under the tree. She warned us again that “we wouldn’t have any surprises on Christmas Day,” but it was too late – my brother and I knew what was in every single package. In fact, that was the year that I had gotten my first cassette Walkman. We were pretty cocky because we knew that Santa was coming.
Until he didn’t.
That Christmas morning, we ran to the tree and began looking for the Santa gifts, but there were none. We kept waiting for mom to give us a lecture about being “told so,” and then surprise us, but it never happened. We were devastated.
Looking back, I still don’t know why she had taken away Santa that year by putting all of our gifts under the tree weeks before the big day. I realize that Jesse was always a little jealous of our family, and, wanting what we had, used his gift unwrapping skills to imagine those were his packages under the tree. And I’m also sure that it was kind of like he was giving the middle finger to the world, which never gave him a chance to have so many packages, and, to him, our family was the world.
That was the worst Christmas of my life, although I used that Walkman until the keys and earphones fell apart, and not because of the number of gifts. It was the worst because we, my brother and I, didn’t have any surprises and had thwarted the magic of the holiday.
The Moral of the Story
I share this story with you because I’m reading a lot of posts from moms out there about how this is the worst Christmas ever. I mean, real talk! We’ve lost our jobs, we don’t know how we’re going to pay the rent, we’ve lost our loved ones, and we’ve lost our patience with this whole COVID-19 Christmas. But …
I don’t remember anything else I received that year except that Walkman. In fact, there are only three Christmas gifts from my childhood that I vividly remember: the unwrapped Walkman, my birthstone ring, and my class of 1989 ring, but I remember every tradition and who was there. I remember the excitement of Christmas morning, watching movies and baking generic cookies, making paper chains for decorations, and the year we strung popcorn on the tree. So, mamas, don’t beat yourselves up over the fact that you simply “can’t” this year.
Let’s embrace this Christmas as a chance to fuss less and laugh more. Let’s remind ourselves that we put the magic in the holiday, and that can happen with one or 50 presents under the tree. We’re going to get through this, and COVID-19 Christmas 2020 is one we’ll all remember, with or without a tower of presents under the tree.
Onward,
Amy Jo
