The Naughty Christmas

The following story’s events are true, unless you’re Judy or Greg. Then there might be a different version. Do they even remember…

The Christmas of 1960 found Judy, age 10, me, age 8 and Greg, age 6, anxiously awaiting to see if our wishes from Santa would be fulfilled. One day while my parents were gone, Judy hatched the idea of searching my parents’ bedroom for presents. Greg and I went along.

Judy found the Thumbelina doll she had asked for. She turned the knob on the doll’s back. Its head began moving, making the whole body squirm in supposedly lifelike motions.

Greg found the Mr. Machine toy he had asked for. He wound it up and it whistled as it rolled about the room.

 

I don’t remember what I asked for that year, but I remember we found The Game of Life. We opened it up, put the spinner in place and made it whirl.

I felt bad sneaking into my parents’ room, but we did it several times and played with our gifts. Our parents must have become suspicious, because they put a piece of clear tape at the top of their door. We saw it and made sure to replace it if we went into their room.

The snooping escalated. We got into the presents under the tree. We carefully unwrapped the ends of our gifts to see what was inside, then sealed them back up.

By then, I felt sick inside. Not only was I sneaking around, but I had absolutely destroyed the magic of Christmas morning by knowing what I was to receive.

My parents finally sat the three of us down on the couch and told us they knew what we had been doing. They said we would be getting nothing for Christmas. The gifts would be returned. I was devastated, but knew it would be a just punishment.

Christmas morning, the gifts were still there, Thumbelina, Mr. Machine and The Game of Life were under the tree from Santa. But I felt no joy in receiving them that year.

The next year, my mother bought three different patterns of gift wrap. She used one pattern for Judy, one for me and one for Greg with no gift tags. That way we couldn’t know which present was for which child. But we weren’t tempted to cheat again.