Christmas Stories

First of all, let me say this: Don't in a moment of weakness try something you don't want to continue as a family tradition. I did. One Christmas we bought the two oldest ones new bikes. Up till then they'd had garage sale rejects.

I bought them well before Christmas and needed a place to hide them. So I thought and thought: Well, they never clean under there beds or even look under there for missing items so I hid them under their beds. When Christmas came it was a tradition to go midnight mass. Well, by the time we got home and began wrapping and playing Santa, I didn't feel like dragging them out from under their beds and putting them together at 2 a.m. Cristmas Day. Instead I came up with an ingenious plan to hide clues to their locations and leave them about the house. It was a hit! The scrambling for clues the next day was so much fun and they ejoyed it so much I had to continue to hide presents and clues for years there-after until they grew up and left home.

Second of all, let me say that we were mighty cheap in those days. No bow wasn't a recycled bow. No ribbon was thrown away until it was good and ragged. And I insisted we keep the 'to and from' tags after the ripping and tearing was all done. They only lasted a minute functionally and then we were supposed to throw them away? No way! So we saved them and those Christmas mornings at 2.m. we would ask eachother "You got one from mom to Louis? Do you have one from Louis to Patrick?" It struck me as odd they never noticed our handwriting on the tags or tat the same tags came up over and over. Until they would whisper to me in November, "Tell Santa I want a _." Little did they know the effort we put in to bring thme uniform happiness, one where everyone had a BIG present of equal stature.