A Christmas Memory by Bonnie Le Hamilton

This last week there was a post on Facebook about tricking kids into thinking they were getting nothing for Christmas, and one of my little brothers (the middle one) brought up something we once did to the oldest of our brothers.

First you have to understand that Bryon was a snooper. If you hid any gifts in the house, he found them well in advance of the big day, without fail. Our mother tended to hide our gifts at the house of some friend or other. But our stepmother (the mother of the two youngest brothers) came up with another plan one year.

First, you have to know she was really good at wrapping presents. Not just neat, but very well taped. There was no way you could undo just one little corner and sneak a peek. In fact, there was no way to get a peek without having to completely re-wrap the thing. Then she came up with devious plan to make him think all he was getting was a lump of coal for Christmas.

That year, along with using so much tape, she didn’t put his name on any of the tags. I can’t remember how it was that she knew which was which (I think it was the wrapping paper) but he thought he wasn’t getting anything, without us saying so, because of course, he did find where the gifts were hidden, he had searched all those tags for his name to no avail.

On top of that, on Christmas morning all he found in his stocking was a small box designed to look like a red brick chimney and inside that box was a real lump of coal. I remember the look on his face when he pulled that box out of his stocking and looked around at all our stocking filled to bursting with treats then he looked at his box again and apologized for snooping.

Even then our stepmother refused to give him his gifts, and he actual stocking stuffers, until he’d promised to stop snooping.

Here’s hopping Santa is good to all of you! Merry Christmas everyone. 😊