The subtitle to this post should be: "The Trojan Gift"
So, Santa is sassy. He sometimes uses creativity in his gift giving. If I'm to be true to the Best Christmas Present EVER! I can't ignore my dad. When I started high school, "Santa" got a crazy idea. He started giving my 4 sibs (2 bros, 2 sis) a "Trojan Horse" gift.
Christmas was quite regimented affair in my family. Every Christmas morning we would line up, youngest to oldest, process down the stairs after the video camera and my parents were set up, and Christmas morning would ensue.
We would all rush our gifts and tear them open and then eat Christmas breakfast. Well, one Christmas, Santa changed things up. We opened everything with our name on it, but there was one box with ALL our names attached. My parents insisted that Santa wanted us to enjoy our individual gifts, eat breakfast and then open the joint "Trojan Horse" gift.
The first year, we didn't know what to expect. We scarfed our breakfast in record time. We couldn't figure out what the huge, weird shaped box in the living room was....
Once we opened it, we realized it was like a pinata. The one "Oh my God, I have to have it!" gift was concealed in the horse/U/bizarrely wrapped box.
It was basically my parents' way of prolonging the Christmas anticipation. The box, no matter how many years we encountered it, was always an agonizing mystery. There was always a gift in it that we were really hoping for, but maybe not the one we expected.
No matter how many times the "Trojan Horse" gift appeared, usually about 6' long and oddly shaped (my dad worked in a body shop so weird shaped boxes were abundant), we never really knew what it contained. It was the last ditch effort for what we REALLY hoped for.
We received everything from our first Nintendo (Super Nintendo if I remember right), to our first DVD player, to our first family computer, to my very first CD player, to a microwave (which I still think my dad bought for himself and not my mom, no matter what he says) to a camcorder.
God bless the '80's and '90's....so many things, so much mass consumerism, so much fun.
I miss "Duck Hunt" and "Super Mario Bros" and how thrilling it was to beat "Tetris" on the first go....
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
BEST Christmas Present EVER! Part 4....
Posted by MoxieMamaKC at 3:18 AM
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2 comments:
What a cool idea! I may have to adapt that for MY family. I've done it to my best friend before, esp. when we were in high school - big box, lots of duct tape, smaller box inside, lots more tape, etc. - but it has been a long time.
That's incredibly cool. Reminds me of the pizza box year.
We were NOT allowed to touch, shake, move, well really do anything to the packages under the tree. Except 1 year we were told their was one box we could do whatever we wanted to, except open it early.
It was obviously a Godfathers Pizza box, as they were fairly distinctive back then. But it felt empty, and all the shaking in the world provided no noises or clues of any kind.
Of course it was the last gift we were allowed to open Christmas morning, and my Brother and I could hardly bear the wait. We tore off the wrapping, verified our suspicion about the box, then cracked it open... Inside was a coupon for 1 large pizza a month at Godfathers.
In retrospect, not the greatest gift I ever got but definitely the greatest gifting experience. Well at least on the receiving end.
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