Because the holidays are about sharing

[Andraste]

My brother and I were allowed to open one present, each, on Christmas Eve, a little while before going to our Grandparents? house for family festivities. At first, we were just excited to open a package, any package. As a result, I often went for the biggest one with my name on it and my brother usually went for the one with the paper that said, ?Open Me? printed all over it in green.

But this was in our young, and naïve years. We hadn?t yet learned that the big packages usually contain clothes, which are not exciting Christmas presents until the teen years, if even then. Also, we hadn?t yet realized the ?Open Me? paper was a not-so-subliminal message to open the new scarf and gloves set because it?s rapidly becoming cold outside and we don?t want the fingers to freeze, now do we?

 

[Andraste]

Original Comment by: Randall Fitzgerald
http://www.ikimashou.net
My mother is actually a horrid lying harpie from the depths of hell, and here's why. Last year, I'd decided that a Nintendo DS would be my big ticket item for the year. Usually it's a console, but sometimes there's an off year so I'll settle for some gadget. Anyway, I had opened everything she got me, which amounting to a bunc3h of crappy clothes and some batteries and a calendar or something. All that was left was a big hefty box and my mother had told me that she forgot to preorder the DS and I'd known it was sold out all over, so I was sort of wondering what it could be. It turned out it was a jacket and I was wholly disappointed. Honestly, I would have socked her one. Haha. Anyway, it turned out that she had hidden the DS and a game inside the folds of this gigantic winter coat along with a game and all was ok. She has a manner for doing that and I swear it pisses me off every time. Why parents? Why must your torment us so?!

On a side note, my mom would let us open one gift on Christmas eve, but she would sort of dictate which one it was, invariably she would insist that we open what I knew to be jeans, thereby taking the entire point out of the exercise.

I would also like to post a question to everyone. Have you ever experieneced the total let down of a parent pretending to have not gotten you something, only to have them kept it secret somewhere? Why is it, do you think, that we are so quick to suspect those that we love the most of letting us down?

 

[Andraste]

Original Comment by: Chorazin
http://chorazin.livejournal.com
Huh, actually Randall, my best X-mas memory is about a parent hiding something from me that I really wanted.

I REALLY wanted Powermaster Optimus Prime (POP) when I was a wee lad. I mean, REALLY wanted. Annoyingly wanted, the way only children can focus on a singular item and want that more than life itself.

My parents has recently divorced, and money was tough for everyone. Back in the day I think POP was 40 or 50 bucks. which is a lot to spend on a single toy. My mother and father were both in attendance on Christmas morning, which was the last Christmas they saw each other at. I opened up all my other gifts, which were mostly clothes and some cheaper Transformers I had my eye on. I was quite dissapointed.

They could see the look of sadness on my young face, and my dad said "I think you missed something behind the tree." I went back behind it and there was a long box in green wrapping paper, with a note on it from my mom. She smiled approvingly when I pulled it out and tore into it with reckless abandon.

POWERMASTER OPTIMUS PRIME WAS MINE!!

I was overjoyed. Ecstatic even. Thinking back upon it, I think I was more overjoyed that both my parents were there with me, but at that moment I wasn't worried with such concepts as divorce which can cause one to grow up faster than normally necessary. At that time I was just a happy kid with the best present ever.

Oddly enough, while I was in college (near Christmastime) the Japanese company that invented the Transformers, Takara, reissued a toy called God Ginrai, which was the model for the American Powermaster Optimus Prime. I saw one on e-Bay for rather cheap, and I was overcome with a waive of nostalgia and wanted one awfully bad. Sadly, I didn't have the money, but I asked my mom to front me the cash and she gave me the money as a gift, in essence, buying me the same gift again only a decade later. Funny how things work, isn't it?

 

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Original Comment by: BacksideNine
http://www.boardroom.com
Ah, christmas. The second season NES was out i got a console and a used copy of castlevania. I had always played atari at the neighbors house and the 'tendo was all i wanted.
Hooked ever since. Nintendo had more a part in my upbringing than both of my parents or television.
The xmas that i recieved SNES is a fond memory.
Enough lemonade porch stories.

 

[Andraste]

Original Comment by: Slartibartfast

Randall:

Your mother is a "horrid lying harpie from the depths of hell" even though she bought you the DS? If you were my kid your christmas present would have been a slap to the face and a drive through the slums so you could learn to appreciate what you have.

I have never been mad at my parents for not getting me something. Dissapointed, yes, but never mad.