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A Christmas Creepy Post

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I will never apologise for putting up a Christmas tree too early or too late or not at all. Christmas creep is justifiably annoying, but one thing I’ve noticed recently is the cultural commentary around when is too early and too late for decorations in the home.

Then I realised this may well be a conversation piece on that part of the web frequented only by parents of young children and babies:

why do folks insist on tormenting young children by putting gifts under the tree before Santa day or Yule or whatever you call that day you open presents? IT’S SO UNNECESSARY.

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And I was reminded of when our daughter was three and a half, and I put her Christmas presents under the tree a good two weeks before she was allowed to open them. I have fond memories of this exhilarating period as a child myself, looking at the shape of the presents and trying to work out what might be inside. My brothers and I were very well behaved. I didn’t realise how well behaved until I knew a family of three boys who basically decimated the wrapping, one small rip at a time, until the paper was nothing more than a shredded formality by Christmas Day. If we’d so much as touched our own presents, or ripped the paper in any way, there would have been hell to pay.

My three year old daughter learnt that lesson in the best possible manner: By experimenting with personal regret. One hot afternoon two years ago she toddled in to see me in the kitchen. She buried her face in my lap and sobbed. Then came the confession. She’d peeked through one of her presents and found something pink and fluffy. It was a ‘pink gog’ from Nana. She was so very sorry.

I thought she’d forgotten all about that, until last week when the now five and a half year old reminisced about the time she naughtily opened her pink dog before it was time.

“You were scared, weren’t you,” I said. “And you felt really bad.”

“Yeah. I thought you was going to kill me.”

Now I’m hoping that’s hyperbolic, but I guess that’s my parenting style in a nutshell. I wonder if I am officially old-fashioned and strict, expecting my daughter to develop self-control enough to resist opening her presents outside Christmas afternoon, when we sit down as a family and open them slowly and thankfully, one at a time. I’m sure some families would consider it torture making the children wait until after Christmas lunch, and I wonder also if we’re giving up all opportunity to teach our offspring self-control, in a society where if something doesn’t appear instantaneously, it doesn’t appear at all.

The Christmas tree will be up soon, and I will be wrapping our daughter’s presents, placing them under the tree. I’m in no doubt that she will wait, as she did last year, and that those few weeks of expectation will make her gift all the sweeter.

 


Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

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