Trying not to ruin moment

Don’t ask.
Don’t tell.
And, most importantly, don’t peek.
The final days before Christmas are among the most difficult when you’re a kid. There’s tremendous anticipation, so tremendous that sometimes it’s impossible for Christmas morning to live up to a child’s imaginings. There’s all that naughty vs. nice accounting to worry about. And on top of that, the adults around you are harried, distracted, and stressed.
That would be more than enough, but there’s all that temptation. All those packages wrapped and under the tree can easily move a kid from the nice side of Santa’s ledger to the naughty side in a matter of moments.
Probably because I was raised with a strong sense of Calvinist guilt (one degree less than Catholic guilt and two degrees less than Jewish guilt, my Catholic and Jewish friends assure me), I still recall vividly those times in childhood when I let Christmas temptation get the better of me.
There was, for instance, a Christmas when I was about 7 years old.
The tradition at our house was that the kids gathered on the landing of the stairs until my father was ready to come down. Then and only then could we tumble down the last remaining steps and open our stockings.
But that year, standing on the landing or maybe one step beyond the official limit, I leaned forward and craned my neck and could actually get a glimpse of my Christmas stocking.
And I saw something. It was a hand puppet that matched a hand puppet on Captain Kangaroo.
I saw it perhaps 45 seconds before we were allowed to go downstairs, but that 45 seconds ruined the surprise.
I was beyond Santa at that point, but I felt that I’d cheated just a little bit, and the feeling was uncomfortable. No one knew but me, but I knew. And that was enough.
For years, that memory kept me scared straight as far as Christmas surprises were concerned.
But about the time I was 11 or 12, there was one package that fascinated me.
It was a box about 10x10x10 inches, and it was wrapped in multiple layers of tissue paper. Puzzling endlessly over the package, I started stretching the tissue paper to see if I could read through the wrapping and figure out what was in the box.
I tried and tried and had no luck, then suddenly I could read what the box said. It was a Viewmaster projector, a device I’d have to explain to anyone under 30 today.
And it was a pretty cool present.
But I’d ruined it — or nearly so — by my persistence and my impatience.
So these days, I don’t ask, I don’t tell, and I don’t peek. I’m not even inclined to give a package a rattle on the off chance that I might actually guess what’s inside and spoil the surprise.
Not every kid (or former kid) feels the same way, of course.
At the house next door when I was growing up, one of my best friends and his sister, who was best friend to one of my sisters, took a completely different approach.
If the coast was clear, they’d not only peek at their presents, they’d unwrap them, play with them, and put them back in the box before their parents found out.
I’ve often wondered what they would have thought if their parents had removed the previewed packages entirely and substituted them with things like socks and long underwear.
Now that would have been a Christmas morning surprise, though not the kind kids dream of.[[In-content Ad]]