Our Christmas quirks

I promised you all that I would do a separate post outlining some of our traditions regarding the unwrapping of presents on Christmas.  It wasn't until that year that I realized how quirky my family is when it comes to the unwrapping of gifts.

1.  We always take turns, and we establish an order before we begin.  We usually go by age, but this year we went around the room in a clockwise fashion.  We chose this order because my brother gets too excited and anxious about opening presents, and he kind of just dug in this year.

2.  I am always the Christmas elf.  It is one of my favorite things, because I have the opportunity to speculate on every single gift that is being distributed.  I'm totally nosy that way.  Also, my mom likes to put presents all the way around the tree, and then they somehow get pushed under, and nobody but me has the flexibility/desire to army crawl to the back of the tree to retrieve said gifts.

3.  My mom will always start telling people the order in which they have to open certain clusters of gifts.  It's very important to her that the main gift is not ruined by the "accessory" gifts she has wrapped separately.  I've asked her before why she doesn't just number the tags, and she ignores me and continues commanding on Christmas day.  How she keeps all of them straight I will never know.




The official command post


4.  We re-use gift bags and boxes.  There are some bags and boxes that have been in use for 20+ years now.  It's always fun to see who gets which bag or box from year to year.  Our favorite, most legendary box is the County Seat Jeans box.  We first got it some time in the mid-90's, and it has attended nearly every Christmas celebration since that time.  We make a big deal of it whenever someone unwraps it each and every year.  This year, my brother was winner, winner, chicken dinner with the box.  It contained underwear.  Good job, mom.  Good job.

5.  The tissue paper in gift bags is a big thing for us.  You can not simply remove it.  It must be teased out of the bag, then flicked across the room with flair.  My dad is the master tissue paper remover.  His style is legendary.  I wish I could have gotten video, but I'm pretty sure he would not have let me leave the house with it.  Instead, you will have to make do with photos.

This year, Ammon and I upped the stakes by doing synchronized tissue paper flicking on a gift that was for both of us.  I wish I had a photo, it was truly impressive.

6.  If we have the opportunity to make the opening of gifts ridiculous, we will.  My parents got Ammon a very large, very epic gift this year that they didn't want to take the time to wrap.  So instead, we devised a process where he had to close his eyes and fondle it, in order to determine what it was.

7.  In a normal year, my mom goes bow-crazy.  When she does so, I also go bow-crazy, and I decorate myself from top to bottom in the bows from gifts.  One year I had 17 bows by the end!  This year though, mom had a hard time getting in the spirit, so there was just one bow.  Ammon rocked it in my stead.

I feel like a real life blogger, posting all of these pictures for you.  I hope you enjoyed learning a little bit more about why I'm so darn weird... it's clearly hereditary.  Does your family have any strange Christmas traditions?  I'd love to hear about them!