Christmas Memories: Spilling Beans

There is a Christmas from my childhood that my family dubbed “The Christmas Kimberly spilled the beans.”

Somehow I found out although I don’t think I was on my own no matter how my sister wants to pin it on me almost all of what everyone was getting for Christmas. And then I told them. Because I thought if I knew so should they.

I’m not sure how it started. It may have been when I first spied two boxes of rollerblades in the trunk of my mother’s Honda Civic. I knew they were for my brother and I. I suppose from there I just couldn’t stop.

I was really smooth about how I told people what they were getting for Christmas. Like I told my brother that he was getting something to wear on Sunday. Something that would go on his tie. I thought it was justified if I didn’t come out and say it but gently dropped enough hints that they would put it together on their own. I’m a giver that way.

It was from this and perhaps the incessant pulling of all the presents from underneath the tree to “snoop” that my mother stretched her genius creative powers and stopped putting our names on our presents. Instead she used some sort of code. We have been reindeer, colors, stickers, puzzle pieces, serial numbers (from a $2 found in our stockings Christmas morning, the woman is a genius I tell you), scripture references. Then one year we thought she had quit as our names were once again on the presents. I will be the first to admit that I was highly disappointed. That was until we had everything divvied out Christmas morning and then she told us to switch our gifts around as what we thought was ours wasn’t really. Sometimes she just told us which was which. Other years we had to break the code using a clue that was found in our stockings.

So even though some might say I ruined Christmas that one year, from it came a pretty remarkable tradition. One we all looked forward to each year. One that I can’t wait to start with my own children.

So the moral of the story is this: it’s a good thing I spilled the beans.

This was not the year I spilled the beans.