The thing I remember about Christmas: Me and my little brother slept in the same bedroom, and we’d always wake up on Christmas morning about two hours before it got light. It was still pitch-dark outside, but we were so excited we couldn’t go back to sleep. And we were under express orders not to go downstairs until Mom and Dad got up. So that was a LONG two hours. Sometimes we couldn’t contain ourselves so we’d knock on our parent’s bedroom door and ask them if they were awake yet. Which pissed them off.
Finally — after several lifetimes — they called us to come downstairs. We’d go charging down the stairs to the living room, and there it was — this mountain of presents around the Christmas tree. And what a magnificent sight that was!!
There were five kids in our family. And we’re all in our pajamas, and mom and dad are sitting there in their bathrobes, Dad slurping on his coffee trying to wake up.
We weren’t one of those families who immediately tore open all our presents in a feeding frenzy. We had this ritual we went through every year. We each had a red stocking with our names on it hanging on the mantel, and the first thing we did was take them down and open them up. They were loaded with candy and little toys and knick-knacks.
Then, one-by-one, we’d open the presents that we children had bought. “First let’s all open all the presents from Peter.” And so forth.
And then the big moment. We each had a pile of about eight presents from our parents, numbered from one to eight. From the smallest present to the biggest present. And we’d open them up one by one. “OK, everybody open up present number one.” And so forth. The first couple of presents were usually pretty dull. New socks or new mittens, stuff like that. But they got progressively better as we moved up the numbers. And the big number eight present was usually the one thing we wanted most of all. So my parents milked it for all the excitement they could get.
By the time we were done, the living room was a mountain of ripped-open wrapping paper and ribbons piled half-way up the Christmas tree. And we’re all playing away with our new toys and eating all the primo candy bars, and generally it was a pretty merry Christmas every year at our household.