Shawn P. B. Robinson

I’ve been thinking lately of writing and posting some true, fun, short stories from my life on my blog now and then, and today is the first one!  It’s also my way of saying, Merry Christmas everyone! I love you, I hope you enjoy the story, and I hope you have a wonderful Christmas!

A Robinson Christmas

I think I was about four years old.

Christmas was always a special time for my family. We never really had much money, but my parents did their best to go out of their way to shower us with gifts. As an adult, I’ve learned that Christmas is so much more than gifts. I see it in terms of my faith as the time when we celebrate the coming of Jesus Christ to bring peace between God and man. But as a child, the gift-giving part (or the gift receiving part) seemed much more important.

My parents had a rule. We were not to open the gifts until they climbed out of bed and joined us downstairs. In movies, I often see kids run downstairs on Christmas morning and just start ripping open the presents. It always seems odd to me. I think, “Why are their parents allowing such madness to run amok?” Perhaps I do not think those exact words. Perhaps I am just exploring opportunities to use the word “amok.” But regardless, I have continued the tradition with my children. We open the presents together.

My oldest sister, however, never really waited until Christmas morning. Not as far as I know, anyway. She would, over the course of the Christmas season, sneak to the Christmas tree and open each of her presents as neatly as possible so that she could see what was inside, then re-wrap them, leaving no evidence of her evil deeds. I suspect she also opened our presents to see what we were getting, but I’ll leave that for her to confess.

To keep the rest of us out of our presents, at least on Christmas morning, my mom came up with an ingenious solution. She knew very well it would be difficult to keep all four of us from unwrapping our gifts while they did their best to sleep in past four a.m. on Christmas morning.

After we went to bed and were sound asleep, or at least trying to fall asleep, my mom would set herself to work. She would lay out four piles of unwrapped presents for us. The piles of gifts often were not the big presents but were instead small toys for us to play with.

The four piles, one for each of my older sisters and one each for myself and my younger brother, were not labeled. We were not absolutely sure who each pile belonged to, but we took our best guess. My brother and I could easily tell our piles from our sisters’, but the challenge was in which “boy-pile” of toys was mine and which was my brothers. Sometimes we would find something in a pile that was clearly for one or the other, but other times we would pick the wrong pile, play with those toys until our parents woke up and then switch when my mom pointed out our mistake.

On that particular Christmas morning when I was four, however, something different happened.

I can remember coming downstairs, full of excitement and anticipation. I ran into the living room and found what I thought might be my pile of unwrapped toys. My brother dove into his, and my sisters settled in with their toys.

But that morning, the front door opened. We lived in small town, southwestern Ontario, and it was the 70s. I guess we never really locked the doors. In hindsight, it would have been wise to take a different approach to home security.

The door on the front of our house opened and in walked Santa. We were, of course, pleased with the turn of events. It had not occurred to us that Santa might want to visit us while we were opening our presents. To be honest, I’m not sure I believed in Santa, but that did not spoil the moment. Details such as that were largely unimportant to me. Santa had arrived!

He came in, all dressed in his red suit, and I expect he was laughing his “ho-ho-ho” kind of laugh. He then sat down and ordered us to open our presents.

We knew, of course, that our parents were not in favor of such a reckless decision at such an early hour, but it was, after all, Santa. We jumped on our presents and ripped open one after another, thrilled with each and every one, other than the socks and sweaters, of course.

It was a morning to remember. Santa had come to be with us while we opened our presents. What joy had come to the Robinson household!

When we were finished, Santa stood up and walked out of the house, and we were left with all our presents to play with. It was a good day indeed.

A short while later, our parents came downstairs. They had managed to crawl out of bed at an hour reserved for sloths and teenagers—likely somewhere around 6:30 or 7:00am. I can remember looking up and seeing them walk into the living room. They were shocked. One of them, I forget who, my memory fails me on such an important detail, asked in a deep, manly, fatherly voice, “Why did you open your presents?”

We told them, of course, that Santa had come and commanded us to open our presents. I suspect those reading this account might be thinking it was my dad who had dressed up and then somehow ran around to the back of the house to get out of the costume and into his pajamas.

It wasn’t my dad.

To be honest, we never figured out who Santa was.

There were the nice theories, such as it was my grampa, dressing up and just trying to be difficult, but he never admitted to it. There was also the not-so-nice theory: that it was a local man, dressed up as Santa from the night before, having had a little too much eggnog and traveling from home to home, entering each one and telling the kids to open their presents.

Regardless of who exactly it was, it was a Christmas to remember. I am grateful that the man in the red suit saved us the agony of having to wait literally minutes until our parents climbed out of bed.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Shawn