Day 8: Whose Turn Is It?

--------
Intro: The 12 Days Of Christmas Memories
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Closing
--------

When we kids were younger, and Christmas was still mostly about the presents, Santa made sure that each one of us received just about the same number of presents. This allowed us to open presents one at a time, and to go in order, and remain balanced throughout the day. One year I even noticed that my presents were discreetly labeled "R1", "R2", and so on, presumably so Santa could keep count.

(This seems like a good point to mention that Santa Claus obviously believes in making every Christmas a Green Christmas. Santa has one of the most comprehensive recycling programs the world has ever seen, in which decorative shirt boxes and other hard packaging materials are reused year after year. This was most apparent the time that I received a present that had "B11" marked in the bottom corner. Even wrapping paper is passed down from year to year, being used for a slightly smaller package each time, when the present opener preserves the paper. I tend to do this, and sometimes it means I spend 15 or 20 seconds unwrapping a gift. Teddy responds to this by finding the biggest present he can and staring at me while he tears the paper to shreds in two seconds.)

With a balanced number of gifts for each kid, it was natural for us to pick an order and stick to it. To this day we still go roughly from youngest to oldest, although Mom and Dad are part of the regular rotation now. In fact, I think Dad gets more presents than anyone these days -- easiest to amuse means easiest to shop for.

We've changed things up over the years, but most often we each open one present before breakfast -- usually this is around 10:30am, once everyone has woken up/showered/arrived -- then do the rest of the presents after breakfast, followed by stockings at some point later in the day. Mom told us that when she was growing up, Santa left their stockings in their bedrooms so they could go through them as soon as they woke up, but I like stockings at the end -- it's like a cool-down period, not too many surprises. Even though Santa wraps just about everything, even in the stockings, we kids often get the same things -- "Mmmm, chocolate Santa." "Yep, got one of those already." -- or things that are really obvious -- "Sweet, contact lens solution!"

If we get too off-track during the opening of presents, Mom will chime in with, "Whose turn is it?" (The odds of Mom saying this on Christmas are even greater than the odds of Mom saying, "I'm sorry you didn't get any Legos this year, but, you know, you didn't ask for any!") When Mom asks, "Whose turn is it?" she is really saying one of two things:

1. "I know it must be one of you kids' turn, but even if I knew which one of you it was, it would take me three tries to say the right name, so just figure it out on your own and go grab a present."
2. "Dad, we handed you a present two minutes ago, before you started telling this story, and it's still sitting unopened in your lap. Please open it."
   

When the unopened presents start to dwindle in number, Mom sometimes regroups them by recipient, which is really so she can direct things to make sure that everyone opens his or her last present together, in the last round. Family lore tells that Teddy receives fewer presents than anyone else, but I think this is blown out of proportion because of the one year in which, after a Mom gift regrouping, there were more presents left for the dog than there were for Teddy. (In fairness to Teddy, the dog hadn't started yet.)

++++

My many years as a certified math nerd (a phrase which returns 9 exact hits on Google) allow me to state that the odds of two parents and four kids making it through over two decades of Christmases without anyone being very sick at the time...those odds can be precisely quantified as "ain't happening." On that note, I'll turn it over to Allison:

"One of my favorite stories is the time Teddy had the flu on Christmas. Ben got out of the shower and walked out of the bathroom with a towel around his waist, and Teddy didn't think he could make it to the bathroom in time, so he said, 'Ben, give me your towel,' and Ben goes, 'No, what are ya, goofy?' and then Teddy proceeded to throw up on the floor right in front of him. Ben had just recently gotten his video camera, though, so he filmed the whole day of us unwrapping presents so Teddy could watch it while he unwrapped his that night, once he was feeling better."