Do you wanna know how to make your kids go nuts at Christmas? Hide the tree. I’m serious. Ever since I was knee high to a grasshopper’s eye my parents (and grandparents) have hidden their Tannenbaum.
Here’s how:
1) Round up the family.
2) Get a real tree.
3) Set it up in a front room by a window to enable outdoor viewing.
3) String a whole bunch of cranberry/popcorn garlands while listening to the Nutcracker Suite. This is invariably when I got the giggles. Sitting still and doing craftsy pursuits are not my forte–in fact sit down activities drive me a little wonky.
4) Decorate. Ma always sat and watched us kiddos hang ornaments. Later she admitted that she re-hung them after we went to bed. It makes sense, as kids we tended to hang ornaments all in one spot at eye-level.
4) Put up a huge bed sheet in the doorway (ceiling to floor) so the whippersnappers can’t see into the room. It helped that my parents hung a sign like “He’s watching you!”. Plus, telling us kiddies that all the presents would disappear if we peeked discouraged any sneaky business.
5) Keep the tree hidden (with the presents) until after a lengthy Christmas Eve dinner. Dinner was always the dreaded “pink meat”. At the time, I had no idea I was turning up my nose to pricey prime rib. My cousin and I always invented new ways to keep from ingesting this bloody steak and sneaking it into gram’s garbage receptacle. For extra torture show slides or home movies and insist on dessert and coffee before presents time.
6) Take the sheet down in time to some prearranged signal for the BIG REVEAL. Grandpa always took his sheet down in tune to Handel’s Messiah- the part with the Hallelujah Choir. That was our signal to come flying down the stairs tripping and arguing with each over who got to go in the Christmas tree room first.
7) Watch the kids go banana boats.
Family traditions are so cool.
