Christmas Tradition

My niece, Sue, has of late become a very famous blogger. She has had as many as 76 comments on one post! I feel real special if I get more than two. To show her gratitude to her faithful readers and to openly steal Christmas traditions from them for her own personal use, she is running a contest. Even though she has admitted on her blog to have lied in the past, we are all assuming that she will actually determine a winner and send out the prizes. After all, her reputation is on the line here.

Here's my entry - (remember, Sue, I am your very favorite aunt and you are my most favorite niece).

This tradition came about more out of desperation and keeping my sanity. One Christmas Eve many years ago, I was feverishly wrapping a mountain of presents for my 5 children. Of course, it was after they had gone to bed, so the hour was late. While wrapping, attaching bows and gift tags, I thought there had to be a better way! So the next year and every year since, the first thing that I bought was wrapping paper. I spent time picking a particular paper for each child. My own personal guidelines were that the paper had to be primarily green or red and the theme of each roll had to relate in some way to each particular child. Since my children were all in school by this time, I would wrap each gift the same day I purchased it - well most of the time - without ribbons or gift tags. Then the wrapped packages would be stored in a closet or hopefully a secret hiding place. On Christmas Eve, Santa's job was greatly simplified since each child was paper coded. Occasionally, the kids would find the wrapped packages (they've admitted this). But all they could do was try to guess which wrapping paper was theirs.

The bonus was that since all the kids were beyond the age of believing in Santa, I could use the leftover paper the next year for gifts going to extended family and friends.

The plan saved my sanity and has made Christmas Eve less of a hassle. It's been fun to search for the ideal paper for each child. Now that the kids are grown and some with families of their own, I try to paper code each family.