My Mom Ruined Christmas for Five Minutes – And Gave Me an Epiphany

On Christmas Day as a boy, I always woke up before my parents, trying to wrangle them out of bed before sunrise. I got up one Christmas morning at about 5:30 am when I was six years old, almost 7; my birthday is in early January. My mom had been up until about 3 a.m. making cinnamon rolls for the holiday morning. She was always up late on Christmas Eve. 

I was the second-wave family for my parents. My sister and brother were already out of the house when I came along. They each had an oldest child less than two years younger than me.

So, despite being the youngest in my family, I grew up like an only child... Except that my sister lived about half a mile away in my small California central coast town of Nipomo So, at times I felt I was an older brother to her kids while feeling more like a cousin to my brother’s offspring. My brother lived in a nearby city, Arroyo Grande, but I saw them about once or twice a month most of the year, so I wasn’t as close to them as I was to my sister’s kids.

So, our tradition with my mom and dad was to get up on Christmas morning and get breakfast pastries - usually my mom’s cinnamon rolls or sometimes Mexican pan dulce from the local Hispanic bakery - on the coffee table, along with my parents’ coffee (a “must have,” especially my mom). Usually, I had hot cocoa.

Sometimes my dad would start a fire in the fireplace before the presents could be opened. But no matter what, he always had to shave before opening gifts, which I would watch him do while trying to explain that he could do it later... I think he was stalling to keep me waiting so he could get the aforementioned coffee.

Other Topics of Interest

‘Carol of the Bells’ – A Melody From Ukraine’s Pokrovsk

The melody from Carol of the Bells comes from Ukraine’s Pokrovsk, a city the Russians are desperately trying to capture and rid of Ukrainians.

You see, in the US, parents get their kids many presents—a ridiculous amount of money is spent on gifts in December. There’s usually one really big one—a bicycle, then, or a computer nowadays—a lesser major gift such as a CD player, and many smaller gifts.

My relatives would usually drop gifts off, or we’d bring them home from my brother’s house where we had spent Christmas Eve—along with my sister’s family; the parents, sisters, nephews, and nieces of my brother’s wife; my grandma, et al. These gifts would join the many others—including the inevitable sweaters, socks, minor toys, and lots of books (I’m a bookworm who started early)—that were wrapped and gathered around the tree.

Incidentally, when my mom went to the store during the holiday season, I would carefully try to ascertain unobtrusively what was in the box - not that I wanted to know, just kind of to give myself a little clue.

For the unwrapping session, all three of us had to be in the living room, my parents in their favorite spots, mom on the sofa, dad in the armchair, and me sitting cross-legged on the wall-to-wall carpet between the tree and the fireplace.

There was no free-for-all. You had to open each, one at a time, in turn. Mom would curate the order so the big gift would be at the end. And we would read the tag for who it was from—which I had already noted in my surreptitious spying activity beforehand.

Before this ritual began, I was allowed to take the gifts out of the stocking hung from the flagstone mantle draped with twinkling lights. Of course, the lights had to be turned on before the beginning of the unwrapping, which would take about two hours.

On this fateful morning, I took the chocolates, traditional oranges, Matchbox and Hot Wheels cars, etc., out of my stocking.

Then I noticed the number of gifts had not increased since going to bed.

I frantically looked at the gift tags: from Mom, from Dad, from my sister and her family, my brother and his family, from Grandma.

But no “From Santa”! Santa didn’t come!

I suppose I panicked at that age... My mom just arrived in the living room en route to the kitchen, bleary-eyed and a bit cranky from sleep deprivation...

“Mom, Santa didn’t come last night!”

“What are you talking about...?” she queried while wiping her eyes to get the sleep out.

“There are no presents from Santa under the tree! It’s only the presents you got me! Santa didn’t come and bring any presents!” I explained the news in a distraught voice.

I may have set her off with my remark about only getting presents from my parents...

They were on a tight budget, but I usually got a few of the things I had asked for. Even if it went beyond their means. When I was a teen, they bought me a decent electric guitar amp. They did it because I had worked at a local golf course and bought myself a Gibson Les Paul Custom. I had the world’s finest electric guitar with no amp to play through! They took care of the problem!

But at six, nearly seven...

My mom, in exasperation, exclaimed:

“What?! There’s no such thing as Santa Claus. All the gifts you ever got were from your dad and me, not some make-believe character from a cartoon!”

I denied it once, but I knew it was true... Again I protested, but she doubled down and went to make coffee. I began crying and went to see my dad in his shaving routine.

“Mom said there’s no such thing as Santa,” I complained to my dad as he maneuvered the Norelco around his chin.

“Your mother’s right, it’s just a story.”

So, I went into the living room and started to think: This meant I could narrate my plans for my gifts with my personal elves all December and months before. No more Santa’s lap at Sears or JCPenney or in the shopping mall.

And I now had “adult-only” knowledge! I would break the news to all the other kids, starting with my quasi-siblings.

That afternoon when we went to my sister’s house, as we did every year, with whatever portable toy I toted along (Star Trek action figures or a new aviation book), I let my niece and nephew in on the secret. They didn’t believe me at first but did after I explained. And my sister just shrugged her shoulders when asked by her daughter and son.

Then my brother and his clan showed up... His wife heard about the intel leak and pulled me aside: “Don’t you ever tell my kids about Santa!”

At once, she confirmed it all in one sentence—my new knowledge was factual, and she unwittingly ensured I would sabotage her kids’ fairy tale world... I had a mission now!

I did tell her kids, on the sly; they claimed not to believe me. But I reminded them every holiday season.

Upon my return to school after New Year’s Day, I told all the other kids one by one.

Some believed me, others went home and asked their parents and returned with a lame rebuttal that I took apart - flying reindeer? All the world in one night? A fat guy going down a chimney?

And so began my life as a skeptic, a seeker and disseminator of the facts, an analyst asking how and why.

I felt privileged to be in the know.