How I Celebrate Christmas 3

When I was a young boy in The United States I think my family’s Christmas tradition was the same as in most other families. Months before Christmas my brother and I would write a letter to Santa Claus detailing exactly what we wanted for Christmas that year, sometimes three or four pages worth of things. After writing the final draft of our lists my brother and I would submit them to my mother in November for her to send to Santa Claus in The North Pole. Throughout the month of December gifts would slowly start to pile up under our Christmas tree. On the morning of December 25th we would wake up bright and early and wait for my mother to wake up so that we could open the presents. My mother would eventually wake up and we’d open the presents and be amazed every time that somehow our letters had made it to Santa and he’d gotten us exactly what we wanted.

As older children we eventually came to know that those lists never actually made it to the North Pole and that my mother had been the one buying all of the things we’d asked for. When I was seventeen years old or so we started a new tradition in my family, we would gather together at my grandmother’s house every year on Thanksgiving day and after eating dinner we would all write down our names on a small piece of paper and put them in a box. There were usually eleven or twelve people present and we’d shake that box around a bit and draw a name blindly, it had to be a secret.

With the name we’d randomly chosen we then had to start thinking about what kind of Christmas gift that person would like. We set a maximum spending limit of thirty dollars or so, that way no one would buy anything too expensive or cheap. The very first year I drew my older cousin’s name, she was twenty years old at the time and I honestly had no idea what she might’ve been interested in. I spent a few weeks panicking and stressing about what I should get her but I didn’t want to break the rules. I had to keep who I’d selected a secret. After thinking a lot and asking around I ultimately decided to buy a scarf, because it was cold at the time.

Christmas morning eventually came and once again most of my family gathered together at my grandmother’s house. This time the presents that everyone had bought in secret were sitting under my grandmother’s Christmas tree. I had spent twenty or thirty minutes wrapping the gift I bought, it was a lot more difficult than I imagined it would be. It was clearly wrapped by an amateur. After another dinner and some games or singing it was finally time to open the presents and I got nervous immediately, I wasn’t worried at all about what I was getting but how everyone would react to my gift. “Who even wears a scarf in Texas?” I thought. My cousin was one of the first people to open a gift and she said, “oh, it’s nice” or something to that effect, clearly unimpressed and disappointed. The gift I received was a pair of socks, from my grandmother, I thought “I’ll wear socks” but I wasn’t exactly thrilled to receive them either.

From that year on we continued the same tradition of Secret Santa, and while the magic of receiving gifts from Santa Claus is gone and will never be restored there is something exciting about receiving a gift that you didn’t ask for. I have gotten more socks, food and a tie or two over the years and even though I often can’t attend the Christmas gathering back in The US I always participate in our tradition.

Spencer

Vocabulary

detail (v) to give full information about something
bright and early (idiom) very early in the morning
draw (v) to take out (an object) from a container or receptacle.
ultimately (adv.) finally; in the end