How the Grinch, or your Siblings … Stole Christmas

 

Imagine yourself as a six year old little girl.  It’s Christmas and you have been working your damnedest to make sure you get on the Nice List.  You asked Santa for Pokemon cards and a Polly Pocket and, by golly, you’re gonna get it all!  You spend five hours with your aunts, uncles, cousins and other family. just waiting for the time when your parents announce it’s time to go so you can run home, jump into your flannel jammies and go to sleep.  You barely fall asleep with all the excitement and look forward to your sixth Christmas morning.  It may be your sixth, but it’s the first Christmas morning that actually means something to you.  It’s the first one that you really “get.”  It’s the first one that you truly understand Santa, his elves and the Nice vs. Naughy Lists, and consequences for your actions.

But you have a disadvantage this year that you don’t truly understand at all.   It’s a discretely hidden disadvantage and it’s so cruel and unusual that you have no idea that it even exists.  It is the fact that you have siblings that are a bit older than you.  Seven and 10 years older than you, to be exact.  And they think they’re funny.   They think that duct-taping you to a chair to teach you how to wash dishes is their duty as siblings.  They are warped individuals and you go to bed feeling like all is sugar plums and fancy Santa dances in the world.  In short, you go to bed oblivious to the horror that is to become your sixth Christmas Morning.

All the while, in your oblivion, your brother and sister (and I mention the brother first because he, of course, would be the mastermind of the evil that is about to ensue, duh) are doing their damndest to keep their eyes open until your parents go to sleep so they can unleash the most evil scheme they have ever hatched in those warped little teenaged brains of theirs.

They feign sleep.  They snore mockingly as your parents “assure” they are resting soundly.  They listen to every sound ‘Santa’ makes in the living room below.  The jolly fella has come and gone.  Cookies have been snacked upon.  Stockings have been filled.  Santa has, once again, averted the lenses of the video camera that was set up to catch him in action on this very special night. When all activity has ceased, they creep into your room to make 100% sure you are asleep for the night.  It is time.  The time is now, while you are resting angelically amongst your gumball comforter in your cozy Doug pajamas, snuggling up to a Barney stuffed animal.  The time when your older confidants will willingly betray you, thinking they are doing the funniest thing that has ever been thought up by human teenagers.  They will play the practical joke of jokes.

They slink downstairs like a pair of evil Disney villains, literally creeping, one stair at a time, closer and closer to the most diabolical scheme the world has ever known.   All the while, you are snuggled, dreaming of a morning full of Shrinky Dinks and Easy Bake Ovens.  They continue their evil little creepiness past beautifully wrapped packages, many of them bearing their own names, but of no surprise, since these teenage demons have already discovered “Santa’s” special hiding spots and have scoped out their own packages, sometimes unwrapping and rewrapping gifts in anticipation of the big morning.  They sneak past these packages and out the back door of the home you all share.  Out to the backyard and quickly to the barbecue.  The barbecue that your dad prepares with such love your sister’s favourite barbecued chicken for her April birthday.   Where he prepares your brother’s clam bake birthday for his August celebration.  The barbecue that has, and will continue to prepare so many family celebrations after the betrayal it is about to relay upon you in just a few short hours.   They quietly sneak out the back door, in disbelief that they have not yet been discovered in the early hours of Christmas morning.

They sneak, amazed, yet morally unsure of their mission, straight to the barbecue, still housed outside next to the shed, as weather is mild on Long Island in the winter.  They lift the lid of the house of shame and discover, much to their amusement, that this barbecue does, in fact, run on coals.  They lift the cover, then the grates, and collect as many small pieces of coal as they can handle.  As they slowly put everything back in place, they are intrigued that they have not been caught just yet.  They ease their way back into the house,  tip-toe back through the living room and straight to the stockings hung on the wall.  They head straight to YOUR stocking, adding four or five lumps of coal to the top of what is likely hair ties, chap stick, a pez dispenser and a new toothbrush.  Had they really wanted to get away with their deception, they would have put a piece or two into their own stockings.  But no, the pea-brained teenage thought process did not take them that far.  It only took them as far as “play a prank on a six-year old.”   They did not think how you would react in the morning.   They did not think about what your parents would say.  They did not think about the years of emotional pain it would cause you.  They only thought that you were a six-year old brat, that they were far more intelligent and that you needed to be taught a lesson.  How cruel.

Back to bed they crept, with knots in their stomachs, unsure if they were knots of giddiness or ones of dread, as they will undoubtedly be punished.  Their cat-nap lasts until approximately 5 am, the usual Christmas morning waking time, as per your brother.  (20 years later, he still wakes at this time on Christmas morning, true story.) The tradition in your house is “Stockings First!!” so you and your siblings run to pull them off the wall, except they are hanging back a bit, overly curious at what your vessel had to behold.  You pull out a single piece of coal and look up with an unsure frown.  Your sister and brother look wide-eyed at the discovery.  Your mother shoots a look of death at your father.  (Unbeknownst to your siblings, dear old dad had the same idea – for the three of you – that Christmas morning, but stood down at the spewing of ugly threats from your mom.)  Then came a second piece, and a third and the look of heartbreak.  When it was revealed that the two elder children did not receive any coal, it was clear what went down.   Big bro and big sis giggled a bit but did not gloat in the satisfaction that they had anticipated feeling.  I guess they actually DID love you a whole bunch.  (Still do, for the record.)

Author’s note:  I’m fairly certain that was the year we went out after Christmas and bought little sis all the Pokemon cards she could handle.  The very same Pokemon cards that now litter the floor from one end of my house to the other at the hands of my seven-year-old daughter.  “Revenge is a dish best serve cold,” is what they say.  Well played, little sis.  Well played.