Just like every couple, Paula and I have developed traditions around the way that we do things at Christmas. We shop for most things together (except for the ones from Santa of course) and then we sneak everything into the house and hide them somewhere that we're pretty certain is safe from snooping eyes. We change that spot every year just in case they've gotten wise to us.
On Christmas Eve we set our alarm clock for about 2 AM Christmas Morning and when the alarm goes off we get the gifts from their hiding places, wrap them, and stick them under the tree. I'm not a very good wrapper, so I always fetch the gifts and get strips of tape ready while Paula wraps. Then, when she's done wrapping them, I will put the name tags and bows on them. We always do one tag for each of the kids that says that it's from Mom and Dad, but the others always say Santa.
Because we generally end up going to bed late, we're usually pretty tired when we get up at 2 AM to do that wrapping and we find ourselves making little mistakes like cutting the paper too short or putting the wrong name on the tag and stuff like that. In fact Paula, always cuts at least one piece of paper too short and giggles about it; it's one of those little unintentional traditions that always makes me smile.
So a few years ago the kids got up, as usual, at around 6 AM, ready to open presents. Someone always takes the initiative to grab them, read the tags, announce who they're from and for, and then distribute them. This particular year my daughter, who was maybe 10 at the time, was passing them out, dutifully saying "From Santa to Tyler", "From Mom and Dad to Caitlin", etc. She grabbed one of hers and with eyes the size of half-dollars read "From Satan to Caitlin". Caitlin looked at me and said "very funny dad, that's mean". The funny thing about it is that it was a complete mistake and in my sleep-deprived state I had just misspelled Santa.
So now it's become a tradition that someone says something like "there's none here from Satan are there?"
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