Operation: Christmas

I first posted this story in 2011 and have made it my holiday tradition ever since. For its tenth anniversary, I've made some minor edits.

If you haven't read it before, I hope you enjoy it. If you have read it before, I'm hoping that you make it your holiday tradition in reading it again.

Merry Christmas and best wishes for a safe and happy holiday season!

At first, we did it out of excitement for the season and impatience, unable to wait until morning. Later, it became a game about how far we could go, about how much risk we were willing to take. It was a test in organizational skills and stealth.

In time, it would become a ritual.

The first time we crept from our bedrooms and down the stairs, anxious to see what Santa had left us, my younger sister, Jen, and I faced our biggest obstacle: each other.

"Go to bed," I whispered, not wanting her to make any noise, thereby arousing the attention of our parents, who had only a half hour ago, or earlier, had gone to bed after placing our wrapped gifts under the tree. Our older sister, Holly, was sound asleep, seemingly able to contain her excitement and curiosity, and able to wait until the morning.

The first time that Jen and I met on the stairs, we got our parents' attention: "Get into bed," my mother called from her bedroom, "or Santa won't come." Reluctantly, Jen and I returned to our respective rooms, giving each other the stink eye for having spoiled the other's plans at checking out the cache of presents.

Later that night, after I had deemed that everyone was fast asleep, I slowly made my way downstairs once again. I would pause on the stairs every time a step creaked, waiting to hear if anyone had stirred at the soft noise. It took a couple of minutes to reach the ground floor and sneak to our living room, where our Christmas tree stood. I had reached my destination without arousing suspicion.

I was a stealth machine.

A faint light illuminated the living room through our sheer curtains from the outdoor street lights, casting a twinkling glow off the tinsel and glass balls on the tree. My eyes, which had already adjusted to the darkness of my bedroom, could easily make out the outline of the tree and the mound of boxes and parcels underneath it. I saw the stockings, filled to bursting, hanging off the edge of the shelf of our wall unit—our house having no fireplace or mantle. I slowly approached the tree, making my way towards the light switch underneath the tree, the one that would light up the tree and give me a clear view of the gifts.

I was so busy moving quietly, using my eyes to the best of their abilities, making sure that I didn't trip over a present, that I hadn't used my ears to detect another presence. Coming into the living room, equally quiet, was Jen.

"What are you doing here?" I whispered.

"The same thing as you," was the response.

"You're going to wake everyone up," I complained.

"Not if I keep quiet," she said. "You're the one making all of the noise."

I knew that by continuing to argue, we'd wake the rest of the household. We dropped our voices to a barely audible whisper. "What should we do?" I asked.

"Want to turn on the Christmas tree?" Jen suggested.

"I was just about to do that," I said, "but only for a second." I was afraid that somehow the light would make its way out of the living room, up the stairs and down the hall, through my parent's closed door, and up to their shut eyes. Such was the paranoid logic of a young kid who was not where he was supposed to be.

Our family Christmas tree.

I reached for the switch and the tree sparkled in the warm glow of the lights. Jen and I let our eyes wander over the packages and the brightly patterned paper, trying to see through the wrap and trying to discern the gift by its shape. We kept the lights on for only a couple of seconds, and before we felt that we could run further risk, we immersed ourselves once again in darkness.

We decided that it was too great a risk to remain downstairs any longer, so we agreed to return to our rooms. We further agreed that we shouldn't try ascending the stairs at the same time, so Jen went first, and when I knew that she was safely in her room, I made my way to my own.

Operation: Christmas was born.

The next morning, as Jen and I sat in our living room with our older sister and our parents, we gave each other a smiling look, silently communicating that we shared a little secret, that we had gotten away with a reconnaissance of our haul of gifts. No one else in the room knew what we had done. We had gotten cleanly away with this act.

Leading up to the following Christmas, Jen and I privately discussed going downstairs to take another sneak peek at the gifts under the tree. But this year, we agreed that we would be more organized. We synchronized our clocks so that we would have our rendezvous better-timed. Also, with the mystery of Santa Claus pretty much worn out on us, our parents told us that they had decided that they would put our stockings at the end of our beds before they went to bed themselves. They told us that if we were to awake to our stockings in our rooms, it would buy them a little more sleep by keeping us occupied with oranges, small toys, and other treats.

Before that Christmas Eve, Jen and I had decided that when our folks came into our rooms to put the stockings at the end of our beds, we would feign sleep. We would listen for them retiring to their own room, and then we'd wait a half hour. We would then give each other an additional 15 minutes to go through our stockings and check out our haul.

And then it was showtime.

We would quietly step out of our rooms and wait for the other to show up in the hall. We would then head down the stairs together. In the weeks leading up to the big night, we would make a note of the squeaks in the steps and either place our foot on a side of that step that didn't creak or, failing to find a safe spot, avoid that step altogether. We memorised the walking pattern, going up and down the stairs until we got it right. We were confident that we wouldn't make a sound on our way to and from the tree.

In the second year, I brought a flashlight. We would still turn the tree on so that we could marvel at the packages underneath, but would use the flashlight to better read the writing on the packages to find which of the gifts belonged to us.

On our way back up, we heard a stirring from my folks' room. We froze. We didn't know if one of our parents had simply moved or was on their way to investigate some sound we might have made. We stood, halfway up the staircase, remaining silent and motionless until we deemed it was safe to proceed.

That was year two.

In the years that followed, we continued the tradition. Jen and I got more sophisticated. We drew maps of the upper and ground floors, marked out a plan of where who should be at what time. We ran drills when we were home alone. Operation: Christmas became a finely choreographed exercise.

We became emboldened: we'd turn the lights on the Christmas tree and leave them on for as long as we were downstairs. We'd stay longer, counting up our presents and figuring out what each one was, based on what we had asked for versus the size of a package. We would get ourselves a snack from the kitchen and eat it, surrounded by wrapped boxes.

In our teens, we would unwrap the gifts, confirming what we suspected the package to be. If we could further remove the gift from it's casing or box, we'd do it. We'd play with our stuff. And then we would carefully re-wrap the present and put it back where our parents had arranged it. Some Christmases, we'd return to our bedrooms, knowing exactly what we we would be getting, for real, in a few short hours.

The thrill of Christmas morning came in the form of feigned surprise, both of us doing our best at keeping from laughing out loud. Sometimes, Jen and I couldn't make eye contact for fear of bursting out in hysterics.

We also enjoyed the surprise of seeing what our sister, Holly, had received under the tree. The thought of unwrapping her gifts during our operation wasn't even a consideration. Touching Holly's presents was clearly taboo.

Operation: Christmas went on for years, until Jen finally moved out of the house. Even though she was younger than me, she flew the coup first. Our game was over. I never went to check on the presents by myself. Operation: Christmas wouldn't have been the same without a partner in crime.

When we became adults, Jen and I confessed our crime. Our parents wouldn't believe us. They couldn't accept that we would have the capability of pulling off such a caper, that we'd be able to unwrap gifts, play with the toys, and put the presents back together. Not without our parents detecting anything was amiss. Jen and I just looked at each other, smiled, and shared our memories in silence.

For us, the magic of Christmas includes our scheme. For me, remembering Operation: Christmas was a ritual that brought me closer to my sister than any other game we played as kids during daylight hours. It was our special time together.

And isn't that what Christmas is all about?

Note: the photo that was used in this blog post was from a photo that I shot on the very last night that my sister and I carried out Operation: Christmas. I took this before going to bed, before starting 'the mission.'