Poll: Were you that kid? Or maybe you still are?

Same with my mom. And she could wrap the biggest present air tight in like 0.34 seconds. It was like watching Cutler carve up an NFL defense. Oh wait...

 

I hope you get a giant bag of coal.

 

I'd be so lucky.

 

I never really got a kick out of snooping. Had a good friend growing up who was very good at that stuff. Knew most of the subtle moves he could make without making waves.

I preferred the surprise. Besides, my parents made some rules crystal clear. No moving, picking up or messing with presents that you didn't put under the tree. And they wrapped everything, even the Santa stash, and there was no unwrapping until they were up and ready to go.

No biggie ... used to watch the early SportsCenter, anyway. The sickness started at a really early age.

 

I remember in one house we lived in from 1969-71 (but were only in that house for Christmas 69-70) my parents stored the presents in a canning pantry in the basement that had a lock on the door. I remember trying the door once and it opened. Instead of going in and seeing the presents, I instead went up and told my mom that the door needed to be locked. I had pretty good discipline for a 10-year-old.

 

I used to scope the joint for presents.

Now that it's my turn to hide them, I'm ready. My kids are too young to snoop, but just in case, I decided to put the big ticket shit in our extra luggage.

I have a Wii sitting in a suitcase in our basement.

 

I didn't snoop too much as a kid, plus my dad was pretty good at hiding them.

I'm the oldest of 5, with the younger three arriving when I was 10, 12 and 16, so by the time that crew started getting Christmas presents, I was instantly promoted to Elf First Class and got to help with the wrapping, gift-stashing, etc etc.

 

Snooped a little when I was younger, but outgrew that by about 14. The surprise was far better (and I'm not even that big into surprises.)

 

If your kids are school age, they are old enough to snoop. I think I started snooping when I was six. There was a small room -- no bigger than 10X5 -- with three rows of shelves all around it in a corner of our basement. My parents told my sister and I that it was the "secret room", when in reality it was the Island of Misfit Toys. Anything that my parents either didn't want to throw away or that they used so infrequently that it wasn't worth keeping upstairs went into that room. We pretty quickly figured out that's where the presents were.

 

I'm lazy. Not that lazy.

Besides, I've always preferred wrapped gifts to the gift bags, at least at Xmas time. I'll use bags every now and then, mainly for birthdays and such.

 

I snooped once, if you call getting up for a glass of water snooping. I walked into the living room to see my stepdad putting my first big-boy bike together when I was 5.