The Christmas Box

[BrewerGeorge]

I just heard a story from a friend whose family has been exchanging the same decorative box among themselves for 60 years. Now entering its fourth generation, The Box is a very, very important Christmas tradition in their family. He says it has crossed the Atlantic twice and he first got it as a young Airman in Guam. What's inside is not important, but getting The Box is a Big Deal.

I had never heard anything like that before was very moved by the story and tradition. I'm going to try to start something like that with our family this year if I can.

Has anybody else ever heard of anything like that?

 

[BattleGnome]

I’ve heard a story of two brothers passing the same birthday card back and forth for decades.

Several years ago my mom started saving my dad’s birthday card and has been giving him the same one - he hasn’t noticed, she writes the year on the back to keep track.

My sister and I were passing a box back and forth for a while but I think it was purged when she went minimalist.

I have gotten the same Christmas gift bag under the tree for nearly ten years. I think my parents accidentally put one of my brother’s presents in it last year and confused everyone. (My name is written in sharpie on the bag but they had put a tag on it with my brother’s name)

 

[navigator9]

My best friend started a tradition between the two of us years ago. Ours is not a box, but a silver ball that's hinged, and opens up so that you can put something inside. It's about three inches in diameter. It doesn't matter what we put inside it, it just has to be able to fit. Over the years, we've included things like jewelry, tickets, a silk scarf, a toy snake with a Santa hat on, a lump of coal. You never know what you might find inside that ball! :shock:

 

[dibbles]

I hadn't heard that tradition, George, but it is lovely.

One tradition that we have started with my grandmother saving my dad's first rattle and hanging that on the tree. My mom saved mine and I saved my children's. I have my dad's and mine hanging on our tree and have given the kids' to them.

 

[lenarenee]

If you have a large family, maybe you can expand the tradition somehow. Christmas is once a year, so with 50 relatives - people wait a long time for that box!

As a kid we had a tradition that started as a joke but lasted 20 years. My mother's side of the family lived out of state and we exchanged gifts through the mail. My mother received her gift (and it was large!) - wrapped in plain paper that had been completely covered with stickers! No doubt my uncle was responsible for that idea! Being kids - we thought it was great, but the adults thought it was almost anti-Christmas to not have store bought shiny paper and bow! Being a trooper - my mom mailed their gifts next Christmas - using the sticker paper!! And on and on it went, with a little patching done with new Christmas stickers.

One year the package from that side of the family never arrived - and it was the year they had the sticker paper. It was lost. Not only was that the end of the sticker paper tradition, but given the cost of gifts and shipping, we changed to only exchanging cards for Christmas.

 

[Kamahido]

We have a story we read after Christmas dinner called "The Shoe Box: A Christmas Story".

 

[jcandleattic]

One tradition we have that has lasted nearly 40 years, is giving my dad his gifts in overlarge boxes. It started because for years my dad was notoriously good at guessing gifts. For whatever reason, he could look at the wrapped gift and just know what was in it, even if it was just a square box.
So my brother decided one year he was going to put dad's gift in a huge box with bricks on the bottom and see if he could guess. That was the first year my dad was wrong in guessing the gift was. That had to have been in like '75 or '76. We have been doing that for him ever since. He can still sometimes guess what he's getting but for the most part he's stopped guessing, and now everyone laughs when he gets something like the size of a ring in a box as big as a TV box or bigger.