One of the biggest joys of giving gifts is seeing the other person’s reaction when they unwrap their present. Redditor u/germangirrl felt robbed of this experience after waking up on Christmas morning to find that her children had already torn through all their gifts. She asked Reddit if she was the a**hole.
“My husband is usually a great husband and father, but I am so effing pissed right now. I don’t think I’ve ever been this mad. I woke up this morning around 8:30 when I heard the kids running around. I knew they would be eager to open their Christmas presents so I got up immediately.”
“I have a lot of trouble sleeping for various reasons so my husband lets me sleep in every morning and watches the kids until I wake up naturally or I have to get up to help get the kids ready for the day. He’s alone with them for half an hour to an hour. He knows what time to wake me up if I oversleep.”
“So I come into the living room and there is wrapping paper everywhere. All the presents are already unwrapped and the kids (5 and 7) are playing with them. I immediately started crying and walked back into the bedroom where my sadness also turned into anger, and I started screaming like crazy. I am so, so mad.
I spent so much time, thinking about what to get the kids, ordering it or driving around to find it in the stores, wrapping them and everything, and I feel like I was completely deprived of the joy of seeing their faces when they open their presents, which is one the best parts of Christmas. My husband said he videotaped it. I screamed at him why he either couldn’t make the kids wait, or he could’ve just come and woken me up.
He just said ‘I never wake you up in the morning’ I said ‘it’s f*cking Christmas morning. You didn’t think I wanted to watch the kids unwrap the presents’ and I called him an a**hole.”
She ended the post by writing, “He just said sorry, he didn’t say I overreacted. I’m really hurt right now and I don’t even know how to get over it. I don’t feel like doing anything Christmasy today. I’m so disappointed in everybody.”
Redditors had a wide range of opinions to share, but many offered solid suggestions for how to change how they do Christmas morning in the future to avoid a similar situation.
In updates to her post, u/germangirrl mentioned that they ended up having a happy Christmas despite the rocky start, and she and her family talked about plans for the future so that it wouldn’t happen again.
“I talked to the kids about opening the presents, and my older one apologized for not waiting for me, but he was just so excited and had to open them right away. I told him it was OK, but maybe next time we do it differently,” she wrote, adding, “And we already have a plan for next year. Our kids always get one present from Santa and the rest,they know, are from us or the rest of the family and friends. The gifts from Santa will be placed under the tree and they can open them at their leisure. The rest of the gifts won’t appear until everybody is present.”
“Thank you to everybody who had reasonable input. And while there were some intense, strange, and even downright rude comments, I appreciate all the kind words I received. There are still people out there who try to make the world a better place.”
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