The Question of Peeking

So it’s January. Back to reality. The Christmas holidays are over. The chocolate is almost gone, except for a few stray Hershey’s kisses and a Santa candy that I opened today, then rejected when I saw it was cookies and cream instead of chocolate. Normally, I’d probably have eaten it, but after eating eight hundred pounds of chocolate and other assorted treats over the holidays, I’m trying to get in a little better shape (what an original idea for January, right?). Note that this doesn’t mean I’m avoiding chocolate—I did intend to eat the Santa—but it means I’m trying not to eat it unless I really want it, rather than just eating it because it’s there, and cookies and cream is not a flavor I swoon over.

Er . . . okay, I was a little less than accurate in the preceding paragraph when I claimed the chocolate is almost gone. The purchased-for-Christmas chocolate is almost gone, but there are those three bags of chocolate that I bought when I saw a display of Christmas candy for 75 percent off. But I’ll have you know that I haven’t opened the bags. They’re in the pantry—the kids don’t even know they’re there (though my daughter will know once she reads this blog—Shauna, keep your paws off the Reese’s Peanut Butter cups. Eat those weird sugar cookies instead).

So in the aftermath of Christmas, here’s the philosophical question for the day: when it comes to Christmas presents, are you a peeker or a non-peeker?

I’m a non-peeker. I would never want to try to discover all my Christmas presents before the big day. It’s not that I’m wonderful at delaying gratification—I always bite Tootsie Pops to get to the Tootsie Roll in the center, and I confess to skipping ahead a bit in The Way of Kings this morning and reading a scene out of order because I wanted to know what happened to a particular character. But when it comes to gifts, I love happy surprises.

My brother was a peeker. I remember my mother hiding his gifts at my aunt’s house to keep him from finding them. He claims that finding your gifts beforehand adds to the fun—you get the excitement of finding out what you’re getting, and then on Christmas, you get the excitement of actually getting it. To which I say: dude, you're a raving lunatic. So much of the fun of Christmas is in the anticipation and wondering—the not knowing—the exquisite excitement of finally finding out what Santa brought you or what's under the tree. To find out all your gifts beforehand would be a bummer (I don’t know if my brother still tries to peek—I’ll have to ask his wife).

My husband was also a peeker in his childhood. To him, the fun was in the challenge of it—finding your presents beforehand. I one hundred percent cannot relate to that. Where’s the fun in knowing everything you’re getting? How can Christmas morning possibly be as exciting if you’ve already unearthed all the gifts?

To my delight, my children have all inherited my non-peeking ways. I don’t have to go to great lengths to hide the presents—I just keep them in my closet. The kids know they’re there. My husband suggested that maybe this is genius on my part—because I don’t try to hide the fact that they’re in the closet, there’s no challenge in trying to discover them, which lessens the temptation. I’d like to claim genius, but I suspect it’s just that the kids are innately non-peekers. This year, my younger son accidentally found out what he was getting when he went to Amazon.com on my computer—oops—to look up the gift he had requested and on that page was a statement that I’d ordered it on such-and-such date. He was bummed, feeling like he’d ruined Christmas (he bounced back, of course, and was very excited, but at the moment, he wasn’t happy that he’d accidentally seen that shipping info). And we still had some surprises in store--when he saw one of them on Christmas morning--something he totally hadn't expected--he was so excited that he screamed and fell to the floor. It was a great moment.

How about you? Peeker or non-peeker?