Are you finding it harder and harder to please your kids in your gift giving? Last year we came across a hilarious micro-experiment where a father gave his three-year-old a wrapped 21 cent box of raisins as a Christmas gift and recorded his son's reaction. Then he tried it the following year - what a difference a year makes!
The father, author of The Sneeze, recorded his son's "raisin reaction" at age three (hear it here) and rated his excitement at a 6 out of 10. Fast forward a year and dad again wraps up a box of raisins for his now four-year-old. You can hear the audio here, but here's the transcript: "What did I get? Okay...RAISINS?!? He gave me raisins! (Actual foot-stomps of misery.) (Handing box to my wife.) Put this back in your food!"
After that the raisins became a family joke and his son would jokingly repeat the now infamous lines above throughout the year. Of course Dad didn't stop so last year he wrapped up a 1.5 lb canister of raisins for his five-year old. The reaction?....you'll have to find out here!
You can bet this family will keep up this perhaps odd, but very funny Christmas tradition for years to come! Last year when our son was 6-months old we made sure to wrap up a box of raisins for him. Predictably he was only interested in the wrapping paper, but we'll try again this year (a year when he's actually eaten and come to love raisins) and record his reaction for posterity.
What funny or odd family traditions does your family have?
(photo: Carrie McBride)
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I do something similar for my 5 year old daughter on her birthday... I wrap a piece of corn for her. It is always funny to see her cracking up while stating "you can't WRAP corn mama!"
I love the sneeze!
that's hilarious! my husband recorded audio of our screaming, crying infant boys with the intention to play it randomly in the middle of the night when they are like 15 years old and being pain in the butts.
oh my lord that was so funny
What bouncer is that?
I LOVE this.
The comment about recording the screaming babies...that is classic and so brilliant!
aaahhhh! i love this... great idea! but also kinda sad how as we age our expectations shift as well. :/
kjoc--that's brilliant.
My nana used to wrap onions, carrots, etc., on our birthdays. The old photos of my sister and I as we opened those packages are priceless.
Jackson - it's an Oeuf lounger.
My great aunt gives me a can of olives each year. That's it. I'm 30, and she's serious. I still pretend to be gracious. But seriously! (She keeps reminding me every year how much I loved olives when I was a kid.)
Hahaha! I have an aunt that gives me cans of olives too... however my enthusiasm is genuine :) Must be an aunt thing!
looks like an oeuf bouncer.
ROFL!
We give my stepdad cashews every year. We went to a hotel once and I told him not to open the cashews. He didn't listen. It was an extra $28 for 3oz of them.
Last year I bought my nephew a princess coloring book & wrapped it up. My brother in law took him in the next room pre-opening for the "Be grateful for everything you get" speech. So the look on his face was PRICELESS. "But this is for giiiiirrrrrllllsss!" he whined. :) We're doing something again this year.
My gram used to send my mom $5 to buy me swiss cheese for my birthday. I guess one when I was about 4, I said "thwith cheeth" and as a result was forced to eat it every birthday. Did I thay I like thwith cheeth? Becauth I don't.
Love the recording baby cries idea. And I think my 18-month-old would go bonkers over a box of raisins.
It is an oeuf lounger and you don't want it. I didn't even bother to get it out of storage for our second. Now the maclaren we borrowed from a friend, terrific design.
Sorry for the threadjack but our daughter loved the Oeuf bouncer and so did we. She used it steadily for the first seven months of her life and now that she's nearly two she uses it as a toy lounger/bouncy chair. We've lent it to friends with newborns who also loved it.
This is priceless. Makes me glad to think I still have a little guy young enough to appreciate the little things and sad to think that he ever won't!
my crazy uncle used to give me an emptied jar labeled "toxic fart fumes...beware."....inside you could see a 20 dollar bill but I was so hesitatant to open it being afraid it would smell terrible....needless to say, it never smelled bad and it was always worth opening to get the 20 bucks!
Last year, when my kids were 2.5 and 11 months, in an attempt to avoid too much junk food and save money, I put mini boxes of cereal in their stockings. It was a huge hit, possibly the overall favorite gift for both. We will be repeating this year. Will be interesting to see the difference.
I'm giving my 17 year old daughter (who, naturally, thinks I'm an idiot) a wrapped copy of Runaway Bunny.
Kind of the same idea in reverse, but this one with a simple message of, "No matter how you act or where you go, you can't run away from my love." Hopefully she'll look back on it someday and get it.
As a kid, one of my gifts was fragile, so my mom warpped it in news paper, then wrapped it in x-mas paper. Once I took the decorative paper off, I got overjoyed that I was given newspaper as a gift. Silly me!
My mom always, ALWAYS put a clementine in the toe of our stocking.
But as for non-food present traditions, she'd make us work for our presents. Either we'd have to solve a riddle before opening something, do a tricky task (say the ABCs backwards), or guess what it is (and she'd stick tiny things in boxes with books, etc., so it was hard to guess)!