Real Estate Views from St Pete

A Simms Christmas custom, as I mentioned in my last blog, was hiding Christmas stockings. It started way back when the boys were little, and eager to start Christmas morning before dawn. We got to sleep a little while longer, because they couldn't start opening presents or wake us up until they'd found their hidden stockings - and sometimes what's in them kept them playing even a bit longer.

Somehow this tradition, as traditions often do, had a mind of it's own, and the boys grew up and found more fun in hiding OUR stockings. As they grew into their teens and twenties, they become ever more clever. So, we had two groups hiding stockings, basically us older ones first, then after we were asleep the next generation started hiding. Could they find things that night accidentally - sometimes. The year I remember was when we pushed Uncle Chip's stocking up in the flue of the fireplace. The boys were hiding someone else's there, so just pushed Uncle Chip's higher. Typically they found easier to find hiding places for the oldest generation and some of the women.

There was the year they emptied a half gallon of ice cream, put a stocking in it, and put it back in the freezer.

There was the year they cut out the center of our BIG dictionary and hid Dad's stocking in it (that year they left for Chicago before he found it ... but were sure to have a new replacement dictionary as well as a bottle of whiskey to cushion their reaction from Dad.

One year in Gram's condo, with less nooks and crannies, they hid Dad's stocking in a suitcase, took off an air conditioning grill, put the suitcase in that space, and built a false floor over it.  

Another year Dad was on crutches (too much HonkeyTonk at a Christmas party) so the rules said it had to be below his head level  -  they opened (by ungluing the bottom) a new huge box of laundry detergent in the laundry room, emptied as much detergent as the stocking weighed, then glued the bottom back together so it looked like new, and put it back on the storage counter.

I could go on and on, but I think you get the idea.

So, years have passed, and for the last several years Christmases have been with one of the boys and their family, no longer at our house. Guess what - they don't want their house torn apart the way they tore ours apart!  One year of super tame hiding with lots of rules, and the tradition has died off  -  at least until we can teach our grandson to imitate his father!

Crazy family customs - it makes for wonderful memories.

Sharon Simms, Real Estate Agent selling homes in St. Petersburg, Florida, the Gulf Beaches and the Tampa Bay area.