In the wee hours of Christmas morning, Katie and Scott Reintgen were awakened by an unexpected visitor. And it wasn't Santa Claus.
It was their 3-year-old son asking for a pair of scissors.
When the North Carolina couple woke up to investigate the odd middle-of-the-night request, they realized that their son ripped open every single Christmas present that they painstakingly spent hours wrapping the night before.
Scott, a bestselling sci-fi and fantasy writer of "A Door in the Dark," summed up the event on the morning of the 25th with a brief social media post of the Christmas tree surrounded by already-opened presents. He captioned it: "Yall. My three year old came down at 3am and unwrapped EVERYONE's presents." In 24 hours, the post received 6 million views.
The Reintgens had their three children — ages 6, 3 and 1 — asleep by 9 p.m. on Christmas Eve. The parents finished up their gift wrapping and went to sleep at 11 p.m.
Everyone but the youngest Reintgen was jolted awake at 3 a.m. when their middle child, who they refer to as "T," ran into the bedroom demanding scissors so he could open his Spider-Man web slinger.
"Honestly, I couldn’t believe he would actually open all of the presents," Scott tells TODAY.com. "It was just so shocking that you had to laugh at how ridiculous it sounded. Like you’re living out a scene in a movie or on candid camera."
Scott added a follow-up video to his social media post. He explained that T wanted to open all the presents so that nobody was "confused" and "they all knew what they had gotten." In the video's caption, he wrote that this is "a story we’ll tell for the rest of our lives."
Upon discovering the carnage around their Christmas tree, Scott helped the kids get back to sleep while Katie, who runs a popular Etsy shop named Citrus and Poppy, began the tedious work of rewrapping presents. Everyone was asleep by 4 a.m. ... but the kids woke up two hours later, eager to start opening (or reopening) presents.
“At first, I laughed. Then wanted to cry. After a second of dread, I moved into 'super mom mode', as all moms do. I see you moms!" Katie says. "One of the best parts of Christmas is being a magic maker for our children. It’s funny, my oldest didn’t even notice the wrapping wasn’t perfect — he was too swept up in the morning fun to notice.”
That's right. Even though the 6-year-old woke up at 3 a.m., he didn't remember what had happened in the morning.
"When we told him about the unwrapped presents, he didn’t quite believe it. If he had been the one to go downstairs, he would have quietly inspected all the gifts and then returned to his bed without touching any of them," Scott explains. "He’s a big rule follower, so the idea that anyone would go down and start opening presents in the middle of the night would be unthinkable to him."
Were the Reintgens surprised that their middle child unwrapped all the Christmas presents? Not totally.
"This was absolutely on brand," Scott says of T. "He is our wildcard. Very adventurous. Quick to do something unexpected. While we opened gifts that morning, he kept saying things like: 'I told you you were getting one of those!' and 'I thought I already opened that one!' and 'See!'”
Katie wasn't able to rewrap every single gift, unfortunately. "We didn’t rewrap our middle child’s gifts," Scott says. "We figured he’d experienced the adrenaline rush of unwrapping already! Plus, we had run out of new wrapping paper, so using the shredded leftovers was our only option."
The experience of going viral has been a "fun" one for the family. They've enjoyed reading along on social media as other families reply with their own hilarious family Christmas stories. "We were grateful it brought a lot of light and laughter into the holidays," Scott says.
The couple wants to make sure TODAY sends a huge shoutout "to all the parents making magic in the middle of the night. You are seen and appreciated."
As for T, Katie and Scott talked to him about the importance of letting other people enjoy opening their own gifts. And thinking ahead to Christmas 2024, Scott says, "I think we’ll be waiting until early morning to put them out next year!"
