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Katie and Scott Reintgen were woken up at 3 a.m. on Christmas Day by their three-year-old son, who had a loud and frightening request for the gift he had just unexpectedly unwrapped: He needed scissors.
“He wanted to open his Spider-Man web shooters, so of course he needed scissors to cut them free,” Scott Reintgen, 35, told The Washington Post. “That’s when we realized something had gone terribly wrong.”
As the Reintgens walked down the stairs in their North Carolina home, their fears were confirmed: Their young son was so excited about what Santa had brought him that he had opened all of his family's presents hours before his two siblings woke up.
“Yall,” Reintgen wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “My three-year-old came over at 3 a.m. and opened ALL the presents.”
The photo posted on social media, which had been viewed more than six million times by Tuesday morning, shows the destruction under the Christmas tree, with a pile of torn paper next to the family's unwrapped presents. The family's Christmas had been torn to pieces by their toddler in just a few minutes – and the parents now had to race against time to put it all back together.
“There was the cold realization that all the effort you had put in the night before had suddenly been undone, but most of all it was just incredible to watch,” said Reintgen, a science fiction and fantasy author and author of “A Door in the Dark,” a New York Times bestseller. “There was nothing he left intact – it was everything.”
The story resonated on social media with parents who had similar experiences and others who wondered how the Reintgens were able to re-wrap all the presents before their other two children woke up at 6 a.m. for the three-year-old's presents to open had already been unpacked.
Katie Reintgen repackaged enough presents in time to prevent, as her husband put it, “the origin story of the villain” between the 3-year-old and his 6-year-old brother, who still believes in Santa Claus.
“Of course we could have been annoyed by our child opening all the presents – or we could have had fun with it,” said Scott Reintgen. descriptive it as “the best possible catastrophe”. “We will 100 percent share this at his wedding. It’s one of those incredible stories.”
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When the parents realized what had happened, they took action and tried to save Christmas. As Scott Reintgen calmed the couple's adventurous middle child – he called the 3-year-old just “T” – he asked his son for his version of events.
T had asked Santa for Spider-Man web shooters and a Sonic Lego set, and when Christmas finally came he wanted to look for them. The boy told his family that he came downstairs to open all the presents so that “no one was confused and everyone knew what they had gotten,” Reintgen said in a letter Video posted on X.
“The Spider-Man web shooters were the gift he was looking for most, and he found them,” Reintgen told The Post. “He just didn’t have any scissors.”
I'm just adding his explanation as to why he opened everything! 😂 I also have to add: We are not evil. He is a good boy and we will tell this story for the rest of our lives. pic.twitter.com/GKiJjPjQXR
— Scott Reintgen (@Scott_Thought) December 26, 2023
Katie Reintgen quickly got to work repackaging as many of the unwrapped gifts as she could. She used a combination of new and torn paper and lots of tape. When the destroyed paper wasn't stuck to a gift, she pressed it against the floor to cover the exposed gift, her husband said.
Thirty minutes later, all the presents were repackaged as quickly as possible. It was a Christmas miracle.
“She was the hero of the night for her work repacking,” Scott Reintgen said.
But the parents had no time to rest. It was 6 a.m. and the kids were awake and ready to see what Santa had brought them.
When the family opened their presents for the first time – and T opened his presents for the second time – the six-year-old didn't realize anything was wrong, except that Santa had misheard the names of some of the presents for him or his brother.
The 6-year-old, whose father described him as a strong rule follower, was later surprised to learn what his 3-year-old brother had done.
“I think he was shocked that the three-year-old had ruined Santa’s work,” the father said. “He thought what his brother was doing was against the rules.”
After Scott Reintgen shared a photo of the destruction on Christmas morning, many spoke out on social media own stories that their children were just as eager to open their presents. As a person replied“He’s so funny and funny and this is so unfortunate in his wheelhouse.”
Later, the Reintgens talked to their three-year-old about how he feels when he opens a gift. They also emphasized that they wanted other people to have the same choice and feeling on Christmas morning. The boy agreed that he wanted other people to experience what he felt when he tore all the presents apart and reiterated that he was just trying to help, Reintgen said.
The family spent most of Christmas caring for one of their sick children, but they were happy that so many people enjoyed the story as much as they did. The 3 a.m. wake-up call, hasty repacking, 6 a.m. gift opening, and a day of family fun left Katie and Scott Reintgen exhausted.
But they know that every Christmas they can remember their three-year-old opening all the presents at 3 a.m. — and how the parents used torn wrapping paper and tape to reassemble the magic of the holiday.
“Some people said, 'We would be so mad,'” Reintgen said, “but this is the funniest thing that happened this year.”