By David Johnson
Operation Rudolph, the Mystery Tree, We Three Kings of Pop. No these are not lesser-known Christmas carols. They are actually a few of the unusual traditions that some BYU students enjoy every holiday season.
?It started out as just a bet, but it has turned into a family tradition,? said Rachel Johnson, 18, a freshman with an open major from Mesa, Ariz. ?Now, no Christmas season is truly complete until ?Operation Rudolph? has been accomplished.?
Johnson said her family?s tradition of visiting the Arizona Temple?s Christmas lights each year changed from a casual outing to a covert, military-like operation when her father made a bet with her older brother.
?My dad bet my brother that he could not change the light on the nose of a wire framed deer from white to red without getting caught,? Johnson said.
Johnson said from that Christmas forward, visits to the temple lights were different.
?Now it?s really getting out of hand,? Johnson said. ?I have brothers dressing up in Arab garb, acting like wise men to run a diversion for the sister missionaries while another sibling makes the switch. It?s really embarrassing, but it?s a lot of fun.?
Other students have equally eccentric families.
?I don?t know exactly how it started,? said Karren Thomas, 20, a junior from Los Gatos, Calif., majoring in business management. ?My dad probably just got bored spending hours hunting through the lot looking for the perfect tree.?
Now her family only spends a few minutes at Christmas tree lots, Thomas said.
?We just go to the back of the lot where they have trees still tied up with twine and we point at one and buy?sight unseen.?
Thomas said her family calls the tree the ?mystery tree? until they get it home, put it on a stand in their living room and cut the strings.
?When my dad opens the tree it?s like a big bunch of evergreen yuletide joy,? Thomas said. ?And I?m not talking about some scented holiday dish soap.?
Mathew Knies, 21, a sophomore from Houston studying zoology, knows a thing or two about family traditions. Every year his family picks a couple of other families with whom to secretly share the Twelve Days of Christmas.
?We get really into it,? Knies said. ?It?s really hard to secretly surprise a family twelve nights in a row. You have to get creative.?
Knies said there are some hazards involved with surprising people, especially those grumpy old souls that do not like to be surprised.
?One Christmas we did it to our high school principal,? Knies said. ?He called my sister into his office and said, ?You know it?s wrong to lie to your principal. Admit you did that Twelve Days of Christmas thing.? She just pretended like she didn?t know what he was talking about. She?s good at that.?
Knies said his family has had this tradition for more than a decade and has never been caught.
Many families read Luke 2 and act out the story of Christ birth in Bethlehem, but some families take it a little overboard.
?The night starts out pretty normally,? said another Rachel Johnson, 24, from Seattle, and majoring in exercise physiology. ?All my aunts, uncles and cousins get together and we have Mexican food.?
That is where the similarities end, Johnson said.
?After we eat the play begins,? Johnson said. ?Each year it gets bigger and bigger, and nobody ever brings a costume so everyone runs around stealing bathrobes tunics and towel head-dresses.?
Johnson said that because there are a limited number of principal character rolls, the number of sheep and donkeys in the production is ridicules.
?I?m all for fun but when everyone?s an ass it gets out of hand,? Johnson said.
The role of the three Magi has also taken on a modern twist. Johnson said at the end of the eighties her brother revolutionized the role.
?He really got into role,? Johnson said. ?When the three Kings walked out he was in a red leathers suit with a white glove, moon walking. I guess he though the King of Pop was a wise man. Since then a Michael Jackson impersonation has always been a part of Christmas.?