Winning the lotto with stockings.

We were left with another decision a couple of weeks ago. Do we put out three stockings or four?

We decided on four and have also decided that we will put out four stockings for as many Christmases we have in our future.  That’s the way it’s gonna be!

The BC Lottery Corp has run a little campaign this season encouraging people to not give lottery tickets as gifts to underage (under 19) children.  Oops.  That’s been a family tradition for as many years as I can remember.

You know, a family that gambles together stays together.

Editorial comment:  The preceding sentence was mild sarcastic humour.  We don’t have a gambling problem.  We could quit any time…we just don’t want to right now.

Serious editorial comment:  I know gambling is a serious issue.  Just stick with me for this piece.

Anyhoo…each Christmas, ‘Santa’ would throw in a few scratch and wins into the stockings.  It was a little bit of fun and became this tradition.

I was at the grocery store a few days before Christmas and bought 3 sets of scratch and wins.  It felt wrong, so I added a fourth. They went in Chris’ stocking along with some m&m’s and a lacrosse magazine.

Now, a great alternate ending to this blog would be to say those fourth set of tickets won $4 million dollars and we added to Chris’ fund etc etc…but the ending is mainly similar to the real life story of the lottery business.  99% of tickets lose…just don’t talk about that part.

We had fun scratching the tickets and ‘won’ back about 80% of the ‘investment’ into the tickets.

I call that an entertainment expense…and yes, the ‘proceeds’ will go to Chris’ fund.

Those stockings have been with us a long time.  Ingrid made them when the boys were very young.  Hers has the lace bit on top to set it apart.  All of them have our names on them, Christian, Mackenzie, Mommy and Daddy.

That’s how long they’ve been in our family and as I walked by them every day for the past weeks I was so happy that there were four.

That’s the way it should be.