Some of the NXT roster recent spoke with WWE.com about their favorite Christmas traditions and memories; you can read a few excerpts below:
Montez Ford:
“My favorite holiday memory would be the night I came face-to-face with Santa. One year my mother had gathered me and my sisters together, made us a nice warm meal and, afterwards, we prepared cookies and milk for Santa. I was really jealous of the fact that the cookies we left for Santa were the chewy Chips Ahoy! and hoped that maybe he wouldn’t like that kind because they were my favorite. Nonetheless, we went to bed after setting out the cookies and milk.
“I woke up in the middle of the night to see if Santa stopped by, but to my surprise, homie was by the tree reaching into his bag putting presents under the tree! Startled as I was, I didn’t want to make noise, but a crack in the floorboard made Santa turn, and we had a faceoff. No one moved, and we just stared in silence. It was like an old Western movie with the 7-year-old version of me staring at a 1,727-year-old man decked out in his red suit, waiting to see who moved first.”
Peyton Royce:
“On Christmas Eve, my parents would take my brother and me to look at the fancy lights nearby. At the end of the night, as we drove across a long bridge on the way home, every year my mum would point to the sky and exclaim, ‘There’s Santa, he can’t beat us home or he won’t leave any presents!’ So, my dad would race home, and we would run to bed in hopes that Santa hadn’t tried to stop by yet. I would never be able to sleep because I was too excited. I’d stay quiet and try and listen for him. Sadly, I always fell asleep before I heard anything.”
Johnny Gargano:
“Growing up, Christmas was always your one opportunity to get that one big gift you had your eye on all year. As a kid of the ’90s, before the prevalence of the internet or online shopping, your parents’ and Santa’s ability to get said gift was always up in the air. Some gifts were just flat-out impossible to find. My parents took full advantage of this childhood fear. They liked to employ what I’d later dub ‘The Christmas Story’ method. You know how Ralphie thought he didn’t get the Red Ryder BB gun when he opened all his presents, only to find it behind the tree? Well, my parents did this to me every single year.
“And guess what? I fell for it every time. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Subterranean Hockey? Santa fell asleep and left it on the unused top bunk of my bunk beds. Sega Genesis? Santa left it at the bottom of the steps of our back door when he let the dog outside. Green Ranger and Dragonzord action figure? Behind the tree. Okay, they straight-up plagiarized that one. Looking back at it, the toys were awesome, but it was really about that experience and moment my parents (and Santa) created for me. At the end of the day, that’s what Christmas is really about. Those moments of pure unadulterated joy that happen once a year. It’s a feeling and memory that I’ll carry with me forever, and one day when I have a kid, I’ll make him miserable for five minutes on Christmas morning, too.”
