Summary: <br> <br> <br> Merry Christmas to you! To mix things up a bit this week, we've gotten together your favorite This Week in Mormons co-hosts to share personal stories of Christmas most relevant to them. You'll find laughter, tears, joy, and humility in these stories from Tiffany Hales, Devin Thorpe, Al Doan, Kurt Francom, Jared Gillins, Arianne Smith, and Geoff Openshaw. We hope they will bring you Christmas cheer.<br> Transcript<br> Geoff Openshaw:<br> [0:16] Hello my little elves to die Santa.<br> Headed to this week in Mormons thanks for taking the time to tune in this week because this week is Christmas were right upon it we wanted to mix things up a little bit.<br> So what follows in this special episode are small Christmas anecdotes from the various co-hosts of this week in Mormons.<br> Some of the stories are humorous some of the stories are tearjerkers summer touching summer spiritual summer secular.<br> <br> [0:45] What's Ray's we see the common threads of the Christmas season through different lenses through different hosts I want to take this time out front to thank everyone who participated and to get things kicked off.<br> We're going to hand it over to our very own Tiffany Hales of the twin sisters was a story.<br> About how she eventually got the best of her mother during Christmas.<br> <br> Tiffany Hales:<br> [1:17] Now you may think the game of Survivor was invented by Mark Burnett and made famous by CVS and its host Jeff proust but you would be incorrect.<br> The game of Survivor was invented by me and my mother.<br> During my entire childhood Christmas was a dance my mother and I played to see who could outwit outplay Outlast,<br> my mother never wanted anybody to know what they were getting for Christmas,<br> she was famous for wrapping small items in big boxes with extra heavy items like bags of beans or towels to throw you off when you were trying to guess the gif,<br> and you always had to guess the gift before opening it so it became a game between me and my mother for her to outwit my guessing skills,<br> now my guessing skills became finely-tuned and quite Adept at a very early age I would scour the house for all the hiding places for presents until my parents got smart and started keeping the presents at my dad's business.<br> <br> [2:20] I would dig through the trash for receipts,<br> I would look in the trash for bags from stores I would even go into my mother's sewing room and dig through the fabric scraps in her trash to figure out what she might be making me<br> I would eavesdrop on conversations and I would unwrap and rewrap a present and you couldn't even tell<br> I was obnoxious and I'm pretty sure I drove my mother that to the brink of Christmas insanity,<br> no Christmas 1975 was a particularly memorable one in our game of Survivor I was 8 years old,<br> the rule in my family was you could not have a Barbie and her accompanying accessories until you were 8 years old.<br> I turned eight about a month before Christmas and received my first Barbie so of course for Christmas I wanted all of Barbie's accessories,<br> specifically the carrying case with the fold-down bed and her Country Camper.<br> I had picked them out of the Sears catalog as usual I could not sleep on Christmas Eve with the excitement of Christmas and my anticipated new Barbie toys.<br> <br> [3:27] Sleeping on Christmas Eve or rather not sleeping on Christmas Eve was normal and again part of the game of Survivor that my mom and I would play I would always be sent to bed about 10 p.m. I would struggle to fall asleep,<br> and I usually wake up somewhere between 3 and 4 a.m. which was generally shortly after my mother went to bed we would then spend the next 4 hours with my parents yelling at me to get back in bed,<br> threatening to take away my Christmas presents if I didn't I got really good at being as quiet as a church...
