-- Man Kept Ex’s Christmas Gift Unopened For 47 Years, Then He Finds Out What’s Inside

 

High school sweethearts ending up with a happy marriage is more common in fairy tales. For teens Adrian Pearce and Vicki Allen, a high school courtship was on the cards, but their relationship was not. This story all started with an unopened Christmas gift…

1. A Parting Gift

Adrian and Vicki met as teen students in the 70s. Before long, they started a relationship Adrian thought was rock solid. The young couple enjoyed the initial bliss of their first serious love, thinking they were meant to be together forever. However, before the Christmas of 1971, Adrian received from Vicki a Christmas present as a parting gift. This left Adrian crushed.

2. Left Broken-Hearted

At the time, Adrian was gearing up for the Christmas vacation with Vicki, but the breakup interrupted his romantic plans, leaving him with nothing but a broken heart. It’s unclear why Vicki decided to end their whirlwind relationship right before the Christmas holidays. Did the gift have a deeper meaning? With no explanation from Vicki, Adrian decided to leave it unopened.

3. Left Unopened

In his anger and confusion, Adrian thought his girlfriend had dumped him. Nonetheless, he decided to keep the Christmas gift – their only memento – in his possession, but left it wrapped. Adrian put the gift under the family Christmas tree, not ready to open it. He even vowed to himself that he’d never open the gift. That year, after all the other gifts had been opened, the present from Vicki remained under the tree, unopened.

4. The Years Fly By

Every subsequent Christmas after the split, Adrian placed the sealed gift from his lost lover under the tree. This became something of a tradition. As the years turned into decades, the gift’s blue wrapping remained intact, but the clear tape slowly turned yellow. “I’m never going to open that present,” Adrian told his family. So, the tradition continued, but it couldn’t continue forever.

5. Put Her Foot Down

As the years passed, Adrian finally met the woman of his life, Janet, and they had a happy family with children. Even during this time, Adrian kept the tradition of putting the wrapped gift from Vicki under the Christmas tree each year. Out of curiosity, his children continually bugged him about opening it, but Adrian refused, no matter how persistent they were. That was until Janet put her foot down.

6. How Long Is Too Long?

After over 40 years of the same routine, Adrian’s wife, Janet, finally became tired of him holding onto such an old item for such a long time. She told her husband that she didn’t want him to put the gift under the Christmas tree anymore. Still, Adrian put the still-wrapped gift under the tree each year and then placed it lovingly back in its storage space.

7. Facebook Changes Everything

For Adrian, the gift was a special keepsake from his past that many others couldn’t understand. Before Christmas of 2017, Adrian finally decided to take his story to social media. On Facebook, he explained the details surrounding the present. Unexpectedly, the post prompted many to track down long lost Vicki, Adrian himself included.

8. The Imposters

Adrian’s story of the sealed decades-old Christmas gift hit national news headlines. The media storm prompted multiple women to claim that they were the Vicki behind the unopened gift. But Adrian wasn’t so easily convinced. He asked a few questions only the real Vicki would have known, only to find that none of them were the true Vicki.

9. Reaching Out

Outside the media hype, Adrian turned to his diary for any indicator of the real Vicki. In one diary entry in 1977, Adrian had written about his running into Vicki’s sister, Stephanie. On that day, Stephanie gave him several phone numbers that should have led directly to Vicki. But alas, the numbers all turned out to be dead ends. By this point, the trail seemed to have gone cold.

10. Making Leads

As Adrian’s story of the 47-year-old gift went viral, a coincidental development led to a breakthrough in the hunt for his former sweetheart. One of Adrian’s high school friends turned out to be also a friend of Vicky’s on Facebook. Via this mutual friend, Adrian finally got in contact with Vicki, and Vicki even invited Adrian and his wife to meet her in Canada, where she lived.

11. Long Overdue Reunion

In excitement, Adrian and Janet traveled to meet Vicki in late 2018, carrying the special present. Vicki was shocked to know that Adrian had held on to the gift for so long. Adrian confessed to her that he never had the heart to open the gift after the breakup. In the end, the two decided to reveal the gift that had been hidden for almost 50 years in a unique way.

12. A Magnificent Reveal

Adrian and Vicki decided to reveal the gift live on television. On CTV, Vicki explained the reason for their breakup. While she was shopping for a Christmas gift for her then-boyfriend Adrian, she ran into another boy named Wolf. They had a crush on each other instantly, and before either of them knew it they kissed. Feeling guilty after willingly being unfaithful, Vicki decided to break up with Adrian right before the Christmas holiday.

13. Break The Suspense

Fifty years later, it’s finally time to unveil what’s inside the wrapping. Adrian gave the gift to Vicki, and the moment she unwrapped the gift, her face turned red, muttering that she couldn’t believe she had given Adrian such a gift. It turned out to be a comic strip book entitled “Love Is: New Ways To Spot That Certain Feeling” by Kim Grove. It features love notes to the cartoonist’s husband.

14. A Bit Careless

Vicki felt somewhat embarrassed, and the entire crowd was somewhat surprised that Vicki had given Adrian a book about love for breakup right before Christmas. As Adrian looked at the book, Vicki admitted that she’d been “a bit careless of his feelings” at that time, explaining that it “just shows ignorant a 15-year-old can be.” Well, Adrian suspected the gift was pretty elaborate for a high school student.

15. An Innocent Romance

Vicki revealed further details on the events that occured between the two young lovers. In her eyes, their high school romance hadn’t been as serious as Adrian had believed. She had considered their high school fling as just an innocent, short-lived romance. Vicki had never expected it’d have impacted Adrian so much. Luckily, Adrian held no grudges against Vicki and had enjoyed over 40 years of happy married life with his wife, Janet.

16. A Fundraising Event

The gift opening event broadcast live on CTV hit the headlines that day, but there was another reason that Vicki and Adrian were on the news. The gift opening event was also a fundraising event for the Christmas Bureau of Edmonton. In total, the event raised over $13,000 that day, and all the money would go toward buying Christmas gifts for children in need.

17. Prospects For The Future

After all of the dust had settled, Adrian announced a special plan for the mysterious Christmas present that had finally been opened. He wrote a book about the long-kept-secret gift and all his ordeals during the nearly five-decade period. Adrian entitled the book The 47 Year Old Present. He even planned to frame the book along with the blue wrapping paperas a reminder of his past.