Assistant Principal John Saras tried to pull a prank on a friend, but it didn’t go as planned.
The friend’s family owned an elf on the shelf, which Saras thought would be funny to temporarily borrow. Unfortunately, he didn’t know how the kids would react.
“When I took his Elf on the Shelf, they cried because they thought they weren’t going to get Christmas, because the Elf on the Shelf left,” Saras said.
Needless to say, since the incident, Saras has not since kidnapped anymore innocent elves.

Many kids around the world are told they’re going to get coal for Christmas, but it’s always an idle threat.
Science teacher Kent Radomsky, however, took it to a whole new level — actually giving his kids coal. “They found buckets of coal, and each bucket had their name on it.
“That’s all that was there. They got very upset and started crying,” Radomsky said.
It was all a joke, though. There were two Christmas trees: The upstairs tree had coal under it, but the downstairs tree had all the real presents under it.
“I said, ‘Guys why don’t you check downstairs,’ so they went downstairs to the tree and that’s where all the presents were,” Radomsky said.

Jackson Deemer, son of teachers Rich and Kate Deemer, got tired of getting asked what he wanted for Christmas.
So, he devised a response that only a 7-year-old could come up with; when relatives or family friends would ask what he wanted, he would simply reply “poop.” Because they thought his son was just trying to be funny, Rich decided to purchase fake dog poop online.
On Christmas morning, Rich placed it atop of the presents under the tree and waited for his son to wake up. When his son saw it, he began to scream and cry that the dog left an extra gift on their presents.
Deemer “thought it was hilarious because my son was being funny and we tricked him.”

Most people have a relative or family friend who dresses up as Old Saint Nick to spread Christmas cheer.
However, when science teacher Jon Tietz’s brother dressed up as Santa, things didn’t go so well. “He had special glasses and everything. It looked real,” Tietz said.
The whole idea was for it to be a treat for his children. But before his son could even sit on Santa’s lap, he pulled Santa’s beard down and said, “Hi Uncle Mark.”
“He didn’t buy it from almost the beginning,” Tietz said.
His son still believed in Santa, though.

When he was around 5 years old, math teacher Richard Fochtman received coal for Christmas. Fochtman’s 15-year-old sister threatened he would get coal for Christmas that year if he did not stop misbehaving.
Because he thought his sister could not control what he got for Chistmas, Fochtman continued to misbehave. As a result, on Christmas morning he woke up to coal hanging from his door. He alarmed his parents in the morning because “I started crying and screaming that I got nothing but coal.” When he walked out of his room, though, his presents were there along with his laughing sister.