Colleen the Younger approached us in the kitchen less than a week before Christmas, the bearer of big news that could not wait a moment longer.

Like a youthful George Washington fessing up to the now historic cherry tree massacre, Colleen the Younger had come to admit wrongdoing.

The key difference was that, unlike the famously remorseful Washington – who, according to many reputable sources on the Internet, later became president of the United States and had an entire capital named for him – Colleen the Younger displayed none of the symptoms usually associated with guilt.

Nervous hand wringing?

Nope.

Averting of eyes?

Uh-uh.

Tears streaming tellingly down cheeks?

Not a one.

The boyish Washington probably would have been toeing the dirt with one boot, head hung low and hands shoved deep in his trouser pockets as he admitted hacking down the family’s cherry tree.

“Like, I’m really sorry and, like, you know, it’ll never happen again, dad,” Washington is quoted as having said in an official transcript of that historic admission. “So, can I have the keys to the van, or what?”

(This second quote has become the source of some debate among historians, the Washingtons having been known as a station wagon family.)

So great was his shame that young George determined then and there to live an honest and uncorrupted life.

He became a shining example for everyone who would come to work in the city that bears his name.

“And, like, don’t invade other countries without U.N. approval,” he might have added. “That’s way worse than knocking down a cherry tree.”

But back to Colleen and the reason she was grinning gleefully while announcing that the paper wrapping on two presents beneath the Christmas tree had become torn, exposing the boxes inside.

So torn, Colleen declared with a naughty smile, that the presents were threatening to reveal themselves to anyone who happened by.

Or, in her words, “I can see the boxes.”

There was no telling what would happen if someone tugged at the paper with their tiny fingers and then shook one of the boxes vigorously for evidence of a heavy object that may or may not be a Little Astronomer Space Gazer Telescope.

“I cannot tell a lie,” Washington is said to have told his father. “It was I who felled the tree. My school chums would have called me a wuss otherwise.”

Colleen’s Washington moment was less auspicious.

“Maybe I ripped the paper,” she said, her mouth curling up into a wicked smile. “Just kidding. Maybe I didn’t. But I think I did.”

She was taunting us, and I had to admire her for it.

As a child, I, too, tore a small piece of wrapping paper from a present in an attempt to circumvent the traditional Christmas morning gift opening and end the anxiety of not knowing whether I would be receiving the Batmobile replica or the hand-knit sweater with embroidered kittens.

Christmas was held in my father’s boyhood home of Kapuskasking, a remote northern community whose town motto is, “You can smell us from Cochrane. We can’t help it. It’s the paper mill.”

On Dec. 24, when the grownups were busy elsewhere, my brother and I snuck toward the tree to find two identically sized presents bearing our names.

My brother shoved a finger into one of the boxes and ripped away a large triangle of coloured paper, at which point we looked at one another in disbelief.

“Rollerskates?” we selfishly cried in unison. “They look like they were made for a girl.”

I believe we pouted through dinner, midnight mass and into the morning when, with the family gathered around the tree, we did our best to fake admiration for the blue and white rollerskates with the white racing stripes and red toe stoppers.

As George Washington wisely once said, “Better that than a kitten sweater.”