Illinois Man Finds 46-Year-Old Christmas Gift Inside Wall of Childhood Home

Several Christmases ago, my then-cohost was losing her mind because she got me a gift that she couldn't find. She had no idea what happened to it. Fast forward over a year later, after I moved to Dubuque, she sends me a package. It was the gift she bought a year prior. She discovered her three-year-old daughter inadvertently hid it.

That's the closest I can relate to a man from Lombard, IL, who discovered a Christmas gift of his own tucked away behind the drywall of his childhood home. The gift had sat there for about 46 years. The man, Tim King, is now the owner of a construction company, TKING Construction Services.

When remodeling the house, King had a feeling he should look behind the drywall to assure there wasn't anything there. Sure enough, there was. A Christmas gift he never received.

The gift was wrapped in holiday Disney-themed paper that had yellowed a bit from spending nearly 50 years encased in a drywall tomb. Tim realized the gift indeed had his name on it, and was absolutely shocked:

So when I pulled [the gift] out, it was super old wrapping paper, and then I was like, ‘Oh crap, that has my name on it' - Tim King, per WGN

Without knowing for sure, King believes the gift may have fallen down into the wall, for his parents used to hide his gifts in the attic in the days/weeks leading up to Christmas.

The Lombard home had been in King's family for three generations. Per WGN, it was originally built by King's great-grandparents as a summer getaway home. A few different additions to the house could explain how the gift wound up falling between the wall, never to be discovered until nearly five decades after it was purchased.

King decided to open the gift in front of his mother, in a video captured for his construction company's Instagram page. His mother had no memory of buying the gift. What exactly was behind the wrapping paper? A set of Matchbox Thunder Jets, which King said he would've absolutely loved as a six-year-old. He believes the toy was purchased during the 1978 Christmas season.

Read more about this against-all-odds Christmas story on WGN's website.