A 3-year-old almost destroyed Christmas by unwrapping the family's gifts at 3 a.m. His mother quickly saved the day.

• Scott Reintgen said his toddler tore open the whole family's Christmas stash at 3 a.m.
• The three-year-old explained he didn't want anyone to be "confused" about what they got.

On Christmas Day, Scott Reintgen's precocious three-year-old son had taken it upon himself to tear open the entire family's Christmas stash.

"My three-year-old came down at 3am and unwrapped EVERYONE'S presents," Reintgen shared in an X post that's been liked 136,000 times, along with a photo of shredded wrapping paper and bare boxes under the tree.

In a subsequent post, Reintgen — a New York Times bestselling science fiction and fantasy novelist based in North Carolina — explained his son's reasoning. The toddler said he "wanted to open all the presents so no one was confused and they all knew what they had gotten," Reintgen recounted.

Reintgen told the Washington Post that he and his wife, Katie, first learned something was amiss when their son entered their bedroom in the middle of the night requesting scissors to cut loose his Spider-Man web shooters from the packaging.

"That's when we realized something had gone terribly wrong," Reintgen told the outlet.

After surveying the scene, Katie Reintgen quickly leapt into action, re-wrapping all of the gifts in roughly 30 minutes so as not to spoil Christmas for their two other children — including a six-year-old who still believes in Santa Claus, Reintgen told the Post.

"A moment of pure chaos for us has resonated with so many," Reintgen told Business Insider, "and while we were a touch tired on Christmas Day, we now have a story we will remember forever … We've just been laughing for days."

Commenters on X were tickled by the three-year-old's mischievousness — relating with their own Christmas disasters.

"My daughter did this at 3 too," one wrote. "I woke up to paper being torn and she had opened everything. I caught her in the act and took a picture, which I will show her when she gets older."

When asked how he handled the situation with his son, Reintgen said on X that they subsequently discussed the feelings around opening presents — and underscored the importance of letting others feel those feelings. But mostly, they laughed about the whole ordeal.

"We feel like it's the best possible disaster," Reintgen said.