Or is it pretty much a free for all.
In my house it was kind of a free for all. We didn’t take turns opening them, eveyone just picked them out and opened them up.
It was a bit different as I was the youngest and the next up was ten years older so I was a lot more excited than my brothers and sisters, being a wee little shaver
So what about you all? Do you go nice and orderly or is it just a free for all?
At my parents’ house it was always youngest to oldest or oldest to youngest. Each person had their own type of wrapping paper, and they would be split up beforehand.
At my in-laws’, whoever opened a gift last picks a gift from under the tree and hands it to the person it is for, who then opens the gift and finds another under the tree, and so on. It is almost but not quite a requirement to predict what the gift is beforehand.
My maternal grandma does a free-for-all because there are a lot of people and gift giving could take hours if it proceeded in an orderly fashion, but I don’t like it much. It’s easy to miss peoples’ reactions to gifts, and with wrapping paper flying everywhere, small presents can get lost or stepped on.
We have gifts from people not present first, if they sent something to be opened on Christmas Day. Then someone will nominate the person they want to give a gift to, and get one of the children to retrieve the package from under the tree, and give it to the right person. We all wait while they open it. Then someone else will nominate a person to receive a gift. We try to mix it up, so that no one waits too long without one. The kids always get more than one present, so we leave one of theirs each till last.
At my MIL’s house, it’s the opposite. All the gifts for each person are piled up together. The piles get handed out, then everyone opens theirs at once.
Never on Christmas Eve.
Not even one.
On Christmas Day morning, we take turns, one person at a time, trying to keep a fair rotation of turn-taking, until all gifts are opened.
I usually take notes for thank you notes.
We do a pretty evenly paced rotation, generally with only one person opening a gift at a time with recipients and donors spaced as evenly as possible.
make little piles next to the appropriate person, and dig in. Leftover wrapping paper goes into the fireplace [in the original house in Perry NY] or the woodstove [in Caledonia NY] and mrAru and I just sort of dive in and burn the wrappers at home.
First we look in our stockings; there’s myself, my wife, our two kids, my brother and my grandparents all with one. This can take some time, as my grandfather likes to look over each one of his stocking stuffers very intensively. After that my uncle starts handing out the presents one at a time.
At home we tend to pass out all the presents so everyone has a pile, then go around the room opening one at a time. At the in-laws, everything gets passed out, and then there’s a frenzy of opening at once. When all the kids were little, we waited and helped them open theirs (making sure no little pieces were lost in the clutter) and then opened ours in relative peace. Now they’re on their own, as the youngest is my 15-yr. old. (Sadness – we’re all old now.)
When I give Mrs. Homie her gifts, I’ll make her go in order of least expensive to most. The first will be a fleece blanket with a kitteh on it, proceeding until she opens the Harry Potter 1-7 hardcover boxed set.
She’ll probably just give me crap randomly. And yes, we take turns.
My mom wanted Christmas to laaaaaaaast so she had this schedule:
1.) When we got up in the morning, we had to get dressed and make our beds. And by dressed, I mean Sunday-type outfits.
2.) None of us could go downstairs until she and my dad said it was okay. (Picture me, at the top of the stairs, face peering through the railing whining, “is it time yet??”
3.) When we were called down, we were rushed by the Christmas tree and in to the kitchen where we would have a full breakfast.
4.) We cleaned up the kitchen, including washing any dishes that needed to be done.
5.) Mom made dad read the Christmas Story from the Bible to us.
6.) Then, and only then, could the Christmas present opening begin. And it had to be done this way: Starting with the youngest, we would crawl under the tree and find all the presents we had bought for the family. We would hand them out and wait as each one opened it. If it was clothing, my mom might insist we stop and try it on. She would take pictures after each present was opened.
7.) If my mom bought a group of us all the same gift (i.e., pairs of white socks or underwear) we had to all open them at once so we wouldn’t “spoil the surprise” for the others.
8.) Once all the presents for family were opened, we would open any presents from dad’s business associates or neighbors or relatives. They were always kind of the “after thought” of the night.
I realize my mom did that because we were perhaps a little poorer at times, and she didn’t want all her scrimping and saving to go by too quickly.
Oh, the torturous breakfast before presents. I think it scarred me for life.
Oh, man. Ours was ritualized to an unbeleivable degree, but I still kind of enjoyed it anyway.
Presents were opened Christmas day, never before. Kids had to wait for for the adults to get up. Stockings were opened first, in age order from youngest to oldest, starting with pets (dogs and cats always had stockings of their own). Then breakfast, followed by the main event, again in age order. That usually got us to around 3PM or so, and dinner.
Whew.
After my father passed away, and fewer family members were there on Christmas, we loosened up a bit and everyone just opened stuff in rotation.
My wife was freaked out that different families might open presents different ways. And of course that means she hates the way my family opened them.
We open one gift on Christmas Eve… which is always a pair of pajamas to sleep in that night.
The next day we open the gifts one-at-a-time, one-person-at-a-time. It’s a drawn out process. Then we have coffee and sweet rolls for breakfast.
I have one sibling - he’s 4.5 years younger. In my childhood, we’d generally open gifts simultaneously. There were a lot of gifts. Often, there was one “big ticket” gift that was to be opened jointly. My brother isn’t a voracious gift opener, but once he finishes opening a gift and knows what it is, he’s on to the next one; whereas I wouldn’t open a gift until I knew I had the giver’s attention. I wanted to be sure that I remembered to say thank you and that they saw me appreciate the gift. I’d take my time to take note of the features, or pick something that I liked about it (“oh, look… there really are 8 reindeer on this sweater! Thanks Mom!”)
If my brother were telling the story, he’d tell you that I stalled so that he could sit there with no more presents left to open while I relished the attention. I’m married w/ 2 kids. My brother is (by most accounts) an adult too. We still go through this routine every year.
As a kid:
Wait at top of stairs to come down to check out stockings and Santa (Santa doesn’t wrap, of course). For the presents, Mom would pass out a bunch so that the kids had piles. She would dictate who opened, which let us open our tons of cheap crap, with occasional stops for mom & dad to open their stuff. Breakfast was after presents, but coffee was brewing during the presents and coffee cake was consumed.
Now, with my inlaws:
Stockings and Santa once we wake up. We then head into the tree room and my SIL (a focus of a mini rant if I really want to get worked up) distributes presents one at a time and we all watch the opening. Coffee is available, no coffee cake though (no sticky stuff allowed in the tree room). Once the first wall is hit, we all go eat breakfast, then return to finish opening. 4 spoiled kids, so way too many things to open in my opinion. Then again, I am just as guilty as the next person in buying too much for my kids.
We have the kids open one gift on Christmas Eve (pajamas).
Christmas morning, kids have to wait for parents before they’re allowed in the living room, because Santa doesn’t wrap his gifts. You know how he is…always going for the flashy stuff like train sets, and they have to be properly set up and on display.
Stockings are first.
When we get to actual wrapped gifts, we all take turns and everyone pays attention. You better not be taking that paper off if you haven’t read the tag or the card yet! If there is a gift from someone who isn’t there, you don’t get to unwrap it until that person comes over later in the day. If there’s a gift from someone who isn’t going to be coming over, have at it!
Parents drink coffee and eat as necessary, kids breakfast on stocking candy.
We did have one year at Grandma’s house when there were so many people, we did the free-for-all. It was freaking chaos for ten minutes or so, with paper flying and people screaming, “Hey! Thank you!” It was kind of crazy and fun, but I’m glad we don’t usually do it that way. Seemed kind of disrespectful and anti-climactic after all the work of choosing just the right gifts…
Very orderly. A great deal of the fun is to make it last a long time and draw it out. We think of some silly random ordering system, like the second to last letter of your middle name in reverse alphabetical order. Then we each take turns opening them. We look and ooh and aah at each other’s presents and the whole thing lasts for hours.
For our own family of just four (me, hubby, two young teens) in the morning, we open presents in the order they come out from under the tree, one at a time. Doesn’t take too long. The kids are still usually up way too early, and can open their stockings (not Santa believers anymore, but whatever) before we get up. There is usually something to keep them busy in there…
Later in the day we go to my inlaws’ for dinner, and then open presents afterward. It is a free-for-all with about 30 people and I can’t stand it. Noisy, no one gets to see the reaction of the receiver, hard to thank the giver across the room. Blergh!
The best year was when we gave out the presents from each family group in order. When it was my husband’s turn, we gave our presents out, everyone saw what they got, was able to thank us, etc. It took no more time than the free-for-all, since every family pretty much got the little kids and the great-grandparents something, so they just kept unwrapping. We do a secret Santa for the adults, so if you weren’t getting present from that family you just waited patiently… Nice and quiet!
Yes, there is a very specific order of events:
First thing: Stockings. You can’t look into your stocking until everyone is present. Then, each person goes through their stocking one by one so we can fuss over the gifts. Now that we’re wayyyyy too old for Santa, we do a secret Santa so we can still do stockings (there are no kids - just adults).
After stockings, a big breakfast. We’ve done stuffed french toast for a lot of years now though the recipe has been tweaked. Now it’s a baked upside-down with caramel sauce on the bottom of the pan, and pecans for those who like 'em.
Then, a brief hiatus for some people to dress (most of us are too impatient but some people will go and comb their hair), accompanied with lots of “Why is X taking so longgggggg. Presents! Presents!” (we’re all out of college, we’re just having fun)
Then, presents. One person is Santa Claus - this is the honorary post of the person who selects and hands out the gifts. No particular order except that everyone must get a present before the next round (until later on, if someone looks like they have a lot more presents than someone else, we’ll start modifying the order accordingly). Each gift is opened one by one and fawned over appropriately, and a story about the purchasing of the gift is often told. As this process takes hours, the Santa Claus role is usually traded off several times.
Then we all go get dressed and showered and hang around together until it’s time to make dinner.
Making dinner’s followed by eating dinner. Then games, drinks, and pie (any order).
We prefer the structured chaos method at my house:
Notes: