I see my mom wasn’t the only one who came up with the evil (for an overexcited kid) idea of opening one present and the stocking, then having to eat.
Though in our case “eat” meant something like a bowl of cereal, nothing like some of the breakfasts listed here!
And she refuses to move it back to Christmas Eve even though my baby brother is 19 and, it is safe to say, does not believe in Santa. And he’s not even here this year! I gave up on this one several years ago, as I remember. Once I got old enough to look past the sheer greed of the thing, I didn’t understand the mass present-opening on Christmas Eve – what about Santa? Or do the kids just get a few more in the morning?
I know customs vary. In retrospect, the breakfast before diving into the main pile is actually an excellent idea. But how I hated it as a kid.
Last year we opened our gifts on Christmas Eve, and it was something I’d like to never do ever again. Only reason we did it was because my dad had to go to work really early Christmas morning (sigh). But anyway, I’ve always enjoyed opening the gifts on Xmas morning… maybe because it’s just how we always did it, and last year it felt so odd. Like I woke up and it wasn’t even christmas or something without the routine of waking up and doing the whole gift thing then, to start off the day. shrugs Occasionally as a kid I would get one gift to open at night then the rest in the morning, but not every year.
Christmas morning-er here…
The Santa gifts are put out the night before, in the wee hours, whilst the children are sleeping. This works well, particularly if something has to be assembled (can make for a short night Christmas Eve for Mr. and Mrs. Gntly). The kids come out and go ga-ga over the Santa presents for a while (we limit it to 2 or 3 usually, so they aren’t overwhelmed and will actually play with them). Then we move on to stockings, which Dad (me) opens first, then the wrapped presents…
It’s fun!
Christmas morning / early afternoon.
Today, we only opened ours at 5:30 PM.