The typical christmas morning portrayed on TV and in movies is of the kids diving under the tree and opening presents willy-nilly. Is this a common thing in reality?
In my family, we have a tradition of putting numbered raffle tickets on the presents. The corresponding number has the To: and From: written on it, and is folded up and put into a bowl. Christmas morning, we pick a number. That present is hunted down and opened, and then the recipient picks the next ticket out of the bowl.
I have come to greatly appreciate this over the years, time is taken to appreciate the present and say thanks, and things are a lot more sedate, and less of a consumeristic feeding frenzy.
Do other people have similar traditions to slow down the madness?
In my house we take turns. All the gifts are passed out but you have to wait your turn to open your present. The youngest person opens a gift then the next youngest and so on, this way we can all see what gifts are opened and enjoy the whole experience.
MY family’s Christmases have always been slow and easy. We were taught as kids early on to slow down and enjoy it. We usually have someone sitting near the tree, and handing out one present to each of us, and we all open our gift, and then show it to everyone, and sometimes we’ll sit around and play with it/fiddle with it/try it on/taste it first, before moving on to the next present. Last year when I spent my Christmas at my now-husband’s family (we were just engaged then), I was quite relieved to find they were pretty much the same way. Someone would sit near the tree, and pass out some presents, and we would open them, then show them around. My husband says that’s how it always was, it wasn’t just because we are all adults now.
I like things that way. Sometimes just seeing the children go wild on television make my stress level go up… how irritating! (IMHO! I may have to be irritated when I have kids one day!)
That’s how we always did it, too. One person plays “Santa” to hand out the gifts, and starts with the young’uns so they don’t keel over from excitement, but we takes turns.
I would like to add a “me too” here. Growing up, we would each open our gifts one at a time youngest (my sister) to oldest (usually my father). I was very relieved to find my wife’s family did the same thing. We also had to eat a big family breakfast first. Tourture as a child, but nice as an adult.
There was one exception to the rule: We could open our stocking gifts and there was one “Santa Gift” left near the stockings which was not wrapped. I suspect my parents did this so we would be occupied while they got a chance to sleep. I think I’ll continue this when Fang gets older, at 17 months, he’s still a little young to understand the whole Christmas thing.
When I was a kid, we did it exactly the way the OP did. My mom would use the list to keep track of presents. She could remember what was wrapped in what package, how many gifts we each got, how many gifts were joint gifts and who got to open the joint gifts. It was the perfect system and we loved it. We did have the rule that if you pulled your own number, you had to put it back and pull another one.
Now, we have Christmas at my house. Since the presents are mostly arriving right before the festivities start, we don’t do the numbering system. One person sits near the tree and they hand out one gift to each person. We alternate the giver though. So I may get a gift from my mom, then one from my sister, then one from my other sister. We’re actually more impatient to have our gifts handed out to the recipient which is why we alternate. We all want to give our stuff first.
My fiancee’s family is totally nuts. His mom sits near the tree and hands out all the gifts at once. There’s paper all over the place and no one really sees what the gifts are.
However, once everything is open and the paper is thrown away, we all sit around playing with out cool new toys and sharing with others.
I think I prefer the numbering system and that’s what my kids will be forced to endure (when I have them).
I forgot to say, my family has always opened gifts on Christmas Eve. My sisters and I were always very logical, unimaginative kids so we never really believed in Santa.
So, we’d open our gifts late Christmas Eve night, after Mass. Then, we’d get to sleep late, have a nice Christmas lunch and play with out toys. There was no craziness on Christmas day. It was more a time to enjoy each other.
Even now, my family gets together at my house on Christmas Eve so we can spend Christmas day with our SO’s families. It worked out really well.
This is another tradition I’ll probably subject my kids to. I doubt any kid of mine will ever take Santa seriously.
In my family we let the kids open their stocking whenever they wake up. This usually lets them start eating candy and playing with a few things so the adults can get a few more minutes (hours is a bit too optimistic ;)) of shut-eye. Then the adults sit around and watchg the kids pretty much go for it. It is somewhat regulated but mostly by “try it on” and “who gave you that” type of interaction.
The adults then get to open theirs in a grown-up manner.
My step-mother tried to force us to do the one-present-at-a-time thing one year, and it only served to reinforce our ever-growing hatred of her. Fuck that shit.
We do this to but the whole thing takes f-o-r-e-v-e-r. It is not uncommon to take upwards of four hours and we only have about fifteen people at the gathering.
Screws up peoples scheduling if they have to go to another place that day.
In my family, Santa came while we were at Christmas Eve services. This made a great deal of sense to me, since he did have an awful lot of houses to deliver to, so it would be convenient to him to get a head start with families such as ours who opened our presents on Christmas Eve.
We had to wait until everyone was up, which was agonizing as a child because my grandmother was usually visiting and she would not appear until fully dressed and made-up. This took a while in the days of curlers and complicated foundation garments.
When everyone was assembled we were allowed to open stocking gifts at our own pace. Then my Dad took over the job of handing out gifts, one at a time and taking turns. This also allowed my parents to orchestrate the timing of the big-deal presents.
Now that we have kids of our own, we haven’t fully settled into a routine yet. So far we have gone with stockings and a couple of fancy gifts on Christmas morning and then some little thing every morning until the 12th day of Christmas. It seems to give the kids more time to appreciate their presents.
That’s how we do it in my family and my husband’s family. It used to be that everyone would just open all at once, but I think it’s more fun to go slowly and see what everyone got. It’s also nice to have the opportunity to thank the person who gave you the gift right away, and to see others’ reactions to what you got them. This system has worked really well in the past few years, except in the case of my grandma, who cheats. She’s always sneaking presents open when it’s not her turn! (Actually it’s just because she always has way more presents than anyone else and I think she feels silly being the only one left at the end who still has gifts to open.)
My family did it modified free-for-all style. First, everybody in the family had to be there. And we weren’t allowed to wake up the parents before 7.
Then we went hog-wild, except that we would occasionally wait a few moments for somebody else to finish opening the present he or she was working on. And mom always insisted we flash our present at her so she’d know what we opened.
And that’s the way I like it!
My sister’s ex-husband made everyone open and read a Christmas card before opening their gifts. Gag me.
And this has little to do with the topic, but for anyone who is divorced and not remarried, please please please don’t make your kids open their presents in front of anyone who isn’t a cherished family member. Thank you.
Since my kid is now at the far end of his teen years and knows all too well the Christmas secret, I continue to try to talk him in to leaving beer and hookers for Santa… :eek:
Same here, but my brother and I only had to wait for our parents to be up. As soon as we were old enough, there was an agreed-upon time before which we were not allowed to wake our parents (or open any presents). I was raised Catholic, and the first thing we would all do was sing “Happy Birthday” to the baby in our nativity set’s manger, who had appeared overnight (I became agnostic, but I believe that my mother and brother still sing to the baby every year!). Then my brother and I could get into our stockings, and the four of us would take turns opening one gift at a time.
We open out gifts on Christmas Eve, doing the one at a time bit. One year, when my brother and I were in grade school, we did the opening orgy just to be different. It was awful – everything was done in fifteen minutes and no one knew exactly what the other gifts were. Even us small kids thought it was a bad idea, so the experiment was never repeated.
It was never a feeding frenzy, but it’s also never been the sllloooowww process a lot of you are describing. We generally appoint someone Santa, and that person starts digging at the pile. Whatever’s closest at hand gets handed out first, no matter who it’s to or from. We open the presents at our own rate as they come to us, watching others unwrap as we go. We see most of what everyone else gets, because of lulls when we don’t have presents to unwrap, or are pausing to watch someone open your gift, or horning in to see what everyone else is admiring. Some have to be prodded into opening their own gifts because they’re busy seeing what everyone else got, others rip through all their stuff so they can sit back and watch the rest of us. Most of us have an open, watch, comment, open, watch, comment sort of rhythm.
As soon as we were old enough, there was an agreed-upon time before which we were not allowed to wake our parents (or open any presents). I was raised Catholic, and the first thing we would all do was sing “Happy Birthday” to the baby in our nativity set’s manger, who had appeared overnight (I became agnostic, but I believe that my mother and brother still sing to the baby every year!). Then my brother and I could get into our stockings, and the four of us would take turns opening one gift at a time.