Printable View
Some families don't allow any presents to be opened till Christmas Day and some allow for select early openings. What kind of family is yours? Also, does your family have any cool holiday traditions?
What are we all going to be doing for the next couple of days?
My family (my mom, my sister and I) are terrible for trying to open things ahead of time. We get a box of goodies that come from relatives and one year my mom opened all her stuff about 3 days ahead. We were not happy! lol. Bad Mom! We always open that box at our Christmas eve dinner. We have a big ukrainian feat and talk to the relatives.
For my kids I have advocated a few early things. DD's birthday is the week before Christmas and if we didn't spread it out a bit she wouldn't even know what she got my the end. She gets some stuff in early December at her kid party and then presents as people see her from then on till Christmas. It is nuts. So we let the older kids have one early thing too. They get a whole nother pile of stuff on Christmas day anyways. MIL goes pretty nuts with the presents.
We are so bad about it. If it wasn't for DH, DSD and I would have probably given all our gifts by now. We suck at waiting! lol.
Ha! Funny.
We open on Christmas morning. We do stockings for the kids so they do that first thing, and then we have a special breakfast, usually some kind of egg/potato/bacon/cheese scramble. (Not sure my stomach is up to that post-flu but we'll see.)
Then the guests start coming, it's my husband's parents and his nephew, my dad & his husband and my sister (my other siblings don't live nearby), and I have a friend coming with her 6-year-old son as well. We open presents and put out a big spread for lunch -- a big bagel brunch! I bake for days ahead of time so there are lots of treats: cookies, loaves, and this year I'm also doing banana nutella muffins since everyone loves them so much.
Christmas night is always quiet, we pull together leftovers and hang out and the kids play with their new stuff.
Christmas Eve is going to be just the 3 of us since my husband is going to church, so I was thinking we'd watch a movie and drink hot chocolate and eat popcorn. And snuggle.
This is a hard holiday for me with my mom being so sick so I am going to really pay attention to the time I get to spend with my family and friends, and enjoy every minute of it. And we'll Skype with my mom & other siblings.
If we are at a Christmas party or it's a secret santa gift we open at that time, otherwise In try to hide the gift under the tree without DS seeing there is a gift for opening on Christmas day
Most of Robbie's presents do not go under the tree until he is in bed Christmas eve. I try to have pajamas for him to open Christmas eve and this year I have a recorded book "T'was the Night Before Christmas" for him to open as well. I am dyslexic and one of the things that is really hard for me is to read out loud. I am happy that I was able to do this and so he can have it forever, I was crying when I made the dedication - did it last...
We open Christmas presents in the morning and then have breakfast. This year we are going to my MIL's about lunch time, she wanted us to come for dinner but we already had plans and she is a HORRIBLE cook!!! We will come home and have Christmas dinner with just the 3 of us. My one friend might join us.
Some things my family does (we are too far away to join them). My one sister has a huge family brunch - she makes a peameal bacon roast (yummy and have to be Canadian to understand what it is), has bacon, sausages, eggs, fruit, toast,french toast, etc There is usually 30-40 people there. On New Year's Eve my one sister's family leave their shoes outside their bedroom doors and in the morning they are filled with candies and small presents.
I try to make a Ukrainian meal for January 6th. DH is half Ukrainian and any excuse for pyrogies and kobassa is good with me :D
Before Robbie we were horrible at opening presents early! The Christmas before we married I was laid off 2 weeks before Christmas - we opened our presents that night I was so upset.
We switch Christmas Eve and Christmas each year with each family. This year it is Christmas Eve with my in laws so we will open their presents (his parents, 2 brothers and their families). We don't typically have them open a present on Christmas Eve besides those. In the morning, they play with their Santa gifts and can open stockings. My parents come over for breakfast and we open the rest of our presents and then dinner at my parents and there is more there. (I'm terrified at what my house will look like!)
A couple of things I forgot that we do... twice a year before Robbie's birthday in June and at Christmas we go through the old toys and pick what is being kept, what is broken and what is to be donated. We talk about how other kids don't have all the wonderful toys Robbie does and it makes room for the new stuff.
My one sister's inlaws always celebrate Christmas on boxing day (Dec 26th for the Americans). They feel that they do not want to "contaminate" the reason for Christmas by all the gifts and such. Made it easy for her - Christmas day was with our family and the next day with her ILs.
We also buy Robbie a lot of books - last year he got 23 books for Christmas just from us!!! I buy books through the year and put them aside, sometimes I forget about some of them... For every gift giving time he gets at least one book. For Valentine's I always get a "love" book that is special and kept separately from his other books.
I also buy a special ornament for Robbie each year. I am now starting a spreadsheet to remember what year what ornament. When he leaves home they will go with him. I also buy whatever ones I find with his name on them. I try and buy or make a special ornament for the whole family as well.
All presents wrapped under the tree are opened on xmas eve. That way, it is completely bare when we go upstairs to bed and in the morning there are unwrapped presents (usually the presents that were too hard to wrap and I don't mind if Santa takes the credit for them, haha!) under the tree left from Santa. Have always done it this way ever since I was a kiddo. I actually thought this was the way to do it until a couple years ago when I found out most people open all the gifts xmas day.
All the presents are already under the tree. I ran out of room in my closet to store them so I just wrapped them and stored them under the tree. Thus far it looks like they haven't been tampered with. I wish I had the right storage to hide them all till Christmas morning, but we just don't have big enough closets.
Sorry your mom is so sick.Quote:
Originally Posted by freddieflounder101
Most years we travel to NY to be with family but this year we are staying home. It is normally crazy with 4 or 5 get togethers that one day. This year we will open one gift each Christmas Eve. Then Christmas AM the girls will wake us up early and we will dive into the gifts. Then I am going to make a large breakfast of bacon, eggs, sausage, and toast. The girls will play with their new gifts while Mom and Dad take a nap. Then we will get up and spend time together. I am planning to make a nice Turkey dinner around 4. I am looking forward to being able to do Christmas at home so much although I will miss seeing everyone.