[HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: Christmas presents - one at a time or all at once?

[IggyMcSnurd]

Iggy here:


When I moved down here to Alabama from California, I brought with me a
couple of Christmas traditions that have been in my family since
childhood.

Like many people here, we all get to open one present the night before,
but it's selected for us so that we don't accidentally spoil any
surprises that involve more than one present.  (Like the fact that I
plan on getting the family a Nintendo Game Cube and a few games.  If
someone opens one of the games the night before, then they know they're
getting the game cube.)

On Christmas morning, one person is selected to be the "Santa" for the
day and they hand out the presents from under the tree.  This is partly
so that gifts get handed out as evenly as possible, and also so that one
person doesn't open all their gifts and then sit around watching others
open theirs.  (Since one of the rules is that we don't get to play with
any of our presents until all of the presents are opened.  The only
exception is my daughter, but she's only a toddler, so we kinda have to
make that exception to help keep her happy and quiet.)

One of the other traditions we started as a family since I moved down
here is rather interesting.  Our feeling is that we give gifts to each
other as a family.  One person may pick out a particular gift, but it's
still from everyone.  So, we don't bother putting "To: / From:" tags on
the gifts.  (After all, it's pointless to say on every gift that it's
from the other family members, isn't it?)  Instead, we each find a
wrapping paper that's our own.  This is the one that all of our presents
are wrapped in, and identifies the gift as going to us.  Not only is
this a fun way to do things, since you get to chose a personalized paper
that you like, but it also adds more variety to the appearance of the
pile of gifts under the tree.


Something we're considering doing, once my daughter turns 5 or so and
understands the tradition, is to adopt a variant of the British
tradition of Boxing Day (at least, as I've heard it described... where
officers and enlisted in the military, or servants and employers...
switch places for a day.) and setting it up where the kids and the
parents get to swap places for a day.


Iggy McSnurd