Monday, December 10, 2012

Santa's Doing Things A Little Differently This Year

When I was a kid and Santa came to our house on Christmas Eve night, the gifts he left were always unwrapped. He simply pulled them out of his sack and displayed them under the tree. Everything was already opened, assembled, batteries in place, and ready to go. It was so exciting to run and gather around the tree on Christmas morning and see our goodies waiting for us. Wrapped presents were from Mom and Dad or siblings, and opened on Christmas Eve.

My husband grew up pretty much the same way. So, when we had our own kids, that's the tradition we continued. A lot of our friends thought that was crazy (that Santa didn't wrap the presents), but, it worked for us just fine and that's how we liked doing things.

Now, our kids are getting older (they are 12, 14, 16, and 19). We have pretty much outgrown the "toys" phase and the gifts they want are things like clothes and techy stuff, such as video games, cell phones, iPods, laptops, etc. Because these type of gifts are often more expensive, the kids are getting fewer actual items for Christmas than when they were little and would get loads of toys. I started thinking that it might be fun to try something different this year. (But, it also feels a little scary to be messing with family traditions.)...

What if "Santa" still puts their gift under the tree on Christmas Eve but he wraps everything this year? It might prolong the fun just a bit and add some new excitement to Christmas morning. I asked the kids what they thought and, at first, they balked at the idea. They wanted to keep things the same, rolling out of bed and immediately seeing all of Santa's goodies under the tree. But, after we talked about it some more, they finally agreed (as long as one item for each would still be displayed unwrapped).


I gotta tell ya...I'm pretty excited about this new little change in routine. It will be strange to do things so differently. However, I think it's going to be easier in that "Santa" can wrap everything ahead of time and have it ready to go. Normally, we spend hours on Christmas Eve night after the kids have gone to sleep - dragging gifts out of Santa's bag, opening and assembling everything.  This should make Santa's schedule a little easier at our house.
 
How does Santa do things at your house? What are your Christmas-present-opening traditions?
 
 
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6 comments:

Naturalhairlatina said...

My daughter is 16 and she is the biggest kid at heart. She enjoys waking up and unwrapping her gifts at 12:01 AM Dec 25th

Anne said...

Fun way to shake up tradition. At my house Santa never wrapped gifts either, but he only brought one present per kid and filled the stocking. So that cut down on the setup time, although when they were little it still took a while! But we also have the tradition that if you are over 12 Santa just fills your stocking, and doesn't bring a present. My youngest is 13 this year, so this will be our first year with no Santa presents at all, kind of sad, but kind of nice too.

Emily Reviews said...

I was surprised the first time that I shared a christmas with my boyfrends family because they don't wrap santa's presents either. They aren't just not wrapped but they are also "set up". So this usually means the hardest to assemble toy(s) are the ones from santa LOL. It's actually really great with little kids because then they dont have to wait around for Daddy to build/assemble their toy and deal with that frustration. It also means that its easier to tell which toys are from santa and which are from parents where as at my house they were just labeled differently but i never read them so i just kind of thought of it all rfom santa and didn't acknowledge that my mom was buying me stuff too.

Mrs. Stephens said...

We always wrap our gifts at our house. Hubby tried to tell me to just put them under the tree unwrapped but I think the kids love ripping off the paper.

Erin S said...

I always wrap..1 it prevents peeking and 2 it makes the morning last longer! You'll love it.

Stacy Uncorked said...

You will definitely find it's easier on your schedule to wrap. ;) We always wrap - I have special Santa paper that the kids never see...well, until Christmas morning, that is. ;) Growing up, we always opened all the friends and family gifts on Christmas Eve and Christmas Morning was Santa gifts. We've kept that tradition for our kids - it makes Christmas last two days instead of one. :)

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