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Are there gifts under your tree, or do you wait until Christmas Eve ?

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beau13

beau13

Ideal_Rock
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I was looking at our tree..thinking to myself, "where will Santa find room to drop off his gifts for the kids"?
We never used to put anything under the tree until Christmas Eve..but this year I find myself putting gifts for "grandpa" who spends the Holidays with us..and a few for "daddy" from the kids under the tree. I also put the ones for nieces/nephews under there as well. The kids think there are alot of gifts, but "why none for them?" I won't put their gifts under the tree until they are asleep Christmas Eve. I always like the look on their faces when they see everything so colorfully wrapped Christmas morning. What are your traditions? Do you exchange gifts before Christmas morning..perhaps Christmas Eve? Are there any gifts under the tree now, or do you wait until Santa brings them?? (this is geared mostly towards those PSer's with kids, who still believe in Santa)

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Pre-child we would put gifts under the tree as soon as they were wrapped. Now, nothing is safe!!

I have all of the gifts wrapped and sitting in the basement. The ones for family will probably come up the 23rd. We exchange gifts with my side of the family on the 24th, so not too long of a temptation for our 3 yr old. Then, the whole sha-bang will come up Christmas Eve night. Santa likes to set some stuff up (like the tool bench that has to be assembled) and then all of the Santa gifts are wrapped in the same paper. (it''s easily identifiable from the stuff that might be under there from Nana and Papa)

Sometimes we wrap up stuff like toilet paper to confuse shakers.
 
Before Santa was, uh, debunked at our house, we never put anything under the tree until Christmas Eve. Once everyone was on board (older children) we started putting things under the tree a couple of weeks before Christmas. My husband puts whatever he wraps for me out Christmas Eve, since he knows I''ll shake the thing to pieces if left earlier. [;)
 
Oh, and I second what SS said with the coded wrapping paper... to this day, things are wrapped by child--that is, all things for one child are one wrap type and another goes with the other... makes it easier than trying to read the little tags. It used to be all Santa things were one type of wrap.
 
You''ve got this down to a science Somethingshiny !
Assembling some stuff beforehand is a great idea, that way you aren''t bombarded by kids Christmas morning asking for you to put together everything they got, all at once! My oldest is getting an Ipod Touch..and I wondered if I should take it out of the package and charge it, and maybe even download some songs onto it for him so that he can listen to it alot sooner (that''s if I can figure out how to do all that!) I think I have to go to Itunes? I dunno!!
 
Date: 12/18/2008 3:14:17 PM
Author: justjulia
Oh, and I second what SS said with the coded wrapping paper... to this day, things are wrapped by child--that is, all things for one child are one wrap type and another goes with the other... makes it easier than trying to read the little tags. It used to be all Santa things were one type of wrap.
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This is what I am doing.."stuff" from us is wrapped in all kinds of paper..but anything Santa brings, is wrapped in the brightest wrapping paper I could find!!
 
We stick all gifts under the tree on Christmas eve. Right now there are two gifts for my kids and both packages are chocolate santa claus gifts to keep our tree from looking too bare! This year my older son is questioning the existance of santa and I''m wanting to make this last year of his belief as magical as possible.
 
Date: 12/18/2008 3:24:57 PM
Author: MC
We stick all gifts under the tree on Christmas eve. Right now there are two gifts for my kids and both packages are chocolate santa claus gifts to keep our tree from looking too bare! This year my older son is questioning the existance of santa and I''m wanting to make this last year of his belief as magical as possible.
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How old is he? My oldest is 13, and last year he found out that Santa is ..well..really mom and dad!
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My youngest just turned 10, and he still believes!!!
 
Even though we''re all (mostly hehe) grown up, we still wait until Christmas eve to put all of the gifts under the tree at my parents'' house. Partly this tradition may stem from the fact that my mom waits until the last minute to wrap everything. However, I do love that magical transformation from empty tree to loaded with shiny presents!
 
Growing up, when we lived in NY, the tradition was this:

We all go to my grandmother's house on Christmas Eve for dinner, mass, and party/party/party. Then "Santa" (my dad) would come through the fire escape and into one of the upstairs bedrooms to drop off gifts. There would be one gift in there for each child. My aunts/uncles would decide on who to bring the gift for. Then we'd head home to sleep. There were no gifts under my tree at all. When I woke up in the morning, there would be an explosion of gifts (at least to a 5 year old that's what it looked like
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).

I have always loved this tradition. Even after my father passed and I knew the truth about Santa, my mom and I would still do this for my brothers who were very young. She and I started a tradition of waitint until about 2 or 3AM Christmas morning to wrap gifts and put them under the tree. And I loved the look on my brothers' faces when they came out to see that Santa came. Priceless

Now that we're all older, there still are no gifts under the tree until Christmas morning. In the middle of the night you can hear people giggling as they sneak their gifts for everyone under the tree. It's a lot of fun.
 
That''s an adorable baby on that bag!
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As a kid, the presents under the tree way before Christmas Eve were always gifts that had been mailed to us by family members. All the other pressies arrived during the night on Christmas Eve, even after my brothers and I were plenty old enough to know who really puts them there.
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We put our presents under the tree as soon as we wrap them. FI loves to trick his son and I by wrapping things in a different box, or adding cardboard underneath. I like to have stepson-to-be shake the boxes and guess what''s inside. And we like to mess with him a little as to what is in the boxes!

He''s 11, and he LOVES surprises, so I''m never worried that he''ll do some early unwrapping. And it''s always been a tradition in my family that you get to open a gift early, and we''ve been carrying that on to stave off a little of the anticipation.
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Date: 12/18/2008 4:06:52 PM
Author: gwendolyn
That''s an adorable baby on that bag!
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As a kid, the presents under the tree way before Christmas Eve were always gifts that had been mailed to us by family members. All the other pressies arrived during the night on Christmas Eve, even after my brothers and I were plenty old enough to know who really puts them there.
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Isn''t it? That bag has goodies for my 5 month old niece. I got her an adorable pink Nike full zip hoodie/jogging pants, with matching pink Nike Shox! Socks..and an ornament with her name on it...it''s soooooo easy to shop for her! lol
 
Date: 12/18/2008 3:29:51 PM
Author: beau13

Date: 12/18/2008 3:24:57 PM
Author: MC
We stick all gifts under the tree on Christmas eve. Right now there are two gifts for my kids and both packages are chocolate santa claus gifts to keep our tree from looking too bare! This year my older son is questioning the existance of santa and I''m wanting to make this last year of his belief as magical as possible.
Click to expand...
How old is he? My oldest is 13, and last year he found out that Santa is ..well..really mom and dad!
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My youngest just turned 10, and he still believes!!!
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That''s so wonderful that your youngest still believes. Seems like believing in Santa is the foundation for children to maintain their innocent sweet little personalities.
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My older son is 8 and younger is 6. A few kids at school have talked about Santa really being parents who put gifts under the tree. The same kids also said that the easter bunny is really parents buying candy from the store and sticking it in eggs. When my son asked me about Santa, I told him that the reason those kids say Santa isn''t real is because they''re naughty kids and Santa doesn''t bring them presents! lol
 
Well, I don't have children yet. But when I was a child there were always a few presents under the tree from Mom and Dad. Then, Santa would always make an early stop to my house in the evening of Christmas Eve to drop off a special gift. He would ring the doorbell, then leave before I got to the door. That was always awesome! The rest of the presents would come from Santa on Christmas morning........ I love Christmas!

This time in my life we usually have some gifts under the tree before Christmas then put the rest under the tree on Christmas Eve. So far there is 1 present under the tree. I haven't wrapped anything yet!!! I'm behind on that this year!!!
 
I don''t dare put anything under the tree till christmas eve. James doesn''t understand about christmas and would open everything! I wish I could put them out though. I love seeing a tree with lots of pressies under there.
 
last year and all the previous years, we put things under the tree as we wrapped them. now with a 1 year old, we have not put anything under the tree yet. i''ve tried, but he got to it eventually, so i took everything away. we''ll probably put gifts for people as they come over, or right before we expect people, we''ll put them under the tree.
 
We put gifts under our tree from us (as in Mommy and Daddy) to my kids before Christmas when they were little. Santa''s gifts weren''t under the tree until Christmas morning. I don''t know how we managed to keep the kids from opening presents too early. I think I like not waiting to put the presents under the tree because I try to make my wrapping look really pretty. After the work to wrap the presents, I feel like they should be "admired" and not hidden until Christmas morning.
 
I wrap all of the presents ahead of time and put them under the tree... I put alot of effort into wrapping and bows and all that so I like to see them displayed for a while. This year I got DH some very large items though so those won''t be under the tree since he''d know exactly what they were. I''ll probably wake up early and just set it up by the tree before he wakes up on Christmas day.

Growing up, my parents always wrapped everything for under the tree ahead of time except the Santa gifts. Those were seperate and came the night before... mostly unwrapped.

One strange thing we do is that neither my mom or I use gift bags for Christmas gifts. We wrap EVERYTHING... even if its an odd shape and would work better in a bag.
 
I wish Christmas would hurry and get here, the more time left, the more $$ spent! My oldest has been wanting a cell phone and I said NO..you don't need one (he just turned 13). I got a text message on my phone yesterday, so I decided to investigate the "special". Well..of course I left the store with a new cell phone in hand (an LG rumour..that was FREE..she said it was a $249 phone), and he gets a better plan than me for $20 /month. I called hubby and told him he better get the hockey stick my youngest son has been eyeballing! ($200 stick). Gotta try to keep it even (you know kids)! Maybe I should stay indoors for the rest of the day!! lol
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Date: 12/18/2008 3:43:19 PM
Author: icekid
Even though we''re all (mostly hehe) grown up, we still wait until Christmas eve to put all of the gifts under the tree at my parents'' house. Partly this tradition may stem from the fact that my mom waits until the last minute to wrap everything. However, I do love that magical transformation from empty tree to loaded with shiny presents!
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I completely agree! Christmas morning would feel just like any other day for me if the presents had been there the entire time. If we get gifts in the mail from relatives, those will usually go under the tree, but nothing else. Also, the new tree my parents got (it''s fake) goes all the way to the ground so you can''t get anything under there anyway! The presents would just be in the way if they were there earlier.
 
When I was little and still believed in Santa the presents would magically appear on Xmas morning.

But as I got older and started to figure out there was no Santa we started opening presents on Xmas Eve after our big dinner.
 
Namaste, my family does the same thing - and that''s the tradition DH and I plan to do for our family someday.

Some gifts (for family, from parents) would come up on Xmas eve, but "Santa" gifts came out after I went to bed (until about age 7). I don''t remember when we just started opening gifts on Christmas eve before church...I thought it was high school, but it might have been when I was in junior high. The last Christmas day I really remember was 3rd grade - I much, much prefer "Christmas" on Christmas eve...I know that it will be exciting to see the whole "Santa" thing when we have kids someday, but there will be a big part of me that will really look forward to the big revelation so that Christmas can move back to when it "should" be.
 
We brought all the gifts out today (except from Santa). JT can''t stand it. He keeps poking and prodding at the packages. He brought one to me and said, "Mommy, please open this! I want you to have it!" He had another gift at the same time and suggested that he should open one with me. When I said we weren''t opening any he got all pouty faced. My friend stopped by and was talking to him about Santa, and every time he heard the word "santa", he would shudder and get all excited.

This is going to be a great Christmas!
 
We don''t have a tree, just stockings hanging off our entertainment unit
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My parents always slowly filled the area under the tree in the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas. They''d get behind and blitz after we went to bed on Christmas Eve, and the amount of gifts would double of triple overnight! That was always exciting to come downstairs to see the next morning.
 
When I was growing up, there were a couple of pressies under the tree from relatives or friends but that was it. Then when my sisters and I got up on Christmas morning, there were tons of pressies and toys there. It was brilliant! D and I have all of our pressies under our tree at the moment, although our kitten has ripped the wrapping paper on a couple of them so I''ll have to do a wrapping job on them again!
 
its the first year I put up the tree and I was so excited to put gifts under it the moment they were wrapped. I wanted the bottom of the tree to look filled and therefore went a little overboard and ended getting DH 3 presents! So i got clever and labeled #1 from "the wife" #2 from "the girlfriend" and #3 from "santa" - each more rated R than then next respectively
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hehehe
 
Without thinking about it I''m doing the same thing that my family did for Christmas. We would have the Christmas presents down early around the tree, for everyone. It was a great entertainment and speculation for us kids to thouroughly examine each present, trying to figure out what it was (and yes because of that us kids like to put things in shoe boxes, or wrap things with toliet paper rolls, balls of paper, etc to disguise what it was when we were giving to our fellow siblings). The next day there would be a new present for each of us from "Santa". One Santa gift in different, and usually rather simple wrapping paper, usually bright red (did they use the same wrapping paper every year?).

In our family when our oldest was younger we put the gifts under the tree. I tried it this year and after practice from her birthday my youngest took one look at those presents and started to rip away - she knew just what to do, but unfortunately cannot be reasoned with! So they are packed away and will be put under at the last minute.
But for other years I just love how the tree looks with all those gifts under there and it builds up the anticipation!
 
There are presents for other people under the tree, I ususally put out 1 gift for my son''s , but Santa brings most of the presents and we open them Christmas morning
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