When did you open Christmas presents when you were growing up?

debodun

debodun

SF VIP
Location
way upstate in New York, USA
We always opened presents on Christmas morning. When I was in college, the man I dated said his family opened gifts on Christmas eve, which seemed odd to me, but they had a German background and I found out that that is the custom in Germany. After my dad passed away, my mom and I divided up the gifts and opened a few every day until New Year.
 

Always Christmas Eve. Santa came to my house and passed out the presents... For every present received from Santa we had to say "Abba lieber vater..Amen" to Santa in order to get the present. It's a Child's first prayer in German. Santa had a stick.. which I guess was supposed to be for the naughty children.. My father always was threatened with the stick.. and it was really great fun... Of course Santa never hit anyone.. Funny thing though... Grandpa always had to go to the store for Grandma.. Santa came while he was gone.. and he was always so disappointed when he returned to find out Santa had already been there. I never made the connection until I was about 13. lol!!
 
We got to open one at home before bedtime on Christmas Eve. My grandmother was a nurse and if she had to work the 7-3 shift, we went to her house on Christmas Eve and would open presents from the family and Santa there. On Christmas day we'd go to her house early so that my mother and aunts could make Christmas dinner, and we'd eat around 4 after my grandmother got home...she had to be there to make sure that everything was ready before we could sit down:)

QS, we were always disappointed to discover that Santa had been to her house before we got there, too!
 

Christmas morning we'd have a stocking each at the bottom of the bed, with a cheap toy, an apple or an orange and a couple of sweets...so we were allowed to keep ourselves amused with those until my father said we could get out of bed.
 
rkunsaw said:
Christmas morning. Santa doesn't come until everyone's asleep Christmas eve. How could we possibly get presents before then?
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Not so fast there buddy... Depends WHAT tradition you follow. My family is from Germany... It is German tradition to open gifts on Christmas Eve.. Obviously no way is the right way.... but there are certainly DIFFERENT ways..

https://www.timeanddate.com/holidays/germany/christmas-eve

Here comes SANTA!!

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We usually opened our gifts on Christmas Eve, since that was the night of big dinner with whole family and church afterwards.
 
Well Santa couldn't make it to our house until we were asleep on Christmas eve, so we couldn't open presents until Christmas morning. We weren't allowed to get up on Christmas morning until our parents were up.
 
We got to pick one to open Xmas eve and before there were Xmas eve masses we'd have to sit through mass all impatient waiting to get home and open gifts.
 
Santa did have a lot to cover with delivering presents so didn't get to our house until the middle of the night. I never open Christmas presents before Christmas morning.
 

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