to ask what weird and inexplicable little Christmas habits your relatives have?

[Greensleeves]

My stepdad always cut deep crosses into the sprouts, to make sure they got extra waterlogged and mushy

My mother used to put a tangerine in the toe of the stocking, then all the stocking gifts/choc, then fill up any remaining space with tangerines and apples so it "looked full". So if it was a slow year you ended up with a big pile of fruit.

My dad starts on the brandy an hour before Christmas dinner "to numb the stomach" so he can fit more food in.

Any weird and wonderful Christmas quirks in your families?

I buy my cats Christmas presents. Cats get upset if they are left out when we open presents so we include them.

I've found my people - we also had a 'hander outer' and gifts were opened one at a time. I'll never get used to the free for all -aaaagh! 😂

We never had santa presents, when i was a kid all presents were from santa & when more family came to visit in the afternoon/evening (or if we were going to elsewhere later on) i was told santa had got confused from all the sherry and mince pies he had drunk 😵 and left some presents at the other persons house by mistake 😂

We did however have Tree presents, which were to be small and carefully nestled in the branches of the xmas tree & opened with breakfast

@OliviaStabler our cats always get me a card and a gift (bottle of perfume this year). They have some ham ends which they've demolished and are now sleeping off 😊

@Autumnchill Sounds lovely

After lunch it is Queen's speech, then the youngest hands out presents one at a time and we all watch the opening of them before the next one

Absolutely love the tradition of it

Everything in the op seems perfectly normal to me.

Say what? I spent 45 minutes crossing sprouts yesterday. And now you are telling me I don’t need to!!!???

@stylishduck we put raffle tickets on all our presents. Then pick them out and open them one by one. Drags it out and kids love hunting for the numbers

writersblock we do as you do....youngest roots around tree until everybody has one gift and then we open, round by round.

Can't begin to fathom the all dive in approach!

We started doing the one present at a time, thing this year. It was lovely!