AIBU to think my idea of Christmas Day isn’t miserable at all?

[Brandysauce]

DH and I have a three year old and, now they’re old enough to really set out “our” Christmas Day traditions, have been constantly disagreeing on the order of Christmas Day. I have extremely fond memories (as we all do) of the way I did it growing up and think it makes great sense on the day re. presents. This is my proposal:

Stocking from Father Christmas opened first thing in the morning, brought into parents’ room and ripped open in excitement. This will consist of at least one “really exciting” present that will entertain them all morning.

Later on, the family all convene for Christmas Dinner which can stretch on for a while, all the family are there including cousins.

After lunch, the whole family moves to the living room by the Christmas tree and then the main present opening begins, taking in turns.

My DH says this is a “miserable” way of doing Christmas and that we should let DC open all presents in the morning. AIBU to want to put my foot down on this?

Over the years I've been invited to Christmas lunch with many friends with children and encountered their chocolate-fuelled, jaded kids coming down from a ripping-everything-open high. They have no idea what they've been given or who gave it to them or whose gifts were whose. They have no interest in anything but one or two items. They're overwhelmed by the mountain of stuff but also disappointed that the main excitement is over so early in the day. On occasion even the the parents have seemed a bit lost about what to do once the main event is over.

So, OP, I like your way of doing it. It stretches out the pleasure of opening gifts through the day. Try it your way this Christmas, your partner's way next Christmas, and decide after the experiment which way works best for your family.

My best family Christmases came when I was a bit older. We'd open some presents and have breakfast together, then go for a walk with family friends and other family members, which I always remember as feeling special and celebratory. The adults would produce flasks of drinks and treats and there'd be some sort of challenge to collect things/ identify things. Then back to one of their homes for drinks and sometimes Christmas lunch. Home to more presents, a late Christmas dinner if my mum was cooking, and then an evening playing doing a jigsaw/ playing a board game together as a family. I do understand your desire to recreate the happy times you had.

We do presents in the morning, but late morning as we do parkrun first. We do dish them out one by one. It's not really formal, it just makes it take a bit longer, otherwise it's all done and dusted in a few minutes. We have Bucks Fizz while we open them.

But we also have some small "table" presents to open between Christmas dinner and dessert/pudding so we still have something to open later on.

DS still has a stocking and opens that when he wakes up :) However as he's early 20s, that isn't at 6am

What do you do in the afternoon? Go for a walk after lunch and then it's dark and we generally curl up with a book present and go to sleep

It might not be miserable for you but I should your children would find it so..
You make it sounds like the Royal family..

I love your way of doing it and it's how we do things now, but not with small kids around. It's perfect for an adults only christmas or one where the youngest is in their teens. Under that and they are too little to hold back the excitement and enjoy the anticipation. They'll spend half the day bored and upset and then won't enjoy the actual opening as much.

Absolutely team DH on this one! I can't fathom letting the DC run down the stairs to see all their presents and then saying stockings only, even as the adult that knows what is in each present I love their excitement and absolute joy at Santa having got them what was on the list.

Also, turn taking and having an audience watch me open presents is my idea of hell.

DC will naturally have some gifts spread across the day as grandparents arrive across the morning/early afternoon.

We were always pretty traditional. The children had their stocking on our bed at dawn. Then Mass, then presents at about 11/11.30 - and we took it in turns.

At about 12.30/1 grandparents took the DC to the park on new bikes/skates/scooters etc. to get some fresh air and run off steam. That gave me a couple of hours of peace to sort out lunch for when they got back. We ate at 3/3.30ish.

You cannot make a 3 year old wait until after lunch but the most unreasonable thing about your post is taking the three year old to a melee of rellies elsewhere - that would be my idea of hell on earth.

Try to think Team Family - your close family!

If you rip open the presents first thing what do you do after lunch?

Talk to each, play board games and play with presents?

The pious in me says that Christmas Day is about spending time as a family, and that's the focus, not eeking out present unwrapping throughout the whole day which OP's preference seems to be. The day is present focussed, rather than get that chaotic bit over and done with, then enjoy food and company. In the case of having small children pick a few presents they look like like they'll enjoy after lunch and put the rest away as they'll be overwhelmed.

Reading to this is like listening to my mum and dad argue when I was growing up 🤣

Personally now I'm older I prefer my mum's way (yours too) but my dad is still keen on my kids (the grandchildren) opening presents early even though my DH prefers to wait too. We have them every year so it's a bit of a nightmare handling child excitement and my dad's needlessly strong views on this!!

I think the thing that's the most important is that all children have the best time possible and no-one feels bad. So it's really important to make sure each child has roughly equal presents/roughly similar size and play value to be opened when the family are all together. It's unlikely that the parents of cousins will be dragging their big presents (scooters/bikes/trampolines) over to your house wrapped up, so you risk creating a situation where your child is "star of the show" with the most and the biggest and best presents compared to their cousins who will only have grandparent/aunt&uncle presents to open. That's a really shitty situation to put them and him in.

The easiest way to avoid this is for an agreement that Santa presents and presents from parents are opened before everyone meets up, and the after dinner present opening is the gifts to and from the aunts/uncles/grandparents that are visiting. This means it's pretty likely that each child will have approximately the same amount and same level of play value of gifts each.

Opening their big presents from you first thing in the morning means they get a chance to have a good play, and then tuck away safely anything they don't want the cousins playing with (especially important if there are younger cousins and there's a chance new, valued things might end up getting accidentally broken or squabbled over.

I think ' turn taking' present opening with a three year old could be a disaster.

If you remain this inflexible, your childs memories of Christmas are going to be of tension and stress. Relax a bit. You don't need to have this level of control over the whole day and you can't enforce merriment.

All the posters saying things like "but what will you do in the afternoon if all the presents are opened first thing" and "I like to appreciate every present and play/look at it" and "it seems grabby and will turn the kids into spoilt brats mindlessly tearing away at presents" lol do you think all the kids that open all the presents in the morning throw them away or something and start moaning that they are bored lol.

The excitement is seeing all your presents and opening them all to see what you have got and piling them up and on to the next one and then hours later rediscovering a gift when you look through your pile lol my kids have always been doubly excited this way and appreciate every single thing they get

I can see both perspectives.
we do stockings as soon as they’re awake (that’s the only thing that Father Christmas brings- all the rest of the presents are from us/family)
then we have a family breakfast and then opening the tree presents, but then again we don’t eat Christmas dinner until about 4/5pm.
That way the present opening isn’t all at once but it’s still in the morning.

Sorry but I’m Team DH. I have a 5 and 2 year old and they would be way too excited to open their presents to have to wait until after dinner. Could you let them open them all in the morning but put just a couple away somewhere for after lunch?

I wouldn’t have liked leaving presents until after lunch as a kid…. We did it twice when staying with family who did it that way and it was torturous 🤣

We has just grown our Christmas routine kind of organically, with little actual planning involved. So it’s ended up as something which works for us all.

we do presents in the morning but have breakfast between stockings and other presents. Then the kids have loads to keep them busy while grown ups cook.

And some families don't do stockings.

Everyone has their own way of doing things and a compromise will have to be reached for harmonies sake.

We do the same as you except we say it’s father Christa’s presents in the afternoon. And still do even though we are all grown up!

Absolutely! I'm 34 and wouldn't delay my own gratification on Christmas Day, so I definitely wouldn't expect a child to! There are a further 364 days in the year to teach them about delayed gratification.

Gifts from you in the morning after breakfast and gifts from family in the afternoon after dinner!

Besides, when they’re 3 the gift opening goes on FOREVER! They want to play with each gift after opening so it took us about 4 hours last year and was amazing. Just go with the flow, Christmas is for fun not rules.

We always opened ‘Santa gifts’ first thing ! It was a crazy happy time then the kids would play with whatever they got! Family gifts would come later as we are lucky to have all ou close family nearby so would see them all at some point during the day. I don’t know anyone who makes their kids wait till after dinner!

Also we all happily do turn taking when opening presents and our dc (3&7) are always so good about it. It’s exciting to see what everyone else gets and if they just tear in it’s over so quickly and you don’t see what others are opening.

YABU it does sound miserable

I’m enjoying all the people telling OP that there’s no right or wrong but actually her way is wrong 😂

OP I'm completely with you on how Christmas Day is organised (also go to church so that takes up some of the morning!) How I did it growing up and it was fine - never bothered me.
My 2 primary aged children now have this and it works perfectly well. They love stockings first thing. Sometimes the presents under the tree are spread over a few days because they enjoyed opening their presents and enjoying them immediately. They also enjoy seeing what others have.
It keeps the enjoyment of Christmas surprises going and with younger children, definitely helps prevent them being overwhelmed....
Piling in and opening all presents in the morning is just mindless to me. I know many do this but the one time I experience this it was horrible. Interestingly my siblings in-laws do the rip through presents option (doesn't like it either) but with us we do present rounds. Their children are fine with this approach.

Our Christmas was the same as yours growing up and we loved it, really made the day family centred, rather than present focused.
We did stockings in our parents bedroom together, then came downstairs and picked a present from under the tree, which would usually be a game that we could play together as a family after breakfast.
We went for a nice walk, got dressed up, my mum cooked Christmas dinner while we opened another present or 2. We had Christmas dinner and then opened the rest of the presents, one of which would be a movie we could all watch together.
We were taught to say thank you for all the presents and actually ask and look at what other people received etc.
We also grew up very poor so there weren't huge amounts of presents under the tree and if we tore them all open first thing in the morning then it would've been over very quickly!
We also were told that stockings were from santa and presents under the tree were from parents/family.
We do exactly the same now and we have continued the tradition with our partners.
Though we had little resistance there since my sisters partners family other than opening presents in the morning, basically act as if its any average day, no games, no Christmas movies, no fun together.
My husbands family view Christmas as a strictly religious holiday so spent most of the day in church and don't even have a family meal or exchange presents.