What presents does Father Christmas bring to your home?

[sheeplikessleep]

Trying to work out best way of explaining this to 3 year old DS1 or whether I am overthinking it.

I've always been brought up with the tradition that FC brings presents in the stocking and that the other presents under the tree are from family. I'd quite like to bring up DS and DH happy to too.

However his family have a different 'story'. They don't do stockings, but rather say that Father Christmas brings all of the presents (under the tree) on behalf of family members.

We visit them each year after Christmas and I'm aware the in-laws will say 'ooh what has FC brought' etc.

Will DS ever (not this year but in the future) ever question this difference? Does it matter? Could we just say that at home he brings the stockings, but at in-laws he brings all of the presents? Writing it down, I am overthinking it, but just wondered if anyone had any experiences / thoughts. Thanks!

We have this problem!

In our family FC always bought the stockings, filled with smallish presents - books, games, socks etc and then all the presents under the tree com efrom the person who bought them, meaning teh big presents are from Mummy and Daddy, Grandma and Grandpa etc.

This si the way we have continued it for our DC, and I personally thinks it gives them a far better understanding of Christmas.

SIL does stockings and bid pressies (from them) from Santa.Meant they couldn't come for Xmas last year as they said the children would have notcied all the pressies in the car!

We did Xmas with them a few years ago and got away with it as all teh children so young, but the oldest are now 6 and 7 and think they would spot the difference straight away,

Other problem we had was that in our family stocking presents were never wrapped. DH appalled by this and I spent our first Xmas Eve with DS having astocking (think he was 2) wrapping stocking presents at 11pm!!

We did it differently to all our friends as children yet I don't remember ever questioning it

We had stockings full of small stuff, then unwrapped presents from Santa in living room, then wrapped presents from other people next to them.

my friend never had a stocking and Santa put all her presnets from him, wrapped at the foot of her bed, and preseents from other people went under the tree.

melrose - that's exactly situation here! i am scurrying around for small gifts for stocking at the moment, as stocking fillers from santa. then we've got a 'main' present from us. we will get away with it this year and for next couple of years, as ds's are 3 and 8 months . i just wondered really. interesting that you think yours at 6 and 7 would spot the difference now. i guess the 'problem' is that if it then undermines their belief prematurely.

emmanate - that's reassuring that you never questioned it.

no easy answer i guess. thanks for posting. i know mil made a big deal of fc visiting when niece and nephew were little, so not sure how to handle that, as she will do the same with ds's. (which i don't want to ruin her enjoyment, but at the same time, don't want to be asked difficult questions by the ds's!).

santa brings a stocking and the presents from me and dh. Any presents from anyone else comes from them i.e. aunts, uncles, etc

Empty pillowcase stocking left on bottom on bed and magically filled by morning.

Tis very exciting to put your foot out the bed to have a quick feel to see if he's already been or not.

Under the tree are the gifts to/from family friends etc.

meant - under the tree presents are not from FC