Celebrating on the 24th or 25th with kids?

[december2020]

I'm Scandi and DH is from the UK.

I've always celebrated the big Christmas event on the 24th evening, DH of course has the main event on the 25th.

Usually we've just lengthen the celebrations for both days and open some presents on Christmas Eve and some on Christmas Day and 'make it work'. Though he feels it's "wrong" opening anything early and I feel it's "wrong" waiting till the morning.

But we're about to have our first kid in December.

So I was interested to know how do you celebrate Christmas if you have a similar situation as ours? Did this change when/if you had kids?

We celebrate both, although our Christmas presents tend to be smaller (mostly books). So we can open some on each day.
We also celebrate St Nicholas's day on 6th December with tiny chocolate presents.
DS does not mind many days of pampering and gift-giving.

Congratulations!

Congratulations

Why not alternate years celebrate each others ways - what do you do on Christmas Day and what does dp do on Christmas Eve?

Have Christmas Eve presents from your side of the family on evening of 24th and Christmas presents from your DH’s side on the 25th, and your dc will be delighted by their own Christmas tradition which spreads the excitement over 2 days.

Thank you everyone!
My parents live abroad and DH's live a good 300miles + from us. So sadly we aren't able to see one set on 24th and the other on 25th with as much ease, otherwise this would be the perfect solution even from a parents aspect!

I'm currently thinking definitely to have a 2 day extended celebration. We just need to decide what traditions should be on each day.
Is it too much to have 2 Christmas dinners 😬
How do we split the present opening between the two? So many questions. 🙈

We have two different family traditions in our house and we have different meals on different days. One day is the turkey and Christmas crackers and Christmas Pudding and the other day is a different festive meal. My dc are older children and teenagers and love the fact that they get two Christmasses!

Can you do different bits on different days. So maybe family presents on Christmas Eve and stockings from Father Christmas on Christmas Day? Same with the food, maybe something traditionally Scandinavian on Christmas Eve and something British on Christmas Day.

We are Germans and we do our main Christmas on Christmas Eve. Christmas Day, DD wakes up to a stocking and any present from a UK friend plus maybe one extra gift. Because on Chrismas Eve you get your presents from Father Christmas (Weihnachtsmann) and Christkind. Christmas Day you have Santa Claus (worked very well).

We do Christmas Dinner on Christmas Day and on Christmas Eve it was always something cold until DD got older and was able to wait longer.

I think neither culture should make space for the other, instead combine and cherish both.

Oh, and St. Nikolaus brings chocolates on the 6th December as well.

It's not quite the same but we celebrate Orthodox Christmas on the 7th January as well as Christmas on the 25th December as a nod to my family heritage. 25th December is the traditional UK Christmas, that's when we do all the main gifts, 3 course Christmas dinner, crackers,pudding etc. Then on the 7th Jan we have a smaller celebration, usually just a roast with Christmas crackers and pudding, plus one small gift for each child. So in your situation I would do both. Split the gifts between the 2 days, have 2 dinners the way you would each traditionally have them etc.

Thank you, this is really giving me a lot of inspiration!

I'm definitely up for a good scandi Christmas dinner on the 24th and then the English Christmas meal on the 25th. Also a nice way to mix up the Christmas menu a bit!

I'll definitely have a little think on how to "split up" presents between the two days. Is it a bit of a "you can only open some tonight and some tomorrow" or that another batch "magically" appears overnight.

another batch "magically" appears overnight.

There are many variations on Father Christmas/Santa but the way we do it is he brings a stocking full of tat little presents called stocking fillers - look for ideas on some of the threads. This appears overnight to open on the morning of 25th Dec. Any big ticket items tend to come from parents/siblings/ other family members and opened after breakfast/through the day. You could easily shift that to Christmas Eve. Some families have everything coming from FC but that is weird it then becomes harder to control requests for expensive toys.

Open at midnight

My friend's DH was Polish, and they used to have the traditional Polish Christmas meal, with his family, on Christmas Eve and then English traditional Christmas lunch on 25th. The Polish grandparents and aunties/uncles gave presents on Christmas Eve, and the rest were given on Christmas Day.

I'd do presents from Scandinavia family on Xmas eve with a split from you. I'd do English family presents and a gift from Father Christmas ( we only ever did one from him, as I thought it seemed grabby otherwise) on the 25th as this is where you live and that's what his friends will expect to talk about

I'm scandi Dh is Dutch. We live in a Scandinavian country so celebrate mainly on the 24th but have a small celebration the 25th with some of the Dutch tradition and then celebrate sinterklas the 5th as well. That works for us. We have to dds and they dont question it or get confused because it's our traditional now

For DD the Santa present and stocking appear by magic, I would find it really difficult to put presents u Der the tree and let DD wait for 12 hours.

She still puts out a glass of beer or wine/port plus some marzipan or chocolate (incl a homemade marzipan carrot) for Santa. During primary school they did reindeer food at school and it was sprinkled on the lawn just before bedtime. Our rabbits got their presents on Christmas Day, after all, they are British.

Im in a similar situation. My husband is Swedish.
We have a big swedish christmas on Christmas eve- with the amazing swedish banquet (Skol!!!) We open some presents on Christmas eve- a couple per person-- usually smaller ones. They are presents from family.
My kids go to school in England so as as far as they are concerned, Father Christmas comes on Christmas eve so on christmas day morning, there is a sack load of presents.
We then do a full English Christmas.

I’m British and about six years ago we started doing Christmas Day dinner on Christmas Eve, and then did presents on Christmas Day. It was driven by having children and a long thin house so I felt I was never near the action as I was always popping back to kitchen. We all loved it! Christmas Eve is more relaxed, nice long walk, some reindeers, focus is on ‘proper dinner’. On Christmas Day, focus is on presents, games, interaction and an easy buffet type food. I also found it meant that that the nibble type items got used up on and we weren’t left with bits in the cupboards! I’ve mixed it up so hot buffet, Christmas afternoon tea, poached salmon.

I'm british, husband swedish. We do both. Swedish christmas on 24th, with full julbord, Kalle Anka etc, santa comes after dinner to give presents. Then British Christmas on the 25th, Santa nips back because he forgot to leave the stockings (silly santa) and we do a full British Christmas.
And then I'm too fat and exhausted to move for 3 weeks.

We often used to spend Christmas with a Swedish/Brit couple (in the U.K.). Whether at their place or ours, we’d have her trad ham/ fishy eats/rice porridge and glogg etc. on the 24th, and turkey etc. on the 25th.

No children, or only adult ones involved then, so no bother about when to open presents, but I don’t see why you can’t do half each day.

Thank you everyone for sharing your traditions and thoughts with me. It's really so wonderful to hear!

I think we may do a scandi Christmas meal on the 24th, this can have the more fishy delights, scandi foods, Christmas ham, casseroles and traditions and then on the 25th we can do the British Christmas meal with the gravy and pigs in blankets etc.

Present wise maybe we'll do a bit of a "santa visited twice" thing where he brings some presents for Christmas Eve (mainly presents to keep kids busy during the evening and fun things to do together) and then he'll visit overnight for the Christmas Day presents.

But instead of having all presents "from Santa" it's more that he delivers presents if you've been good and while some are from him, mainly they're from friends and family. Santa just seems if you've good enough to receive them all.

(Yes I'm thinking far too much into this)!

German DH; English me. We do a 2 day celebration, and St Nikolas visits in 5th/6th December. No Father Christmas on 24th December for 5 year old DS.

Do whatever you want to how exciting to have an excuse to have TWO christmases! Make your own traditions! If you want two big Christmas days back to back then do. Don't do anything that you don't want to, and likewise - don't NOT do something because you feel you shouldn't.

Kids believe all kinds of crap. Just say Santa knows you're from a different country and magically knows to bring presents on different days because of this. Or that you called him or whatever to explain.

We are both British but got fed up of missing time with the kids on Christmas day so for the last few years we have eaten Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve. Means that all of the prepping/cooking/cleaning is done before we go to bed on Christmas Eve and we can have a nice relaxed Christmas day. We usually have enough food left over to have another full dinner if we fancy it or sandwiches if not. And we celebrate over 2 days.
I think the idea of honouring both traditions over 2 days is a great idea. The only downside of the 2 different meals is all the prep that goes into it so I'd be tempted to prep some stuff ahead and freeze it (& incorporate Christmas Eve leftovers into Christmas Day dinner if you can), otherwise you'll create double the work and miss big chunks of both days cooking and clearing up.

Christmas Eve boxes are very popular these days so it wouldn't be that unusual for children to get some small presents on Christmas Eve. Do what works for you.
The great thing about starting your own family is that YOU get to start new traditions for your own children.

@pinksparkleunicorns We always told DD that Santa has a list with all the names of children living in a different country so that early deliveries are made on time.

He also has list of children going away over Christmas as one of her fro3nds suddenly didn’t want to see her grandmother as she was afraid Santa didn’t know she was spending Christmas somewhere else.

Worked like a treat.