Gift exchange - DC open before Christmas?

[SugarCookieMonster]

I’m interested to know what other people do. This year is the first that DS(4) understands that Father Christmas is coming and everything that entails.

In the past we’ve always seen each set of grandparents on the 23rd and 24th. As DS is the first grandchild on both sides we stuck with the tradition of opening our presents to and from each other during the visits.

However, as DS now ‘believes’, DM said he can put their presents under our tree so he can open all the presents on Christmas Day. I hadn’t considered this but thinking about it, he’ll definitely question opening presents early (and we could possibly unleash the beast as he’ll then want to open everything!). DP are coming to us on Christmas Eve.

PIL and all the aunts and uncles are coming to us this year on 23rd. I don’t want to interfere with their tradition of opening early, but I also don’t have the headspace for arguing with DS about why he could open presents one day but not the next. For context they’ve pretty much all asked for vouchers so there won’t be any surprises.

So, if you have young DC, do you let them open presents whenever they’re given or do they go under the tree for Christmas Day?

Presents from other people don't come from Santa so that's not an issue that I can see.
We would open presents from in laws etc if we are seeing them before Christmas. With our friends we would normally swap presents and then open them on Christmas day.
Santa only brings stockings here though so it's easier.

Santa brings the stocking and maybe one other present, mum, dad, family and friends also buy presents if they want.

It's pretend christmas.
And when he wants every day to be pretend christmas, he can be pretend Santa and pick a toy (of his) to wrap up and give to you.
We have a lot of pretend birthdays in this house, I assume it would work with Christmas.

He'll question other people opening presents early more than why he only gets to open some early anyway. And they're obviously not from Santa if he's putting them under the tree, so not sure how believing is relevant.

Thanks all. I wasn’t allowed to open anything before Christmas Day (treated the same as birthday’s) so I wanted some perspective!

Sorry, don’t think I explained myself well there. I just meant that we’ve been drumming into him for weeks that he’ll get presents on Christmas Day (ours and Santa’s) and didn’t want to confuse things.

To be honest having him open them early will probably be better as our families are huge and he’ll probably be overwhelmed doing them all at once!

My children have always been fine with this. Presents from grandparents come from them, we are seeing them now, so presents now.

Father Christmas is another day, and presents from us come then too. Mine have never done anything different and it's all understood.

Nothing opened before the day.

But like a pp, presents under the tree are from relatives - only the stocking comes from Santa.

Presents from other people are never from Santa, DD thanks the person who gives them to her when she gets them.

Opening - it depends. We normally leave them until Christmas and DD opens them with all the other presents she gets. But we had also days where it was easier to open them early.

So far, she never had any problems with it.

There is another thread where a kid was heart set on a monster truck, mum&Dad have one for main gift. Granny has given a cheaper version. Mums upset because the shine has been taken of her gift.

Personally I'd do extended family gifts after Christmas rather than before but my own family gifts all appeared magically under the tree delivered by Santa. Growing up we had 3 Christmas birthdays to deal with inc boxing day, I now have 4 to deal with inc Christmas Eve so I'd rather Christmas gifts were opened on 25th.

I think it's fine to open beforehand - nice for grandparents to see him play with the toys and good for him to space it out. My 4yo would understand no problem that Christmas is Sunday but we're seeing granny on Saturday.

It's bad luck to open presents before Christmas 🤷‍♀️🤣

We put any posted/dropped off gifts under the tree and wait for Christmas. But if we exchange gifts in person, they can open them then. That's what we did among adults pre-DC and I never really considered stopping it.