Does anyone else not hate the big present pile?

[Christmasiscoming2025]

My 4 year olds favourite part of getting presents is opening them so I get him loads of things but it’s not all big gifts/toys. I have got him clothes with his favourite characters on, books, games and puzzles from charity shops, sweets ect.

A lot of people don’t seem to like the big piles of presents on here and say they only get a few presents for their kids and I just don’t really get it as the magic/wow moment is the big pile for kids 🤷‍♀️

We came down to a sack full on the couch, bearing in mind it was the 80s and we didn’t have much. In reality it was probably less than ten gifts of various sizes but i do still remember the wow. We did not get much year round. However as teens we got much smaller gifts or one item eg cd hifi or tv. i missed that plastic sack!

I think you can do the wow without obscene piles especially with small children. I’m pretty sure most peoples aren’t obscene like you see on social media.

Personally, I don’t like a big pile of presents. When my children were very little, one of them liked to open each present, get all the pieces out, set it up and play with it. The other got a little sequin bag and loved it so much that she refused to open any more presents after that. That was the first present she opened.

On any other day if you gave your child one present they would be absolutely overjoyed and play with it for weeks. At Christmas some children get so much, I think they don’t value or appreciate it at all. Stuff sits unopened and unloved for a long time.

My mum was and still is a big fan of Christmas tat. She just buys stuff for the sake of buying stuff. It’s totally overwhelming and completely wasteful. This year I think my children have five presents each. This is a nice amount. The part I love about Christmas is just getting to spend some time together. I really don’t like the present bit at all. For those that love the big present pile, how do you cope with the wrapping and the mess? It drives me crazy!

There seems to be a big pile here but it's largely because there will be a lot of us here rather than anyone getting a massive pile. Grandson will have the biggest pile largely because his things come in bigger boxes and each adult here will have got him a gift. He will have got each of us a small gift courtesy of his Mama too. Hopefully I will have very little as I am not a fan of "stuff" generally so usually I am bought Audible credits and a flower subscription. We all seem to enjoy the stockings more tbh which are packed with consumables and useful stuff that we open at the dining table after Christmas dinner. This started as a ruse to keep autistic son at the table as a child then once it was no longer needed nobody wanted to change that. Son is 30 now and still stockings are hung from the backs of dining chairs to be unpacked after dinner.

We did it for ours - to a degree. But never plastered it all over Facebook. Very tasteless.

I don’t hate it, the years ds is with me (I alternate with his dad) on Christmas morning I do like to create that “he’s been” magical moment with a reasonable pile of gifts. Since he only really gets presents from me here I achieve this by buying one or two “main” gifts then a few silly bits and clothes, bedding, books and chocolate.
I don’t spend a fortune and he knows that we don’t/can’t do that but it’s still fun unwrapping everything. When he was younger I bought a lot of things second hand from charity shops too.

When mine were little we did quite big piles (10 presents each) colour coded wrapping for ease as there were four of them. But we are a small family..no aunts and uncles etc so it was just us. Plus stockings full of cheap tat to open at 5am!
As they grew the piles got smaller and we only stopped stockings when the first grandchild appeared.
It was magical.
Now the grandchildren have lots of aunts and uncles so we get them a couple of presents from us, plus stockings. Dh has hand made DGS main present because what he wanted doesn't exist and dh is great at woodwork!

All the adult kids come home and we jumble up the presents. As adults we have a system where DD2 allocates us just two people to buy for and that keeps the cost down while still having a surprise :)

Haha I was the child opening each present and spending time on it before moving on to the next. My sister would have all hers open in five minutes and I’d be there for hours boring everyone 😂

We always had a huge pile but I don’t think there a lot of tat or presents for presents sake. Guess it helped I was one of 3 so it added up, and there would always be a chocolate orange, a selection box and some socks as well as our main presents. Plus under the tree would be grandparents presents and aunties/uncles and we had 7 on one side and 4 on the other!

we will do similar for 2 yrs DS (and DC who is due next year) he’s only got 4 presents that’s are toys from us, then I’ll get him some smarter jumpers he needs, a sippy cup basically just things I would buy normally as well as 6 or 7 presents from my side of the family and 3 from DH side, it soon adds up to a big pile when you time that over multiple children

I’m poor 🤷‍♀️

Yeah i hate the wear/need/read stuff too 😖 surely you should be buying that stuff anyway? It's hardly fun!

I don't love a big pile of gifts, but then get annoyed when I need to find somewhere to store it 🤣

100% this.

I know some 4 present parents who are very sneery about big pile parents, but then take their children on outings at least once a weekend where they get bought something from the shop, so end up getting their lungs much more over a year, but manage to feel very superior about it.

We love the big pile! It's part of Christmas to me. If you can't spoil them at Christmas, when can you?

It doesn't have to be tat, get thrown away etc either.

I just assume there's a lot of stuff from Poundland and the like wrapped up to make the piles as big as possible.
I grew up poor, I always wanted one good present that was comparable to what my friends would get. The piles of tat made me feel poorer as soon as I was old enough to realise how cheap (and poor quality) everything was.

Edit: Obviously this is irrelevant if you have enough money to buy a big pile of good quality gifts.

So are we but one of my sons presents I've wrapped is a tube of pringles as they are his favourites it doesn't have to be expensive stuff. But it depends what they are use to my kids will think nothing of unwrapping a new toothbrush others who aren't use to that kind of present would look at you like you have 2 heads

I think it’s just personal preference mixed with circumstances. We get the kids a lot for Christmas. Christmas is a big thing in our family and I’m sure a lot of people on here would be horrified by how much they get, but they are great kids, and we enjoy going all out at Christmas and we budget for it accordingly. I love choosing stuff for them and it’s stuff I know they will enjoy and play with in the year ahead.

I had five kids. The pile was big even when they only had a couple of things each!

But we did a 'slow' Christmas, with present opening spread out through the day. It stopped the 'tearing off the paper like savages and then walking away' that, according to my friends, many children would do.

I used to buy socks, underpants and stationery - files, dividers, paper and pens. My teenagers said they relied on receiving it

Its not necessarily overconsumption of things they don't play with though. Mt daughter has always had a big pile of presents but never a big pile of toys.

Im in the middle. I hate wasting money and buying stuff that might not get used. But my parents, despite being quite comfortably off, were quite parsimonious about Christmas (and birthday) presents. Though we did get presents from various extended faculty, godparents, family friends etc.

Our kids only really get presents from us and also I tend not to buy them lots of stuff throughout the year (I get things they need obviously). Special stuff I save for Christmas and birthdays. So yes they do get quite a pile. But it's honestly carefully planned and thought out, no tat that is ignored or wasted. They're also quite sensible so if they are due a phone or laptop there will be much less than usual in the "pile" because most of the budget has been used up.

This year daughter had no bigger items on her list, just loads of small items like beauty stuff. So she will have a lot to open (I'll probably condense them into boxes so it's not too ridiculous) whereas son won't have much (his main present was plane tickets).

We’ve always done a pile!

my parents get a pile each from us/my sister. Me and my sister get a pile from our parents. We do piles for each other, and our husbands. My daughter gets a pile from us and from them.

We are in our 30s, the wow was way before social media and still has nothing to do with it. It’s how we do Christmas, that’s all.

We don’t buy much throughout the year and we don’t do money for Christmas.

I had the massive Christmas pile as a kid, it was magical. Then I watched my parents deal with debt for the rest of the year. I remember seeing lots of final warning letters and I’ve decided for my daughter I want year round financial stability, not great and famine. And Christmasses centred around family time and simple traditions rather than consumerism. But we all get to choose how we parent, do your thing x

Just thought, maybe it’s not the pile people judge. More likely it’s the pics of it shared on social media.

Firstly what a kid sees as a big pile is often far less than what an adult sees as big

and for some children it can easily be too much and go from wow to tears.

for some families a few well chosen things is all they can afford and it is enough

and books games and puzzles are all types of toy even if from the charity shop - not sure why you treat them different

but it also depends on your family norm - if you are buying sweets and books and clothes because he’s short of these things - because you don’t buy them all year round -then it will be different pile from the family who gets stuff every week

if you are buying so much stuff that most never sees the light of day , where you feel broke, where you worry about needing a bigger house then you should think again

I've never counted how many gifts they get. I know the money total because I make sure it's the same per kid (or as close to it as possible, can be difficult now they're older!). I would guess I've spent about 600 on each of them.

But my eldest wanted a really cool gamer bed that cost 300 and was happy to get that as part of his Christmas. I just upgraded to a switch 2 and gave my son my OLED too so he doesn't want a console for Christmas. He's getting 4 Lego sets, pop figures, 3 Nintendo switch games & some small bits like a Elphaba broomstick and wicked toys.

I think quality over quantity for Christmas personally. Sure a huge pile looks impressive but if it's filled with Poundland tat that's gonna break or not be used within a week, then it's shite and I'd prefer to give less gifts but higher quality.

I also buy for my kids throughout the year though, pretty sure they get a toy twice a month (once through pocket money, once through me just being spontaneous). I also disagree with gifting clothes for toddlers or young children unless it's something they're old enough to specifically ask for. Same as the new bed, if my son wasn't old enough to have asked and really really wanted it, that wouldn't have been a Christmas gift.

Glad I’m not the only person in my 30s still getting a pile from my parents 😂