Opening presents - free for all or one at a time?

[ChloeHandbag]

Ever since I've been a Mum, I've insisted that we open each present one by one rather than everyone opening their presents all together. Ie. pass present from under tree, wait for person to open it, then pass next present.

I like to see who got what and their reactions, dh rolls his eyes everytime I tell them suggest we do it this way so I wonder what other people do?

Whatever they want with stockings.

We never have a feeding frenzy with the rest - a slightly random turn-taking where one person wears the Santa hat and dishes out presents, usually with a child as "helper". DS is excited that he can wear the hat this year now his reading is good enough. Sometimes one or two before lunch, usually all after. We're quite happy to take our time over it, last year we opened half on Boxing Day.

DH went to his brother's one year and SIL insisted on the feeding frenzy approach as "more fun". He said he could suddenly see why their kids never, ever knew what he had given them which was a bit sad as we live far away so try to send nice and relevant things so they have some sense of who and where we are. (They never send us anything except excuses!)

Anyway, the free-for-all was stopped when their five-year-old was hugely excited to have unwrapped an enormous, badly-packed, carving knife and was running to show it to his brothers!