Christmas gift traditions

[RebeccainGA]

In my family, we have a few traditions for gifts - my aunt always buys my grandmother a calendar with bears on it. I always make peanut butter cookies to mail to my grandfather. I always buy a pez dispenser for our stockings, and we buy a Christmas ornament with the year on it for the family tree, and a blue ornament for my ornament tree.

What fun traditional gifts do you do in your family?

[Arrynne]

Chocolate Covered Cherries.  Apparently my grandpa would buy a box of those for all of his daughters every year for Christmas.  Now it's traditional to exchange boxes of Chocolate Covered Cherries. 

[magician5]

We used to have one that reflected both the sweet and the un-sweet in my mother.

Every year, I'd get a big bottle of ketchup. I use a lot of it. That was sweet, with all the "Ooh, I don't know what this one is!" comments.

In later years, she stopped wrapping anything. I'd get the ketchup in a small brown paper bag. The lack of care in not wrapping anything grated on me, but the bag for the ketchup made the comments even funnier.

[Luci45]

Our son always gets me a horrible musical toy of some sort. A biker Santa that I don't remember what he sings, a penguin singing Blue Christmas and flopping his blue snowhat, a bear singing Shake Your Booty turning around to wiggle his bottom. He's been doing this for 20 years now. My favorite is a small moose the sings Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer because it's a family joke. He claims he found one that too much even for him. I was afraid to ask!

[MrsCrazyPete]

There is a store near us that sells single serving sizes of Nutella and teeny packages of shortbread cookies. I buy about a dozen of each to put in my DH's stocking every year. He loves to take them to work to snack on while he's walking (DH is a mailman).

For my dad, we always buy him scotch. He always likes it, and always needs more!

[siamesecat2965]

My dad always used to get pistachos for my stocking as a kid, and even as an adult, I'd still insist on them - now that he's gone, my mom still gets me a bag of them every year!

[baglady]

My dad always used to get pistachos for my stocking as a kid, and even as an adult, I'd still insist on them - now that he's gone, my mom still gets me a bag of them every year!

This reminded me of my dad. My mom loves cashews, but she would rarely buy any kind of treat just for herself. So my dad would get her a box of them from Fannie Farmer every Christmas, birthday and Mother's Day, which led to this exchange:

Me: "What's in the box?"
Dad (said with mischievous smile and twinkle in eye): "Your mother's nuts!"
Me: "I know. But what's in the box?"

[jmarvellous]

We always get practical things in our stockings. Growing up it was underwear, socks, and a toothbrush every year, and often anything else we needed as far as,personal toiletries. This year, I still got lip balm, lotion, hand sanitizer, disposable razors, and cute socks.

My sister, since she learned to sew, has made little stuffed things. This year we got adorable felt penguin ornaments.

My brother gives secondhand or bizarre things. I got a giveaway book about the miracle of coconut water, a freebie keychain, and such. My sister got oddball '90s pop CDs (used). Mom got a bunch of freebie keychains and folders. We all got a nicer gift, too.

[Thipu1]

We had the tradition of the box. 

One Christmas, an aunt worked at a store at which our family could never afford to shop.  Because of the employee discount, Aunt could and my mother received a gift in the store's distinctive box.  After that, the box changed hands for around 20 years within both sides of the family.   

During the round of Christmas morning phone calls, the big question was always, 'Who got the box this year?'

[Drawberry]

When I was a child my mother would always bake Grands Biscuits (the flaky layers kind) and have me and my older siblings sit down in the living room to open gifts while she took pictures with such frequency that reviewing them was more like watching a flip book movie.

Now that Boyfriend and I have spent our first Christmas together it seems the tradition is our new cat Jiji waking us up at 8am  Apparently someone else was excited too.

[gmatoy]

Because we always went to my mother's house for Christmas dinner, spending basically the whole day, I made Christmas breakfast a BIG deal and always made chocolate cinnamon rolls. Now that the dinner meal is at my house, I still do the breakfast thing, but wish someone would take over one part or the other!

[daisy1679]

Every year, my grandma would get everyone 12 pairs of socks (there's about 30+ people in four generations). Each sock would be wrapped separately (not pairs, each individual sock), and whoever was passing out gifts would just start tossing the socks at the intended recipient. It would be call a name, throw, call the next name, throw. It was a little crazy, with socks flying everywhere, but the best part of Christmas! When I was younger and us kids would get 12 different pairs, Grandma used to set up a contest to see who could get all their socks unwrapped and matched up first, the prize was usually a box of chocolates or something.

This is one of my family's favorite traditions, even though Grandma is gone now, we have all continued the tradition with our own families!

[KenveeB]

We HAVE to have Lifesaver Storybooks in our stockings every year. One year my mom couldn't find them, and my brother and I were crushed. We were in college at the time!

My mom's wrapping is famous. She likes to put things in odd boxes ("never trust the box" is a family motto -- you might open a box of hair curlers and find an iPod ) and weigh things down so you can't tell what's what. This year I got a couple of bottles of root beer weighing down various boxes.

[CookieChica]

We have a pretty typical one not mentioned yet - Christmas Eve pajamas! I love to go to bed and wake up in brand new pajamas.

[KenveeB]

We have a pretty typical one not mentioned yet - Christmas Eve pajamas! I love to go to bed and wake up in brand new pajamas.

We used to have that, but after my brother and I got out of the house, my mom stopped getting pj's for us. I still buy a new pair every year and wear it for the first time on Christmas Eve.   Actually, this year my brother got all of us pj's as an early gift. He spent Christmas with his GF's family and said he wanted us to have something of him on Christmas Day.