Christmas gift traditions

[Ambrosia Hino]

When I was little, my great-grandparents always bought me and my cousins matching Hallmark Christmas ornaments every year. When we moved away, they started sending money for me to pick out my own ornament instead (not as much fun, because now mine didn't match). I think that continued until around when I turned 18? I know it was after I started driving, because my ornament money ended up in my gas tank at least once.

That's one I need to figure out how to start up again, at least for our house.

[RebeccainGA]

When I was little, my great-grandparents always bought me and my cousins matching Hallmark Christmas ornaments every year. When we moved away, they started sending money for me to pick out my own ornament instead (not as much fun, because now mine didn't match). I think that continued until around when I turned 18? I know it was after I started driving, because my ornament money ended up in my gas tank at least once.

That's one I need to figure out how to start up again, at least for our house.

DP and I do it together, 1 ornament every year, dated. It's kind of cool to see how our tastes change. We used to try to get ones that reflected our family at the time (DD, and us, living together). This year, our first Christmas without DD, we got one that just was two doves, and said "Our Christmas Together". Was bittersweet, but certainly reflects our household!

[LilacRosey]

All the women in my families beed so we pass on necklaces and earrings to eachother every year. We all have different styles so it's pretty fun!, LilacRosey

[gmatoy]

I always sew for my family and recently I made PJ's for everyone and my family announced that was the best ever and should be a new tradition. (And does anyone else's family sing, "Tradition!" from Fiddler on the Roof? Because that is part of the tradition at our house!)

[Library Dragon]

Several years ago DH had neck surgery.  He was just driving again the week of Christmas.  He went to the local drugstore and shopped on the As Seen On TV aisle.  It's now a tradition that he buys us, DSs, DIL, and me, the cheesiest gifts he can get from this area.  It's funny, but some have turned out to be handy.

[StoutGirl]

Every year, my Dad has to get the annual John Deere ornaments, along with some black bear ornaments.

[Waterlight]

Since my parents were divorced and had each remarried, but both lived in the same town and were on speaking terms (from coolly civil in my high school years to genuinely friendly in the last few years before Dad died), I ended up getting TWO holiday celebrations:  one on Christmas Eve, the other on Christmas Day.   I alternated spending one with Mom and one with Dad--and now that Dad is gone, I alternate spending Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with my stepmom and with my mom and stepdad.  That's a tradition 

Another tradition is that my stepdad--who LOVES candy--always gets at least one big Whitman's Sampler box.

When my dad and stepmom's two cats were alive, I got presents each Christmas from "The Boys" with "love and pawprints."  Usually it would be something small, like socks.

[rm247]

Every Christmas eve, I get to open my Nanna's Christmas present, last thing before going to bed.
Every year the contents are the same: Beano Annual, Cadbury's Selection Box & "normal" present.
Which means that for the last 25+ years I get to spend Christmas night in bed reading the beano book eating chocolate.

She used to do something similar with my uncle and the Rupert Annual, but he "grew out of it" so instead his version is now a bottle of port & a jar of stilton.


I have ended up doing something similar for my sister. Despite being in Uni, she still has an old toy stuffed rabbit that used to be mine. So on Christmas Eve, she hangs a mini stocking up for him and during the night I fill it with Milky bars and milky bar buttons because they were her favourite sweets when I started doing this for her about 15 years ago.

[Marbles]

While my mom was alive, my grandparents would give her an angel every year for Christmas. I have no idea what happened to all the angels once Mom passed. Perhaps they went with her.

Mom also liked to buy a box of new ornaments each year. She'd write the year on the box, so now I have boatloads of ornaments. I've continued the ornament-buying tradition, but try to limit myself to singletons.

At our house Santa always brings everyone a geeky tee of some sort.

[Runningstar]

We don't always do this, but usually we will have one gift for each of our 3 kids that is hidden somewhere close by.  After all of the gifts and stockings have been opened, we wait a few hours and then tell each one that Santa left one more gift for them but forgot where.  They start the search and usually find each others.

[mechtilde]

We open our presents in the afternoon.

I was in my twenties before I found out why this tradition had started happening in our family.

Grandpa was a clerygyman, so he was always very busy all morning on Christmas day. But he wanted to see his children opening their presents. So they would open the things they got in their stockings in the morning, and then open the presents from everyone else in the afternoon. So we continued the tradition- one which started Christmas 1945, the first Christmas after WW2, when Grandpa finally got to spend the day with his three year old son.

[NestHolder]

Not precisely a gift tradition, but it is a gift, so... my theatre group used to have an auction at the regular Christmas Celebration.  People bring Stuff, people bid on Stuff, money raised goes to charity.  Well, there was a traditional penguin.  A little plastic wind-up toy of no value whatsoever, but it was always the last item to be auctioned, and always raised the highest sum, to be borne off in triumph by the winner.  Then it would reappear the following year.

[aussie_chick]

Ferrero Rocher chocolates! The rectangular box!
Every year without fail, when I hand my dad his wrapped box he makes some kind of "dad joke" about it being a "heavily disguised Ferrari/yacht/bottle of wine" and then he unwraps it and says "I never would have guessed!" Always the same, every single year!

[Another Sarah]

When we were kids the rule was that we had to stay in our rooms with our stockings until my parents were awake.
Everyone must be awake before the presents are opened.
Now we are all grown up (I'm the youngest at 29) the rule is that everyone must be here before presents are opened.

However my 32 year old brother still sneaks downstairs in secret every christmas morning (since he was 5) to see the tree with all the presents and then comes upstairs to tell my 34 year old sister and I that christmas has come!!!

[Outdoor Girl]

My maternal grandfather was a butcher.  In the 30s and 40s before widespread refrigeration, he would be open late on Christmas Eve, then have to scrub everything down, would be closed Christmas Day and open again on Boxing Day.

He'd get home in the wee hours of Christmas morning, get all the kids up to open their stockings.  Then everyone would go back to bed.  He'd get to sleep longer because the kids would get up and play with their stocking stuff, letting him sleep.

Also back in those days, oranges in this part of the world were relatively rare.  You would get them at Christmas time, though.  So the toe of the stocking was always a big orange.  The heel would be a large apple.  We continue this still.