1) We spent Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and the subsequent day with family out-of-state (presents were opened every day from whomever we were visiting – including the largest family gathering Christmas Eve with LOTS of presents! Maybe it’s a German thing?).

2) We always had stomach aches by the time we got home. Too much food & we had to be polite and eat at EVERYONE’s house!

3) Santa would visit us “on his way back to the North Pole” which sometimes was as late as the 30th! We never thought it was strange because our parents were good fakers and we were all gullible (or you know, had the Christmas Spirit in our hearts! lol!).

Now we have a tradition Swedish Smorgasbord on Christmas Eve before church (which is until 12:30am at least). Christmas morning, us “kids” still open stockings and we exchange presents throughout the day while sneaking cookies to spoil our appetites for dinner. Fortunately, there are a lot less tummy aches these days.

My younger brother and I were always up at the crack of dawn and wandered into the living room to check out our gifts. We “accidentally” opened one to all three of us one year because we just had to know what it was. Once that happened our parents wrapped the doorway at the end of the hall so that we couldn’t get through in the morning.

We actually loved that. We would take a running start down the hallway and bust through the paper. We never got in trouble for opening our presents too early again either.

But we get together with extended family on Christmas Eve and open a present from aunts and uncles. And Santa shows up every year (he’s on old friend of my husbands) and brings new pajamas for the kids to wear to bed. Best $40 we ever spent on that costume…too bad somehow Dad always misses the visit from his old friend!

January 6th (Feast of the Three Kings) we would open our stockings.

My family, on the other hand, has some very deeply rooted traditions – most involving the torture of the children. As an adult, I love these traditions, but I hated them as a child!

Christmas Rules:
1. Children upstairs after Christmas Eve service – not allowed back down without parents.
2. Parents must not be disturbed until 7am.
3. All family members must have teeth brushed and be wearing something other than pj’s – robe and slippers or regular day clothes.
4. Dad is the only one allowed downstairs first. He puts the sheet over the doorway to the living room with the tree.
5. Dad returns to upstairs and we go as a family into the kitchen.
6. All family members must eat a full breakfast and clean up. Once everything is cleaned up, we could open our stockings. One. At. A. Time.
7. Once all the stockings were cleaned up and the kitchen was spotless, Dad would remove the sheet from the living room doorway.
8. Family goes in living room and sits down. One child is chosen to start distributing gifts – child chooses one gift for someone other than themselves, delivers it, then sits back down. Gift is opened by intended recipient. Recipient then chooses a gift for another.
9. Repeat process one. at. a. time. until all gifts have been opened.
10. Once all wrapping paper has been cleaned up, the “Christmas weapons” (from the stockings) are brought out (usually rubber bands or nerf-type guns) and a full-family battle ensues for a few hours. What better way to pass the time until family turkey dinner than a full-blown battle!

Weapon of choice for this year’s battle – marshmallow guns!

My parents would always host a Christmas Eve bash for the entire family so that my 3 siblings, who are 20, 16 and 14 years older than I am, could spend Christmas morning with their kids, families, etc. We would open the wrapped presents (to wrap or not to wrap, that’s a whole ‘nother post, Laura!) to each other on Christmas Eve. The unwrapped presents from “Santa” (we did do Santa when I was a girl, now I don’t anymore) were for Christmas morning.

Well, my husband’s family does it differently. All presents are wrapped no matter who they are from, even Santa presents. My MIL would wrap all Santa presents in the same paper (usually red and white of some sort) and the presents to each other in different paper. All presents were opened Christmas day, period.

Now, we don’t do Santa and all presents are wrapped and opened on Christmas day. There really is no need to open anything on Christmas Eve at this point. Things might change as my children have families of their own, though.

In the morning, we go to mass for Christmas day and come home to open the rest of the presents and eat lots of good foods after the Advent fast. We go around the room so each person opens a gift while the others watch. We listen to Christmas carols and sing them for the first time on Christmas Eve and we continue to sing and listen throughout the 12 days of Christmas. We take down our tree after Epiphany.

We do our stockings on St. Nicholas, which is tomorrow, so we are putting out our stockings tonight. The children write a letter or draw a picture for St. Nicholas to take to Jesus and we leave a carrot out for his horse.

We use the daily office for our morning and evening prayers each day, so our readings and prayers go along with the Church year and go with the seasons.