Growing up Santa would take a bite out of our cookies, feed his reindeer veggies, fill our stockings and leave us a toy or something small, unwrapped. The rest of the gifts were wrapped under our tree from our parents. To me that was always normal. When Dan and I talked about it he told me that his Santa would leave him all of his presents under the tree and they would all be wrapped and his parents wouldn't give him anything. I know it sounds silly that we would even be discussing this, but it is a big deal when you are trying to decided what your own family traditions will be.
The reason I like limited gifts from Santa is that I take a lot of time picking out gifts and Dan and I work really hard to provide for our family. I want Charlotte to know that we took the time to pick things out for her that they are from her parents. Charlotte will also not believe in Santa forever and it might be an easier transition if everything isn't from Santa when that time comes.
I realize that everyone does Santa different in their homes and it's interesting to listen to others talk about their family traditions. Dan
and I are trying to create our own and are having to compromise on things. What is your Santa tradition?
I'm with you, Emily. One small, maybe two unwrapped gifts from Santa. The rest from people:)
ReplyDeleteI love this post! Since we don't have kiddos yet, Ryan & I haven't talked much about this...but we always had Santa fill out stockings, leave us a few little wrapped gifts (like CDs, movies or books) and usually one big gift. Then we also had gifts under the tree from our parents. :) I hope you guys can reach a happy compromise - and have SO MUCH FUN being Santa for the first time!
ReplyDeleteThere were four children in my family. With that many children, just three or four packages for each made for a pile of presents under our tree! Santa presents were wrapped in plain tissue and the stocking contents were also officially from Santa. We'd get one or two gifts from Santa and two or three more from our parents. Stocking contents for some reason always included an orange. Gifts from our parents could be clothes our mom made or something dad selected, whereas the Santa gift was often a 'store bought' item we'd asked for. They were always careful not to give away the Santa Claus myth to the younger children, so the older kids all played along. Everything was set under the tree ahead of time except for the Santa items which appeared magically on Christmas morning. I remember breaking something that I had shaken daily for weeks - when I opened it, I sure learned a lesson. We opened everything on Christmas morning. Before we could go into the living room, we had to wait until Dad had coffee and scanned the paper. I think he was really just hiding behind the paper, listening to us carry on about having to wait!
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