Santa poll

crfische

That was last year! We'll see what's on the agenda for this year. The Fishy family loves them some Christmas.

DramaGeek

Santa brought some gifts, wrapped in special Santa paper.  Mom and Dad gave some gifts, wrapped in whatever paper we had lying around the house.

When my mom was growing up, they only got gifts from Santa.  She said she thinks it's funny that it never dawned on any of the 5 kids that they weren't getting any gifts from their parents.

annakb8

Our Santa gifts were always wrapped, and he still comes to my house because my younger brother is only 9 years old. I do remember one year my older cousins convinced my sister and I that we had to leave oatmeal cookies for Santa because those were his favorite. We made a huge production out of it and made our mom help us back oatmeal cookies from scratch even though she didn't want to. Turns out my aunt and uncle love oatmeal cookies, but my parents not so much.

mkrupar

In Response to <a href="http://forums.theknot.com/Sites/theknot/Pages/Main.aspx/wedding-boards_etiquette_santa-poll?plckFindPostKey=Cat:Wedding BoardsForum:9Discussion:e95d1635-417c-4d01-97d1-40b9feb33197Post:617804ef-4dcd-4acb-9d14-736319f8f46c">Re: Santa poll</a>:
[QUOTE]It blows my mind that some of you didn't have gifts wrapped by santa (or elves). I don't know why it does, but yeah. I thought he wrapped everyone's gifts. Lazy bastardd!
Posted by louisvillebride21[/QUOTE]

I'm with you LVB. All of my gifts were Santa gifts and all of them were wrapped. I figured out that Santa wasn't real one year when we were travelling to NJ for Christmas. I asked the typical question about "how is Santa going to find us if we're not home" and dad said, "maybe santa will come early this year." Sure enough, Christmas was on like a Thursday, and Santa showed up on Tuesday the day we were leaving. That pretty much sealed the Santa isn't real thing for me.

alixzafiris

Santa brought prettily wrapped up gifts and we left out a glass of brandy and a carrot (brandy for Santa and a carrot for Rudolph; milk and cookies is not a South African thing...) and then we'd get up in the morning, have a nice (small) breakfast and all do presents - there are always some, to this day, labelled "From Santa" or "From Donner" etc. - and then hang out and make Christmas dinner.

Well, Santa only brought them until we came to Canada, at which point my dad went to retrieve all the presents from the boot of the car on Christmas eve and from my room - at the front of the house - I head him take a header off the front porch on the ice (our first North American Christmas) and obviously got up and inevitably figured it out...

crfische

A brandy lovin' santa? We've soooo been doing it wrong!

akhensley81

In our house growing up, Santa always signed the gift tags. I have no idea whether he wrapped them or not - we didn't ask. I'm guessing it was the elves though, because that's a lot of frackin' presents to wrap by yourself!

On Christmas Eve, after church, "Santa" would come to our house personally and deliver 1 present for each of us. We'd get to sit on his lap when we opened it. And usually the Christmas Eve present was the ONE THING we had asked Santa for when we visited him at the mall earlier in the month (amazing how well he remembers that stuff!).

While my brothers and I were sleeping, Santa would come back with the rest of our presents. We would leave him a note with his milk & cookies, and he would always write us back. He usually left soot-y footprints on the carpet in the living room from the fireplace to the tree, just for effect.

My brothers and I would wake up SUUPER early just to see if we could hear him downstairs. But mom and dad were always very specific that he would leave and take his presents with him, if we came downstairs during the night. So my brothers would just come in to my bedroom and we'd all sit there anxiously waiting. 7:00am was the time mom and dad said it was safe.

Every year, at about 6:55am, we would go bounding in to our parents' room - unable to take the pressure any longer. It would be a MAD DASH down the stairs (we have video of this, it's hilarious) to see what Santa left for us.

And yeah, fische- no order or oganization to the opening of the presents. You would literally see wrapping paper flying, we would tear in to those gifts so fast.

But then, once we got through our gifts, we would realize that our stockings were gone from the fireplace. Which could only mean one thing: Santa not only filled them for us, but he hid them like the Easter Bunny did with our baskets. So then it became a hide-and-seek game trying to find our stockings.

Funny random sidenote: The guy who came to our house for so many years dressed as Santa, was a pastor at a local church. And I just found out this year that his son is the guy who DJ'd my wedding. Haha - I love small towns!!

mkrupar

Oh and when we were little we had to go to church and eat breakfast before we could open any presents. It.was.torture.

There were never any presents under the tree leading up to Christmas. They all appeared Christmas Eve.

Now, we get Christmas Eve jammies from Lucas's parents. I just got my Santa gift from my father. We get cards from family members. His parents ship us one or two boxes of Santa gifts and we open them, just him and I, on Chrismas Day.

MissLeahM

Since I can remember my presents always came from my parents.. But I think I've seen pictures when I was 3 or 4 where the presents came from santa. 

Other than that, since I've been in a serious relationship with my, now, husband his parents usually write 'from santa' on a few gifts, its kinda cute. 

missy68

Regular presents - from mom and dad, grandparents, etc., were already under the tree. My mom was a white lights, no tinsel person for the decor.

My brother and I would leave cookies and milk out for Santa, along with our lists (I think - I'm foggy on this detail), and in the morning, we'd have 2 gingerbread men cookies and a note from Santa; plus LOTS of presents wrapped in Santa Claus printed paper. They just had our name written on them. And - best of all - Santa had put colored lights on the side of the tree facing inside the house PLUS tinsel!
I think - don't laugh - I was 12 when I recognized the handwriting on the note. I didn't say anything, since my brother was 4 years younger, and I enjoyed it so much.

Oh - and my dad had to get all "fixed" before we could go downstairs/into the living room. It would kill us. Then he'd hand out presents, several at a time. When they were done, we did stockings in front of the fireplace with a fire. Then mom made the same breakfast every year (and still does, minus the grapefruit in her spiced fruit).

We still do it that way, except they're already there and the stockings get filled before we go to bed. Who knows how we'll do it this year; we don't know which of 3 locations we'll be in, and there will be a 5-year old involved, and a newborn.

heather011

We always got one "big" present from Santa under the tree, and then our stockings were all filled with presents from Santa.  They were all wrapped with special paper and signed from Santa.  We always left out milk, cookies, and carrots for the reindeer.

I had started to get suspicious that he might not be real, but my parents were big into keeping up the illusion for my younger brother and I was happy to play along because it was fun and why question something so awesome as Santa?  Then my grade four teacher told the class that anyone who thought there was a fat guy sliding down the chimney to give them presents was just plain stupid.  I was so sad

aggiebug

nope Santa didn't wrap my presents.  He didn't want us to know that he got his wrapping paper from the same place my mom did. 

On Christmas eve we would always beg my dad to open one present.  It lasted all day long until he caved right before bed.  Then on Christmas day we would pass out one present to everyone and we would all open that gift and ooh and ahh then repeat.


Funny story.  So I am the youngest by quite a bit and when I was getting to be old enough that not believing in Santa was a possibility my brother and sister sat me down for a little talk.  They told me Santa wasn't real but I wasn't allowed to tell mom that I didn't believe in Santa. They theorized that once I stopped believing in Santa the number/ quality of presents would diminish. 

marriedfilingjointly

Ok, now I want to spend Christmas with Fishy.  And we're going to have to leave some brandy for Santa because that's just awesome. 

Santa didn't wrap our gifts.  Our "Santa" gifts were in a big pile next to our stockings.  He also seemed to be very concerned about our regularity because we always had prunes and unshelled nuts in our stockings. 

1ofThoseDays

Mom and Danny wrapped our presents because Santa dropped them off early.  It was because he had so many children that didn't have mommies and daddies to wrap their presents to deliver to on Christmas Eve, so my parents helped by wrapping our own.  And then Danny would sit by the tree and had out gifts.

crfische

Is he an elf on the shelf!? I love those things. Such a cute idea!

kellyjellybelly

Santa alway put up our Christmas tree when we went out shopping with my mom, aunt and cousins.  Then when we got home, we would decorate.

And my brother would always leave Santa a note to leave me a special present since I didn't get into as much trouble as him.

missy68

Oh, Elf on the Shelf works magic in brother's house. It's after my time, but they love it for Andy.

Birdie1483

Fish, your parents sound pretty kick ass.

Santa came at my house and would wrap some gifts, but not the big ones. We opened all of our presents on Christmas Eve and that's when we had our family dinner. Santa would come in the middle of the night and fill our stockings and bring a few more wrapped presents.

I remember one year waking up in the middle of the night and hearing Santa. I lay in my bed frozen because I didn't know what to do. Santa was in my living room!!! That was the year I think I got Barbie's dream house.

I started to get suspicious when my parents would suggest leaving Diet Coke for Santa.

cm42878

When I was young santa didnt wrap the presents, we always opened presents on christmas eve so christmas morning santas presents were the only thing under the tree.

Last year FI siblings came in with their chidlren and we all spent the night at my parents house. FI's mom was fostering to of her great niece and nephers and she didnt have the money to do santa for them so FI and I did santa for them. Christmas eve we opened all the presents from family members and once everything was cleaned up we put the kdis to bed and did santa. I had bought special "fancy wrapping paper" and gold bows to wrap all the presents from and put under the tree from santa. We laid them all out and when the kids woke up the next morning it was so much fun to see them excited about presents from santa!!

I think FI had more fun then they did while he was playing santa!! When we have kids we will deffiantly follow this idea for our kids. We also will watch polar express when they start to question if santa is real and they will get a sleigh bell like in the movie.