December 2011 Moms

Christmas Traditions - long...

Okay, first of all I know this is way early to ask a Christmas question, but it's been on my mind and I'm trying to figure it out way ahead of time. I'm having a hard time figuring out how to blend DH's Christmas traditions with mine now that we have DS. I'm hoping you ladies can help me with some advice!

When I was little Santa brought at least 20-25 presents that showed up under the tree Christmas morning plus a stocking overflowing with more little trinkets all indvidually wrapped. We woke up early and ripped into our presents, and I LOVED it! I remember it like it was yesterday.  

My husbands family does it very differently. The majority of presents come from the parents on Christmas Eve then Santa just brings stocking presents that aren't even wrapped the next morning. My husband loves Christmas but didn't even hardly remember who/how the presents came. I found out from his Mom.

Here's the problem - this year we'll all be together in a cabin (5 families - 3 with small children including us) and it's hard to blend together when you have a bunch of small kids from different families with different Christmas traditions! How can I have Santa bring DS tons of presents Christmas morning when the other kids aren't getting the same thing??? It's a really hard position to be in. I want to keep my Christmas traditions but I don't feel like I have a choice since we'll be with all of his family. Do you have any advice for how I can make this work? I'm not too worried about this year because DS will only be a year old so he won't remember too much but years in the future I see it as a major problem and my husband doesn't think it's a big deal at all. Arg...help!

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Re: Christmas Traditions - long...

  • Santa leaves (the big haul) presents at LOs home :)
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  • i'm not sure but we have a similar problem. at my IL's, santa comes on christmas eve. he drops the presents off outside b/c my nieces are scared of him. they pretend that he knocks on the door & leaves the gifts outside. they open the gifts at about 10pm. i always remember leaving cookies & carrots for santa & his reindeer on christmas eve & then waking up christmas morning & running downstairs & it was sooo exciting. 

    for now it doesn't really matter, b/c she won't know what is going on although i hope this year they will move up the opening gifts time b/c i do want to leave & be back home at a reasonable hour b/c she goes to bed at 7pm.  once she has an idea about santa, i really don't like the idea of santa coming twice. i want him to come christmas morning at our house with our own little family. i guess we will cross that bridge when we come to it

     

     

     

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  • Once and awhile our family went on vacation over Christmas vacation.  Santa would leave us one gift each with a note from Santa saying that the rest were left at home so we opened the rest of the gifts when we returned home.  That way my parents didn't have to travel with all the gifts.  It never bothered us because it was "known" that Santa leaves the gifts at the children's homes.  If I was in your position I would do something similar. 
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  • I don't know if we're going to "do Santa".  We probably will, but we won't make a big deal out of it. 

    Growing up, my family had Sinter Klaas (Dutch Santa) come on Dec 5.  We'd set out wooden shoes and he'd leave us Christmas pajamas, a Christmas book, and an ornament for the tree (all "practical" things that we could enjoy throughout the month of December).  The town we live in now (founded by Dutch immigrants) keeps the tradition alive and has a huge Sinter Klaas parade on Dec 5.  We plan to "do Sinter Klaas" with A.

    As for Santa, he always stopped by our house, too...but he'd just fill stockings and leave 1 gift for each of us.  Most of our gifts were from Mom/Dad/siblings.  If we "do Santa" with A, it will be similar.  It's so easy to go overboard for Christmas...I want to keep Santa in line.  :)

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  • imageCherryblossoms07:
    Once and awhile our family went on vacation over Christmas vacation.  Santa would leave us one gift each with a note from Santa saying that the rest were left at home so we opened the rest of the gifts when we returned home.  That way my parents didn't have to travel with all the gifts.  It never bothered us because it was "known" that Santa leaves the gifts at the children's homes.  If I was in your position I would do something similar. 

    This.  Same with the Easter Bunny! 

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  • imageCherryblossoms07:
    Once and awhile our family went on vacation over Christmas vacation.  Santa would leave us one gift each with a note from Santa saying that the rest were left at home so we opened the rest of the gifts when we returned home.  That way my parents didn't have to travel with all the gifts.  It never bothered us because it was "known" that Santa leaves the gifts at the children's homes.  If I was in your position I would do something similar. 

     

    This is a fantastic idea! Thank you SO much! This really makes me feel better - then he gets the best of both worlds. I really love the idea of being in a snowy lodge with family at Christmas it was just hard to figure out how to blend such different traditions. Since it won't be every year that we go out of town, this is a great solution. Thank you so much! And thank you to everyone else for your comments suggestions. I'm sorry I couldn't write back sooner. Got home from work and got busy with the baby! You know how it is :-)

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