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Santa Claus (not the secret santa thread)

I'm probably going to do the brown craft paper wrapping for Santa's presents when we have kids.
 
deac29 said:
This. Unwrapping the present is the best part. Why do lazy parents want to deprive their children of that joy? And why is it too much to ask Santa to wrap his presents but not too much to ask that he make them all to order and deliver them to every kid in the world in one night?
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I can see this argument if you don't get parent presents and the only thing you have on Christmas morning is Santa presents to unwrap. But since we had a number to unwrap as well, I always liked that Santa didn't wrap ours.

I would sneak down at like 5am to see what Santa brought. Then my brothers and I would play with some of our Santa presents before waking up our parents to excitedly tell them what Santa brought us. Then we'd all have breakfast, and unwrap presents from family after that.
 
It blew my mind when we were discussing this last year and Chic brought up the idea of separate wrapping paper for Santa's gifts. It makes sense, but I never would have thought of that, and I don't remember if Santa had different wrapping paper than my parents when I was growing up.

We wrap Santa's gifts except for the larger ones that I put together the night before while boozing. Best part of Christmas, at least until we get to the stage where the toys are too complicated for me to put together. The instant excitement of the kid as he goes bug-eyed at an unwrapped gift as soon as he gets downstairs is awesome.

How have people done letters to Santa? My brother and I gave them to my parents, who sent them on to the North Pole. Chic burned hers in the fireplace (like a witch) and the smoke apparently carried them to Santa or he could read smoke signals or something. I had never heard of this until a couple weeks ago, and it seems like the Devil's work.
 
Also, we do parent presents as well as Santa presents.
 
I honestly don't remember the details because my older sister ruined it for me when I was like four so my parents stopped, but there were wrapped Santa gifts, not sure if they were the good or shitty gifts.
 
Also, Santa still came to our house last year (I was 31 and my brothers were 28 and 25) :p
 
LadyDeac03 said:
I can see this argument if you don't get parent presents and the only thing you have on Christmas morning is Santa presents to unwrap. But since we had a number to unwrap as well, I always liked that Santa didn't wrap ours.

I would sneak down at like 5am to see what Santa brought. Then my brothers and I would play with some of our Santa presents before waking up our parents to excitedly tell them what Santa brought us. Then we'd all have breakfast, and unwrap presents from family after that.
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Was this acceptable to your parents? Probably they liked getting to sleep in?

I allegedly wouldn't have gotten any presents if I went downstairs before my parents. Also we had to read the nativity story in the Bible upstairs first then walk down in reverse age order so I was last.
 
RollTheQuad06 said:
Was this acceptable to your parents? Probably they liked getting to sleep in?

I allegedly wouldn't have gotten any presents if I went downstairs before my parents. Also we had to read the nativity story in the Bible upstairs first then walk down in reverse age order so I was last.
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Yep, pretty much this. They got to sleep in a little bit, and we didn't bother them quite as early.
 
Wasn't worth the risk to sneak down to see the presents. If you run into Santa, he gathers up all the gifts and you get nothing.

Of course kids who don't know better would prefer the firehose method of Santa gifts with no wrapping. Kids love instant gratification. They don't know any better.
 
RollTheQuad06 said:
Was this acceptable to your parents? Probably they liked getting to sleep in?

I allegedly wouldn't have gotten any presents if I went downstairs before my parents. Also we had to read the nativity story in the Bible upstairs first then walk down in reverse age order so I was last.
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This is my absolute favorite thing on the boards.
 
I don't remember ever writing a letter to Santa. I probably did when I was little but it's not something I did often.
 
RollTheQuad06 said:
I allegedly wouldn't have gotten any presents if I went downstairs before my parents. Also we had to read the nativity story in the Bible upstairs first then walk down in reverse age order so I was last.
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Same thing about going downstairs for us. We didn't read the nativity or have to queue up to go downstairs, but my dad would have to go first to make sure Santa wasn't still there.

This occurred until I went to college. After that, I was allowed downstairs, but not near the tree.
 
Knew about the reality (or lack thereof) of Santa by the time I was 6 or so and had suspicions the year before that.
The stockings were from Santa (I guess...although most of that was socks and underwear and candy) and we generally got our "big" present each year from Santa (it was labelled as "From: Santa" until I was 15 or 16, but that's because I have a brother 8 years younger than me).
Unwrapping presents was very orderly...One person opened one present at a time and we'd go around
All presents, except maybe the "Santa" present (if it was too big or oddly shaped to be practically wrapped) were wrapped and under or near the tree
 
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We were NOT allowed downstairs before parents.

Dad would go down first (or already be down there) and get his coffee, exclaiming how sad it looked with "no toys....just piles of coal!" Meanwhile, we'd be at the top of the stairs anxiously waiting for him to tell us we could go downstairs. All three of us had to be together, and somewhere along the line we decided we all had to be wearing our slippers (?). Finally, we'd thunder down the stairs to our piles and it was awesome. One of my most favorite traditions, along with dad reading us The Polar Express on Christmas Eve (he mayyyy still do this, even though we're all 25+).

As for letters, we didn't do letters... but our lists had to be magneted to the fridge "so the elves could see them" and we weren't allowed to have more than 10 items on the list.
 
Mama Dukes always wrapped everything but used like 9384954 kinds of wrapping paper to throw off the trail unless it was something like a bike/skateboard that wouldn't get wrapped. She really embraces it and watches It's A Wonderful Life while wrapping presents (to this day.. I'm 28 and my brother is 21). I'm reasonably certain I was able to drive before I figured out Santa wasn't a real thing.

This unwrapped presents thing sounds awful - isn't the fun part when you're 8 sneaking around and shaking the box to try to get a clue, tearing the little corners of the paper to see if you can see a brand name and then blaming the dog for tearing it? I mean I loved having no idea what I got and maniacally ripping apart the paper/package to find out what was inside.
 
There were still wrapped presents from other family members, so that was all still part of the game.
 
Oh yeah - we'd always leave cookies and milk for Santa and a #carrotsnack for the reindeer. The parents would leave a cookie with a bite mark and eat all of the veggies. We also would routinely drive around Wrightsville Beach to see if we could see Santa when we were really young. Stupid airplanes.
 
bth9673 said:
Mama Dukes always wrapped everything but used like 9384954 kinds of wrapping paper to throw off the trail unless it was something like a bike/skateboard that wouldn't get wrapped. She really embraces it and watches It's A Wonderful Life while wrapping presents (to this day.. I'm 28 and my brother is 21). I'm reasonably certain I was able to drive before I figured out Santa wasn't a real thing.

This unwrapped presents thing sounds awful - isn't the fun part when you're 8 sneaking around and shaking the box to try to get a clue, tearing the little corners of the paper to see if you can see a brand name and then blaming the dog for tearing it? I mean I loved having no idea what I got and maniacally ripping apart the paper/package to find out what was inside.
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8... or 26.

My MIL brought a gift for me down at Thanksgiving last year and it sat in our apartment taunting me. I tried to "accidentally" bump in to it so the paper would rip but no dice and HTTD told me I couldn't sneak it open early.
 
Haha Brews from your rep that's not my last name - I've just always called her Mama Dukes.
 
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