Thursday, December 6, 2007

Santa - wrapped or unwrapped?

Well, this will be our first Christmas with children who are old enough to really understand the holiday. I've been reading the Christmas story to Maddy and she seems to understand some of it. But, you can't ignore the Santa Claus part of Christmas.

Hubby and I had a discussion last week about how we would handle "Santa Claus". When I was a young girl, Santa brought the majority of the gifts. Sure, there were one or two wrapped presents from my parents, but Christmas morning usually consisted of unwrapped presents from Santa. I can remember the excitement of running down the stairs to find all of my presents under the tree - all laid out where I could see each and every one. So, last night, I asked my mother why she decided that Santa's gifts were unwrapped and why most of the gifts came from Santa and not from her. She said that Santa's gifts were those that usually required some assembly and were very big and bulky, thus making them hard to wrap. She told me that when I was a real young girl, like Maddy and Baby Lulu, that all presents were wrapped, 'cause you know, at the age of two, unwrapping the present is usually better than the present itself. She explained that as I got older, it just became easier (with 3 kids), not to wrap EVERYTHING.

So, what do you all think? Should Santa's gifts be wrapped or unwrapped? And should the majority of the gifts come from "Santa" or from Mommy and Daddy? Feel free to leave your suggestions in my comments - I'd love to hear how everyone else is doing it. And also, look over there in my sidebar and vote, please.

3 comments:

Michelle said...

We are old hats at this, our girls are 13 and 9(on Saturday). We always have big presents and little presents. The big presents, ie: doll houses, bikes, computers, we leave unwrapped. They just make a great visual! We wrap everything else. Oh yea, and the stockings........we wrap everything, because it does annoy the girls so! We call it "parent's revenge" LOL!

Anonymous said...

Majority of the presents should be from mom and dad! Maybe some of the bigger ones can be from Santa and left unwrapped under the tree. I always remember everything being wrapped when I was growing up. Stocking were my favorite thing and still are. They of course were from Santa! Love ya! Teena

At A Hen's Pace said...

We've always wrapped everything. We always put most of it out so they could have the fun of shaking and guessing, but one big present we saved to be from Santa. As they got older, I began to wonder why we were letting Santa take all the credit! We kinda phased Santa into just giving a family gift or two--a movie or a puzzle for everyone.

Jeanne