I was just wondering as to what everyone's Christmas morning traditions were? I go over to my parents for Christmas Eve dinner, wrap presents and we will watch "It's A Wonderful Life" or the Alistar Sim version for "A Christmas Carol". My parents are normally in bed by midnight now...in past years they'd be up to about one or so still wrapping gifts. Christmas morning my brother wakes as up around 8 or 9 in the morning. We unwrap presents and do stockings lol. Then my mom's partner will make a big breakfast. After wards it's normally nap time for me. That's about it. What are your families routines?
In my family, we've always opened our presents together, and have always waited until everyone has woken up and gathered around the tree before starting. I've almost always been the first to wake up on christmas morning, so I see it as my duty to wake everyone else up, by shouting "Has he been?", switching on the fairy lights, starting the christmas music, putting on the christmas cartoons, making drinks, lighting the fire, and similarly festive gestures, until the others are up and about. Faced with a lot of sleepy/apathetic faces, it's also traditionally been left to me to bring the presents from under the tree and hand them out, and lead everyone through the morning.
Our traditions haven't changed much. We're down around the tree by 8. Dad in his 'old' (45) age always tries to convince us to wait a bit longer...but that never happens. Heck, I'm 18 and I still believe that presents are to be opened at 8 sharp. We have to let the dog out for a pee, and get the video camera started (mom likes to document everything) before we can touch anything, but by 8:15 we're usually ready to tear open some goodies. Stockings first, then wrapped gifts. And us kids always go first, while Mom and Dad watch. Then they open theirs. After that...coffee/breakfast, or in my case, back to bed. The rest of the day from about 10 onward is used to get things ready for Christmas dinner, which is sharply at 2.
What do you do with drunken Christmas carolers ear-lye in the morning? Our family is very large and it is hard to get us all together at any one time. So our Christmas schedule is...variable.
Nothing. Growing up, we were always a Christmas eve family. On Christmas eve when I lived at home, we'd go to a church service, have dinner and open presents. Then on Christmas day, we would usually take the 2 hour drive out to my grandparents and have dinner and open presents with them and the Aunts and Uncles, but since my Grandparents died, we don't get together with the extended family much any more. Now since I live alone and don't have kids, I usually watch a bunch of movies or something on Christmas day.
We open our Christmas presents about 7am. Nowadays I usually have to tell my sons to get up. Sometimes they grumble a bit and I remind them that they used to wake me up at 5am on Christmas Day when they were little. Then one of my sons cook breakfast. What we do after breakfast depends on what sort of meal we are having. Last Christmas we had a picnic at the beach (2 of my sons, my two best friends and me) so I had nothing to cook. This year it is going to be at home, just me and my two youngest sons so I am only having a rather simple meal.
My brother and I (now plus my sister-in-law) wake up at 7, go out and check the stockings. We take turns, each pulling out one thing at a time. Then usually open some of the chocolate and do the scratch lottery tickets, etc, killing time until our parents get up around 8:30. They make toutons for breakfast, we all enjoy, clean up the dishes, and go open presents, with me playing Santa. The afternoon is mostly free then until we start getting ready for dinner - I'm always on table-setting duty which takes a few hours (I like to come up with different themes and make the table itself special). Traditions have remained pretty much unchanged for the last 20 years plus (my brother and I are now 33 and 26 respectively), the only exceptions being we're not always up right at 7 am anymore, and there have been a couple of years we weren't home for Christmas. This year should be a return to the same-old though. It's a day to feel like a kid again.
My husband and I wrap all the kids' presents on Christmas Eve--and since they are older now, 13 and 17, they stay up later, so we end up staying up later! Of course, we put 'A Christmas Story' on tv and watch it all night long(it is usually the 24 hrs of a Christmas Story marathon on TNT), and have some wine and other drinks. In the morning, after the video camera is set up, we get the kids up to come out and see the presents and all that. We do all the unwrapping and such and then have breakfast..usually bacon and eggs, waffles, muffins, or some such. This year, my mother-in-law is cooking since my husband's 2 sisters, our brother in law and nieces are coming. So, after breakfast will be watching movies, cleaning up and getting ready to go over. Not sure what I will be bringing over food wise. Definitely my famous fudge, but not sure what else. The start of the season, however, is either the day before Thanksgiving or Thanksgiving day when we watch Christmas Vacation, or at least I watch it. Feel like my 'Christmas season' can't start without it!
Pretty much nothing. We exchange gifts on Christmas' Eve, so the next morning we just wake up late, wish Merry Christmas to each other, and then start cooking for the big Christmas lunch (or, getting ready to go to some relatives' house if it's their turn to host the family lunch).
It hasn't changed much throughout my life, but I don't think we have any real specific traditions, like watching a certain movie. Usually on Christmas Eve the parents pick out one gift for each of us to open, though lately I have declined as I get less and less gifts each year so I don't want to "waste" one on the night before. My youngest sister still gets really excited about the Christmas Even gift though. The youngest and me (the oldest) are morning people who wake up far before anyone else, somewhere around 6 or 7, and so we go wake the others. My dad stalls in his bedroom for as long as possible, and then we go downstairs and someone starts organizing and passing out the gifts in turns. Afterwards my mom makes us pancakes and we spend the rest of the day in our pajamas playing with our new "toys," watching TV, and playing board/video games. Sometimes that evening my mom makes a ham dinner, and sometimes we go to a relative's house, that part changes every year.
For several years my husband and I would exchange gifts and then go out for a walk. More recently we've got in the car and driven north for 3 or 4 hours to be with family. This year we will be spending Christmas at home just the two of us. Bliss.
We always have a big breakfast together and then we would all gather together around the tree for presents. One person would play "Santa" and start handing out gifts to people. Then out come the cameras to take pictures and someone invariably ends up covered in ribbons and bows.
Well at Christmas eve we get together, some of us go to church (others don´t), when everyones back we eat tradional Christmas eve dinner, which is quite simple, pottaoe- salad and hot sausages. After that we exchange and open presents, one by one and everyone waits till one is ready unwrapping, before the next one gets a present. In recent years one of my cousins picked a presents (all under the Christmas tree) and gave it then to the right person, before that (when we were still children) we had my Uncle coming as Santa doing that...and we had to sing or say a poem and so. After presents we sit and talk or try out/ try on presents. Christmas morning we not really do something, sleeping late, walking the dog, having breakfast together..and either on the first or second Christmas day we have a festive family lunch with all kind of nice things and after that we are being lazy, maybe reading, maybe watching some of the typical christmas movies, that bring up nostalgic feelings, maybe going for a winter-walk.... TerokNor
Ever since teenage years, my Christmas Morning tradition is the same as any other morning: sleep as late as I can, preferably avoiding morning entirely. When I was a kid, I used to enjoy getting up early but once that changed, it never changed back.
I wake up, grumble about the early hours, drink the blood of virgins, drop-kick a puppy and go back to bed.
Depending on what is going on (my brother and sister in law are ministers, so demands on their time change at this time of year) I get up, grumble about getting up, make coffee, have breakfast and coffee with the rest of the family, then open gifts. After that we either watch movies until it's time to go to my brother and sister in law's place or start prepwork for Christmas dinner. Tradition also dictates attendance at a church service is offered on Christmas day. On Christmas Eve, we attend at least one church service and then will spend an hour or two touring neighborhoods with family/friends looking at Christmas displays.
If Christmas falls on a weekday I get up and watch Maury then try to catch "A Christmas Story". I then eat a tv dinner and go back to bed.
Up until a few years ago, everything happened at my Mother's house. Christmas Eve involved hot chocolate and chocolate chip cookies and a reading "The Night Before Christmas." Christmas morning involved me coming over quite early, then my Mother getting up, followed by the youngest of my two Brothers, then my Father and finally we'd rouse my other Brother. Later, my Sister and the kids would come over. Christmas dinner involved several of my Uncles and Aunts and their kids. Now that everybody's older, they're all doing their own thing. We'll probably have Christmas Eve at my Sister's house, I'll go over to my Mother's new house early Christmas morning, but everybody else will straggle over at various times and there probably won't be anybody else for dinner.
No traditions as such, I don't mind going with the flow. No two years have been the same actually. Maybe we will build some traditions in the future. I'm quite happy either way.
Don't have any. This Christmas morning I will get up at about 10am, have a shower, walk from my Hotel to Heathrow Terminal 5 via a covered walkway, check in and then find a restaurant to have some food at while I wait.