December Meme - 9th

[vyperdd]

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For frozen_delight :

Your favourite and your least favourite Christmas tradition?

My favourite would have to be our Santa Sacks from childhood. In the early hours of Christmas morning (probably between 2-3am) mum or dad would place them on the ends of our beds. They were just pillowcases filled with lots of small, inexpensive presents, dolls and jewelry and and small books, for me, boys things for my brothers. The kind of things you'd find in $2 shops. We always pretended to be asleep and I probably did actually fall asleep a few years, when mum or dad would come in and they knew we weren't really asleep. I mean, how many kids can really sleep on Xmas eve??? The only rule was we weren't suppose to open the sacks until Sunrise. I think it was mainly a ploy by the parents to keep us occupied for just a few minutes more on X-Mas morning, giving them a little sleep in before being their bed was invaded by 3 kids all wanting to show what Santa had brought us.

Once mum and dad were awake, we were allowed to choose 1 present from under the tree to open. The rest we opened after breakfast. Then we would stuff our presents in our (now empty) Santa Sacks and head over to our neighbours to show them. We'd visit most of the houses in our street, as we were very close with all our neighbours. We called them Aunty and Uncle even though they weren't relatives of ours. So it would be an endless procession of kids running up and down the street, going into each others houses, showing off our presents and collecting more.

I honestly can't think of a least favourite tradition. As a child, I loved everything about Christmas.

Comments

[firesign10.livejournal.com]

Aww, love that! We did a very similar thing - our stockings would be around the tree when we went to bed, but when we awoke, they were fat and by our beds. We could open and play with things in them until parents said it was time to go to the tree. Once I became a parent, I realized what a great stall tactic it was ;-)

[vyperdd.livejournal.com]

Yes, it was.
I don't have kids but I do keep treats on hand to occupy Sam when I'm trying to write and all he wants is cuddles and all of my attention.

I did the same with Scully *see icon* with varying degrees of success.