One of our favorite traditions, is that each kid gets their Christmas Stocking at the foot of their bed. See, no one is allowed out until 7am (‘cept for a potty break!), so what’s a kid to do when he wakes up at 5am? Open his Christmas Stocking!
Stockings in my family, aren’t full of the gifts and stuff, usually there is an apple and orange in the toe, a few candies, and some tiny, dollar store type toys. Just enough to keep a kid busy for a while until Mom and Dad are ready to wake up and start Christmas morning. *S*
My folks would come in at 645 or so, and ooh and ahh over our stockings. Dad would collect the fruit, to be cut up and used as Christmas Breakfast, and Mom would make sure everyone was dressed, or at least modestly attired in jammies. She’d wait for the signal from dad that camera was rolling and then we’d all get to run out to the tree.
Good times.
I love doing something similar with my kids. I can’t bring myself to buy the dollar store crap though. I’m still trying to work out a suitable alternative. For this year, it’s a few small toys that I had collected throughout the past several months, a t-shirt, a personalized bag of M&Ms (I make toppers for them with each kid’s name, and sort through to pick out favorite colors), and an apple.
Head on over to Rocks in my Dryer for more Christmas ideas and traditions.
We do something similar, but I can’t help myself: I want to watch them open the stockings too. I’m just as bad as the kids. I get up before the crack of dawn because I’m so excited! 🙂 (My husband is another story)
We do something similar. Presents cannot be opened until after breakfast, at the normal breakfast time. I put their Christmas “stockings” (we use little tubs)on the table and they can go through them in the meantime.
People always look at me like I’m nuts when I teel them that Santa unloads the presents downstairs, then creeps up the stairs to put the stockings at the foot of their beds! My parent did it because of Christmas Eve partying, I do it because I AM EXHAUSTED. I put in little puzzles that they have to do, memo paper and markers to make a list of what they got in the sock(!), little lego and beads so there’s some craft time—Ic an usually buy 1.5 hours of extra sleep! Everyone should do it.
Great parental minds think alike! I’ve been doing this for years, and even as a teen and 3 kids in their 20s, mine look forward to the morning stocking. (I do have to admit finding stocking stuffers for older boys is hard.) It started for similar reasons–keeping the kids occupied at least until the sun came up!
Little gift certificates you make can be a fun addition: for a treat, or extra TV time, or anything that’s fun and easy. I LOVE your M&M idea!
Great idea! Love the M&M idea!!!
My parents always did that except we were allowed to “sneak” downstairs and get our stockings but we had to go right up to bed until we got the “come on down, guys!”
In our house the rule was come get your stockings, and go back to your room until mom and dad got up, AND had a cup of coffee each. Now my youngest brothers have to wait until my husband and I get there to open presents.