When do you open your presents?

When Husband was growing up, his family adopted the Christmas customs of their close friends who were Danish.  They had a special meal on Christmas Eve and then they opened their presents.

It was nice when we were ‘going out’ because I could spend the evening of the 24^th with his family and at the crack of dawn on 25^th I could hare around the M25 and arrive at my own home and I hadn’t missed anything because my family don’t open presents until after lunch on Christmas Day. (Realistically this could be as late as 3 or 4pm…)

When we got married we spent our early Christmas doing the same thing. I’m sure all parties were delighted there was no ‘them and us’ going on.

But when we had children and had one or two Christmases on our own, we had to negotiate.

So I told Husband, “I’m NOT opening my presents on Christmas Eve; that’s just crazy.” Poor Husband.

We have a special Christmas Eve meal (his tradition) which starts the festivities off early (my family might still be shopping for gifts at this point) and we have a table present (his tradition.) We do the altogether more average present opening after breakfast on the 25^th (more my tradition.) We have the Christmas Creatures (my tradition.)

One of the customs I have willingly adopted from Husband’s upbringing is the family Christmas game. They had a new board game each year and yesterday I went out and bought ours:

A special Christmas post

It’s a December tradition on Tea Stains that I roll out my Bangkok Christmas pictures.

The collection of the Christmas pictures started for me back in November when I was in KL. One afternoon I made my way to one of the hundred malls, Pavilion, in search of Bookbinders Design. Inside, a lavish exhibition space of ballroom proportions was bedecked with red carpeting, hundreds of yards of billowing gold fabric and a Christmas scene to rival any in Northern Europe – probably even the real one at the North Pole.

Here we were, the third week in November, and already we were knee deep in Christmas hysteria spirit. I made my way up the escalators to the sixth floor to find my shop but first I stopped and marvelled - even in cynicism - for a moment.

I peered down to the ground floor, bemused and I spied this: what looked like a life size display of Father Christmas’s sleigh and a complement of reindeer.

After I’d failed to find my shop I went down to check out the flamboyant spectacle so that I could include it in my Christmas Decoration posts. And really, who wouldn't be moved? Just maybe not quite as I first imagined...