Santa brings one gift in our house, usually something they have been asking for or in relation to the current obsession, my kids are still young so this is usually a doll or bluey toy, truck etc. highly desired but not necessarily expensive. I do this for several reasons, we often travel for Christmas and it's too complicated to try and hide multiple Santa gifts, I want my kids to understand that I also worked hard/listened and got you stuff made Christmas fun, and they have 3 sets of grandparents, plus various other people buying things for them, it's just way to much stuff if Santa was bringing them multiple things.

I have a question- Some families already have the Santa gift under the tree ...Why?

only rule was Santa will only being up 3 gifts, the rest might come from mom and dad, and Santa isn't able to being a lot of gifts. The rest are from friends and family.

As a non-Christian, I am enjoying all the hand-wringing that goes into this.

PP here again. For the parent gifts, I think I only got about three this year for my kid, all non-toy items that she'll like. Grandparents/relatives send a bajillion, it seems, so I let them buy the toys (from a wishlist they insist I provide, so I picked them anyway).

Interesting to read all the different ways families do this!

One "main" gift and stocking stuffers. Santa doesn't wrap.

At age 6 the main santa gift isn't that expensive/big, but really none of the gifts are. Stocking stuffers always include a socks and underwear refresh (tradition from when I was growing up), but also fun small stuff.

Parent gifts are opened on Christmas eve.

Ha! When I was a kid, only Santa brought presents (several... like 6-7, average?) and did not wrap. I do recall once asking my parents why they didn't get us anything, to which my mother responded very matter of factly that that was unnecessary since Santa gave us plenty, plus we got stuff from relatives.

My DH got a lot of gifts from both Santa and parents (all wrapped). We've reached a compromise for our children. Kids get one gift from parents, the rest are from Santa. All wrapped (I regret that last concession, so time consuming!)

For many reasons, we did about 3 gifts from santa and the rest from mom and dad. Partly to not upset kids like your friend's kid and partly to have my kids start to learn to appreciate the gifts we were sending hard earned money on versus it all being magic.

Anonymous wrote:1 gift from Santa - usually something specific that the kids asked Santa for themselves.

But by the time they started comparing notes about Santa they stopped believing. Not an issue with what other people do.

This is what I think. Who are these kids bragging about what Santa got them? When the kids are littler they don’t even really notice or care what Santa vs their parents got them. It all blends together. Older kids that still believe in Santa are on break for a couple weeks, it just doesn’t seem that fresh when they return to school.

1 gift.

The rest come from us.

We have 3 kids. Each is getting 2 Santa gifts (items that are like $30ish), 3 parent gifts (including 1-2 big items like a smart watch or concert tickets), and 1 gift x 2 sets of grandparents. That is 7 gifts + stocking stuffers. We try to go for quality over quantity.

I’ll add my kids get nice clothes and gadgets during the year so we don’t have to save it all up for one day.