How do you open presents at Christmas ?
All of our gifts are wrapped, and we hand them out one by one. We open them in turns, too, so that Christmas morning lasts as long as possible! However, that’s with a room full of adults — Christmas morning lasting all day would be a bit of a challenge for parents with small children.
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Enter: the Santa hack.
Okay, so first of all:
Santa is totally real. So any of this talk about “parents” setting out Christmas gifts is just because parents help Santa, okay?
Nah, but really: Parents really do go above and beyond to keep the illusion of Santa alive for as long as possible, and I love them for that.
Lots of families have different Christmas morning traditions.
Some parents chose to wrap Santa gifts in different paper, complete with a different label. My mom still does sweet things like this — she always signs our “Santa” presents in a different handwriting than her normal one. My sister and I are 32 and 29.
Other families keep things wrapped.
We did ours like this, too! Our presents would be wrapped, but we always had one big present that was hidden. Sometimes it was wrapped, sometimes it wasn’t. (The year we got a surfboard, it definitely wasn’t.)
So, what’s the Santa hack?
In short, it’s this. Leaving Santa presents unwrapped makes the whole Santa experience more authentic, as if he dropped down the chimney and popped the present right under the tree.
As it turns out, a lot of parents do this!
This is a pretty common tradition among a lot of parents. It makes sense — Santa presents are often pretty big, and they’d be a total pain in the butt for parents (Santa) to wrap.
If you’re a parent, this might be a total life-saver.
We’re definitely going to be doing this with my niece this year! I have no idea how to wrap a ball pit (yes, I do like to cause chaos in my sister’s life), so we’re going to leave it unwrapped and pop our niece in it the second she wakes up.
It also cuts down on wrapping paper waste.
Not only do you not have to buy a ton of wrapping paper, you don’t have to throw it away, either. Not be be a bummer, but most coated wrapping paper isn’t recyclable. So… hey, you’d be helping the planet with this hack!
I asked my roommates about this, too.
Only one had parents that did this hack, and she’s American. The rest of us are Canadian. I wonder if this is a region specific tradition? If so, us Canadians are working WAYYY to hard at Christmas.
So, what do you think?
Is this hack something you would try out, or would you rather have everything wrapped up under the tree? Either way, it’s going to be a great Christmas!
Let me know in the comments below!
