Merry Christmas! All the Baboons have presumably opened their gifts by now. W e have always been Christmas Eve present openers. This year we are we are waiting until Thursday when we arrive in Brookings to open the family presents our daughter in Tacoma sent us to transport to South Dakota. We had to wrap them.
My mother was an expert wrapper, as is my best friend. I am a so-so wrapper. I find it annoying to wrap a gift that is only going to be ripped open in a fraction of the time it took to wrap it. I am just not meticulous in that way. Don’t even talk to me about gift tags, ribbons, or bows!
Husband is left handed and right eyed, and watching him try to wrap gifts is painful. He insisted wrapping my gift from our daughter, even though I offered to. He admits everyone will know he wrapped it. There are tears in the paper and an unusually large amount of tape. He is just happy he could do it.
When do you open Christmas gifts? What kind of a wrapper are you? How is your Christmas Day shaping up?
Trail Baboon 
Merry Christmas Baboons!
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Rise and Rip, Baboons, and don’t forger to save the bows for reuse! We open gifts after the midday Christmas meal. My niece’s kids will have opened most of their haul at home by now, so they will have a small heap of stocking-stuffer-type things this afternoon.
I never endorsed the idea of opening gifts on Christmas Eve, or anyway not ALL of them. Save something for the main event.
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oops! I forgot to push the button that put the post on the top. Merry Christmas
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I’m not a fast wrapper and I’m not a slow wrapper. I’m sort of a half-fast wrapper.
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Well done!
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Christmas Eve is another evening these days.today we will do lunch with Sandra and she will open her presents and daughter’s family will bring one present each to open with her. I had to wrap a present that my son sent, a rare event, as results show. Lunch will be as it has been for years crackers, cheeses, meats, cookies. Merry day to all.
Clyde
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We are going to church this morning, then to our church organist’s house in the afternoon for snacks.
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We haven’t done presents in years, but when I was a kid, most were opened Christmas morning. If we went to a grandparents house of X-mas Eve, we’d open gifts from them.
Most recently, before the adults stopped exchanging gifts, we had a family gathering of my family (Mom and sibs) the Saturday before Christmas, unless Sat. was X-mas Eve. Then it was Dec. 17. Dec. 24th was always dinner at Dad’s and exchange gifts then. And if Sandra and I exchanged gifts, it was usually Christmas Eve because she’s very impatient ( 🙂 ) and her family always opened gifts on Christmas Eve.
Christmas hasn’t been the best one for us this year because COVID invaded our happy home for the first time. Sandra got it about ten days ago. I didn’t. She finally tested negative yesterday so we’re hoping to join family this afternoon for a delicious meal and conversation.
Merry Christmas to all TBers.
Chris in Owatonna
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Merry Christmas, Baboons! I hope all of you are well and enjoying family and friends.
To be honest, I’m not a huge fan of Christmas anymore. For me, it just emphasizes things that make me kind of unhappy. I enjoy the music, lights, and colors and the Advent season leading up to Christmas – there is always excitement in the air and lots of reasons to get together with people I enjoy. But the 24th and 25th are just kind of “meh”.
As a kid, our family had oyster stew and cookies on Christmas Eve and we opened many of our family presents. We usually had grandparents over and the adults would drink coffee while my brothers and I took turns opening presents. On Christmas morning, there would be amazing presents from Santa. One year I got my first guitar. Another year I got a pair of Madshus xc skis. At noon we would have Christmas dinner. It was usually turkey or Mom’s favorite roast pork.
Yesterday I got an amazing text from my SIL. It means the world to me and is one of the nicest gifts I could have received. Today I will spend with my youngest brother’s family. It will be just the four of us. My brother is making seafood shepherds’ pies. We are planning to try to call our aunt who lives alone in Rockford, IL, and who has recently had a hard fall requiring EMS. She won’t admit it, stubborn like my mom, but she wishes she was here instead of alone in Rockford. I wish she’d let us come and bring her home, but she won’t. I come from stubborn people.
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P.S. I used to like to make really creative gift wraps with all kinds of natural things on them, like pine cones or a small branch tied with twine and some bittersweet berries. Now I just recycle gift bags.
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Merry Christmas to those that celebrate it.
It will be a quiet day for us; my sister and her husband will head over to moms for lunch, I’ll come over later and stay through supper. My side of the family had Christmas on the 16th. Yesterday we saw ‘Mrs Doubtfire’ (the musical. I know, you didn’t know there WAS a musical. It was fun) and then had Christmas with son and DIL.
Our daughter will sleep until 4:00 this afternoon and we probably won’t get to presents until 8:00 tonight.
Wrapping presents is slightly above going to the dentist for me. I am an adequate wrapper as long as it’s a box. Don’t expect anything fancy. I grew up with the cheapest wrapping paper mom could find and it tore and ripped on its own. Kelly taught me there is heavier paper with cutting marks on the back, and DIL taught us there is DOUBLED SIDED PAPER!
If you think the paper gets ripped off quickly, you haven’t seen daughter meticulously tear tiny pieces of wrapping paper off a present. So Agonizingly slow it becomes humorous!
When I was a kid, there was already so many cousins and grandkids that the living room was bursting with noise and it seems like it was 3′ deep with wrapping paper and we didn’t take out the trash for 3 days afterward because there was always some part missing that had to be searched for.
Then I met Kelly and her family did one gift at a time and I was astounded. Not nearly so many people around anymore. I sure do miss the Christmas eve parties.
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I am spending the holiday at my sister’s house. Last evening we were at church followed by a Swedish meatball with her family and a couple of friends. Then packages were opened, one at a time. When my nieces were young, Christmas Day morning was for emptying the Christmas stockings. If it weren’t for my fx ankle, I would have been singing with my church choir at two services this morning.
I spent a lot of Christmases working at the hospital – we had to alternate Christmas with Thanksgiving/New Years. Because I worked mostly night shift I was still able to enjoy family celebrations.
As to gift wrapping, I am competent but not terribly creative. Gift bags seem like mostly an easy way out so I don’t use them too much.
I’ll probably show up as anonymous because I am using my phone. Merry Christmas (or Happy Holidays)! K-Two
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I end up spreading out the holidays similar to the way I spread out my birthday. YA and I open gifts on Solstice. But we also go to a massive Christmas Eve gathering with dear friends and there are some gifts there. And then this morning after stockings we went to my BFF’s house where there were some gifts. Now we’re at the movies and after the movie we go to another friend’s in Hudson and there will be more presents there. I like to wrap, but I don’t get carried away for the same reason that I don’t make works of art on my envelopes. They’re just wrapping!!!
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I’m an adequate wrapper, but picky about which paper for which present – I’ll tape together two small pieces (along the long edge, takes a lot of tape) of a favorite if necessary… And I recycle large pieces, but I’m not as meticulous as Ben’s daughter any more. : )
We don’t send many wrapped gifts, and have no one we exchange with here, so not much gets used.
We had a really nice dinner with friends at their house, complete with their homemade eggnog, our cardamom bread… then played the game Sets (the Family Game of Visual Perception), Such a brain strain! – anyone else here ever play it?
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I don’t wrap gifts anymore but for years worked in my dad’s store wrapping Christmas gifts. He didn’t charge people to have gifts wrapped so there always a line of people with several gifts to wrap. It was intense and exhausting the couple weeks before Christmas.
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