What fun thing do you plan to do this Christmas?

[marvinmacs]

My wife and I are having a great time inserting chocolates, candies and cookies inside the Christmas sock for our kids. It helps a lot that they don't know it's not from us but from a third person named "Santa." If only because this helps parents reward kids for doing good things, I'd like to keep this tradition.

[Val-the-nomad]

Christmas stockings are a great tradition, I still get one from my best friend. This is my tenth x'mas away from the UK and instead of searching for a western pub I am trying something new. I will spend Christmas day as captain of the dinner crew at a local orphanage. It's a great way to give something back to the community and to feel useful.

[Perfect7]

We do stockings, also, but the kids know that I fill them. The last few years, I've gotten them each a jar of cherries (something we don't have often, but they love), but this year I can't do that because two of them have negative reactions to the red food coloring they add to them. This year, I got small cans of pop (soda), small bags of chips, and dip for each of them.

[buddys]

Do you all add citrus and apples to their stockings? I always got that when I was a child. But of course we didn't have fruit often in the wintertime so it was a great treat.

[Silva]

Oh I remember stockings too! We had apple, orange and nuts in the toe then chocolate coins and little gifts. I did this with my children until they were in their teens but I don't think they do this now with our grandchildren so the tradition seems to have died out. Shame!

[Britlady]

We do stockings. Though come to think of it, I only have one to hand this year, I need to sort that out. We do fruit and sweets that are for Christmas morning and small gifts. My daughter can open her stocking as soon as she wakes, on the understanding that she isn't to wake us, and we set an alarm to get us up after an hour lie in.

Then we have breakfast together, a proper cooked one, and then it's onto presents. It helps to keep things a little more calm believe it or not, and with waiting a little she's more likely to look at each gift rather than just tossing them aside and moving onto the next.

[Klicky]

If it were up to me we would have nothing but stockings.    My kids each give a gift to each family member, plus tuck a small gift into each stocking gift including his own.  They love that they get to be sneaky and slip things into the stockings, plus they get to pick out something that they want for themselves.  There are also miniature stockings on the tree that Santa fills with golden chocolate coins, and other mini stockings which will be filled with some tiny trinket.

One of my favorite Christmas Eve traditions is that they all take their showers then come downstairs where we all snuggle on the couch and watch a Christmas movie together.  After the movie they go up to bed where they find a brand new blanket on their freshly made bed.  It's all very magical since, being young boys,  not one of them notice their mom go missing at any point during the evening.

[buddys]

Good idea Jo.

Klicky-That sounds like a wonderful tradition. I have adult children and almost adult grandchildren so they are all too "sophisticated" to do things like that anymore. I can barely get them to come to our house for Christmas Eve dinner and gifts. This has been a hard year so they aren't getting much but it comes with a whole lot of love for each one of them. I also have my daughter in law's cousin whom we consider as a third son so we buy for him too. He's such a sweetie and he watches over us a lot of times when the kids don't bother.