CAROLS SUNG, GIFTS PRODUCED. This is another tradition borrowed from my parents. Simply bringing your gifts down on Christmas Eve and plopping them under the tree didn't provide enough pomp and circumstance, so after supper, with the room lit only by the Christmas tree lights we would gather around the piano. My mother would play Christmas hymns and carols out of a book called "The Fireside Book of Folk Songs" and while we were singing, family members would slip away one by one to get their presents and put them under the tree. I still remember the delight of hearing people stuffing their gifts under the tree and then getting the gentle prodding that meant it was my turn to do likewise. It doesn't get much better than that, folks!
After I got married and we started having children, I discovered that my husband didn't have a lot of Christmas traditions to bring to the table, so we've been pretty much feasting on all of mine and this is one of my favorites. Now I'm the one playing the Christmas carols and hymns out of the same book and although I'm not the musician my mother was, everyone sings so loudly that the pleasant din nicely covers up my many mistakes.
When the gifts are all brought down, we allow a little subtle peeking, but no handling of gifts! The lights stay off and the mystery remains. We don't open any gifts until Christmas morning. One year when our first-born was still pretty young, but old enough to get excited about gifts, we decided that it wouldn't really do any harm to let him open just one gift on Christmas Eve - just enough to keep him satisfied until the rest were opened the next day. What we discovered instead was that this one gift awakened a ferocious appetite for more and was somewhat akin to opening Pandora's box. Oops. Well, we were young and inexperienced. That was the only time we tried that little experiment.
CAROLS SUNG, GIFTS PRODUCED. This is another tradition borrowed from my parents. Simply bringing your gifts down on Christmas Eve and plopping them under the tree didn't provide enough pomp and circumstance, so after supper, with the room lit only by the Christmas tree lights we would gather around the piano. My mother would play Christmas hymns and carols out of a book called "The Fireside Book of Folk Songs" and while we were singing, family members would slip away one by one to get their presents and put them under the tree. I still remember the delight of hearing people stuffing their gifts under the tree and then getting the gentle prodding that meant it was my turn to do likewise. It doesn't get much better than that, folks! 
After I got married and we started having children, I discovered that my husband didn't have a lot of Christmas traditions to bring to the table, so we've been pretty much feasting on all of mine and this is one of my favorites. Now I'm the one playing the Christmas carols and hymns out of the same book and although I'm not the musician my mother was, everyone sings so loudly that the pleasant din nicely covers up my many mistakes.
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