Dumb poll question! Santa is a pagan fairytale.

Duh... I can tell you fairytales that are not pagan... But I bet you believe those...

@magada, good grief is right....where's snoopy when you need him? Lol :D

Well I have thoroughly enjoyed reading all the comments, obviously from people all over the US, about how y'all celebrate(d) Christmas and receive Santa gifts. My comments are above but have to add, I had no idea Santa wrapped gifts until following this thread. It seems the "wrapped" outweigh the "not wrapped." I've been looking up photos of Santa's big sack just to see if they are wrapped or not. Two pictures on Christmas cards decorated by Jack Sorensen artwork (Leanin' Tree) had both wrapped and not wrapped (attached-sorry for glare) in his bag so I guess it's a matter of family traditions and really isn't meant to be debated. Of course there's always a Scrooge or two among the many.
Guess it's kind of like a box of crayons.....there's a reason for so many different colors, it was just a way to get people talking and enjoying hearing about others, I certainly have enjoyed most comments. Thanks!
I hope you all have a wonderfully Merry Christmas full of lots of love, laughter and BIG hugs!!

Hehe right on zaz, peanuts kinda stuck to me lol

Tcaraujo, I do not discuss my literary, nor my belief system with strangers that are trolling sites for argumentative discourse!

Santa leaves the unwrapped presents near the individual stockings so we all know who's is who's. The spectacle when we all enter the room together is AWWE!! Everyone gets to see what everyone else received and the display is well put together. I grew up this way (Mrs. Santa also always sewed a nightgown or Christmas dress, etc., and they were left hanging on the brick wall in my parents living room.) My husbands family always had theirs wrapped. As we started our own traditions, I told him he could wrap them all if he'd like .... so of coarse they never have been.

I love the holidays and all, but Santa wrapping my gifts? Surely you jest! The day Santa or anyone else for that matter, wraps my gifts. I'll be packing up for the North Pole with gifts in tow. Happy holidays to all!

I am so happy to see that others don't wrap Santa's presents! I loved waking up and seeing the group of gifts that Santa got for me. One year, he got me a pair of pants with Shaun Cassidy on one of the bell bottoms and a matching T-shirt. It was one of my happiest Christmas memories!

lakewrites- your comment a few posts up: Dumb poll question! Santa is a pagan fairytale.

tcaraujo then gives this comment: Duh... I can tell you fairytales that are not pagan... But I bet you believe those...

lakewrites- follows with this: Tcaraujo, I do not discuss my literary, nor my belief system with strangers that are trolling sites for argumentative discourse!

I ask you lakewrites, who might be the one trolling sites for argumentative discourse?? Sharing your belief system that Santa is a pagan fairytale. The nerve!!!!!

Our Santa never wrapped... and all the Santa toys were "workshop made" and never required batteries.

Santa doesn't wrap at my home. Toys for the children are left in large Santa sacks, much like those on television. Wrapped presents come from the siblings and parents.

It's interesting to read about other people's traditions.

Santa doesn't wrap, he doesn't even have rhythm

grainfarmer- say it aint so... Santa can bust a move;)

Well, I wish I knew that Santa didn't wrap all these years, because I'm always up till all hours of the night wrapping! But that is how I experienced Christmas and how I continue to celebrate. Santa's gift paper always has Santa and/or his reindeer, etc. on it--never the same as the regular gift wrap for friends and family. We reuse gift bags and bows from year to year, but as part of the general wrapping. I recognized my mother's handwriting on the labels when I was a child, so Santa has always had printed labels in fancy font. I was suspected last year when the printer wouldn't work and there were no Santa labels--one side of the tree had our daughters gifts and the other side, our son's.

(One year my daughter dropped her tooth down the drain and she went to bed devastated thinking the tooth fairy wouldn't come. The tooth fairy left a note with a fairy letterhead and fancy font stating she flew down the drain and got the tooth. Two years later, another tooth down the drain...another note. My daughter told me that she thought the tooth fairy used clip art! Told her that the tooth fairy is very busy and probably had her secretary type the note!) My daughter just told me before she went to bed that she found proof on uTube that there is no Santa! (So, I jokingly threatened to take her iPad away and told her that she knows better than to believe everything she watches on uTube! And when she said she would sleep on the sofa Christmas Eve, I told her how I had just read about someone who didn't get gifts one year for waiting up for Santa! So she went to her room to look it up on her iPad before bed! Thanks @whakers!) Now I'm just having fun with her!

Santa is St. Nicholas, who was a real man, who became a Bishop and is venerated for his generosity to needy children and as a protector of children. Stocking gifts are symbolic of gifts of gold left in stockings hanging to dry by the fire to save some sisters who, without a dowry, were going to be sold to slavery. We don't have a mantle so our stockings hang from he stair railing. Our children place their shoes outside their bedroom door on Dec 5th to find money in their shoes when they awake in the morning on the feast day, anniversary of St. Nicholas' death on the 6th. We do not wrap stocking gifts which include small favorite soaps, lotions, lip balm, gadgets, small toys and puzzles, and candy. Our children are allowed to open their stockings when they awake and it has become a very special time for our children alone together. By the time we awake after a late night of wrapping, the kids are nicely sugared up so I don't worry that they haven't had breakfast while I sleep in!

Most importantly, though, our children know the meaning of Christmas to be the birthday celebration of Jesus, and the gifts brought for them, symbolic of the gifts brought for the baby Jesus by the wise men. I have a humble little manager that I BEGGED my mother to get me when I was four years old (kicking and screaming in Burdines and crying when she did not buy it), but Santa left it under the tree that Christmas and it was truly the best Christmas gift I ever received! I display the manger under my tree every year and I will never replace it for a bigger or better one. I still have the extra little plastic sheep I added to the Jesus, Mary and Joseph figurines. I'm four years old again and relive the magic of Christmas every year I place it under my tree. The gifts are placed under the real evergreen, symbolic of life, surrounding the manger as the centerpiece.

Wrapped or unwrapped, every family's Christmas traditions hold equally special meaning to those who celebrate. Wishing all you Houzzers a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

Margo... lol. That santa dances like i do :)))

Hey Margo, Santa's not too bad! I'm not sure if that's one for the kids to see. LOL :D

Gifts delivered by Santa to the kids were never wrapped. They were displayed by or under the tree and also by the appropriate person's stocking. Larger gifts were adorned with a big bows - like when the kids got bikes. Gifts of clothing were always from family and always wrapped. Santa brought the fun stuff. I miss those days.

There are approximately two billion children (persons under 18) in the world. However, since Santa does not visit children of Muslim, Hindu, Jewish or Buddhist (except maybe in Japan) religions, this reduces the workload for Christmas night to 15% of the total, or 378 million (according to the population reference bureau).
At an average (census) rate of 3.5children per household, that comes to 108 million homes, presuming there is at least one good child in each. Santa has about 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 967.7 visits per second.
This is to say that for each Christian household with a good child, Santa has around 1/1000th of a second to park the sleigh, hop out, jump down the chimney, fill the stocking, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left for him, get back up the chimney, jump into the sleigh and get onto the next house.
Assuming that each of these 108 million stops is evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false, but will accept for the purposes of our calculations), we are now talking about 0.78 miles per household; a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting bathroom stops or breaks.
This means Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second-3000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second, and a conventional reindeer can run (at best) 15 miles per hour.
The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium sized LEGO set (two pounds), the sleigh is carrying over 500 thousand tons, not counting Santa himself.
On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that the "flying" reindeer can pull 10 times the normal amount, the job can't be done with eight or even nine of them -- Santa would need 360,000 of them. This increases the payload, not counting the weight of the sleigh, another 54,000 tons, or roughly seven times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth (the ship, not the monarch).
600,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance - this would heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as a spacecraft re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer would adsorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second each. In short, they would burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them and creating deafening sonic booms in their wake.
The entire reindeer team would be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second, or right about the time Santa reached the fifth house on his trip.
Not that it matters, however, since Santa, as a result of accelerating from a dead stop to 650 mps in .001 seconds, would be subjected to acceleration forces of 17,000 g's(gforce). A 250 pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force, instantly crushing his bones and organs and reducing him to a quivering blob of pink goo.
Therefore, if Santa did exist, he's dead now.

This is not intended to affront or insult. It is merely for some humour.

Who is this Santa guy everyone is talking about, eh?

Santa is one of many men that show us all how to think of the impossible and make dreams come true.

When my sons were little I never wrapped their gifts. I would always lay their clothes and toys out on the sofa, the chair and by the Christmas tree. Surprisingly they always knew what was theirs. It's pure joy to see the expression on their faces when they first see everything.

@najeebah1
That's precisely why engineers shouldn't be in charge of anything creative :)

^^^Boo! I liked what najeebah1 wrote...I am of two minds about lying to my children about the jolly fat man in a red suit. That and the tooth fairy. What would najeebah1 come up with regarding the tooth fairy? lol...I will read it to the kids when I am sure they no longer believe. :-)

najeebah1-, I cannot believe that you or someone actually took the time to figure that all out. I can tell how Santa can accomplish all that and still be alive in one little word-Magic!! But that only works if you believe.

What is absolutely real about Santa is the spirit of giving, especially to the children who are our future. That is the magic that children learn--how wonderful it feels to be loved and to receive gifts, but the bigger thing mine have learned is that when they give, it feels 100 times better than even the magic they felt as young children receiving Christmas gifts from Santa or family and friends. I've always been very careful about personifying Santa as little as possible. It is not about the jolly man in the red suit--the red suit was the bishops robe! It is about the life of the man in the red suit that was dedicated to giving up all of his personal wealth and dedicating his life to protecting children. That is a timeless altruistic concept. Nothing makes my children happier than to see the look on a recipients face when they give a gift that is thoughtful and sincere and from the heart, it is more gratifying than receiving their number one gift on their list! We have a dear 94 yr. old family friend who is like my adopted grandmother/great grandmother who is a gift in and of herself! One of the most special gifts my son ever gave her, which she still has the years later, was a hand colored card with two quarters taped inside. Santa is bigger than life, which is why he can make it around the world so quickly delivering so many gifts. And for all of the overblown commercialism that has hijacked the Christmas season, we have managed to find the greatness in Santa by teaching the greatness in giving, and most of all that the biggest gift of the season is the baby Jesus. For our children, His sacrifice on Good Friday and the celebration of Easter are far more important than Christmas.

p.s. I'd love to see what najeebah1 would come up with about the tooth fairy. I'd hope it might include taking apart the powder room sink TWICE to recover my daughter's teeth, which the tooth fairy would leave behind for her because it was too traumatic for her to give up a body part, including her teeth, for any money! I can't wait to tell her the story one day--we are going to laugh until we cry when she is a mother some day God willing!

@najeebah1, that was absolutely the funniest thing I have heard in a long time! You had me tearing in laughter! Thank you so much for that! LOL :D

Growing up in Germany, the Christkind would place the gifts under the tree on Christmas Eve, all neatly wrapped and then ring a little bell for the kids to know that they can enter the room and admire the lit tree and presents. My mother would then later salvage the paper and fabric ribbon for later use if possible (so we had to be careful not to rip the paper, which made the opening ritual of the few gifts last a lot longer).
These days I am glad for reusable fabric bags and paper bags. They are pretty, too and so much easier to use. We keep the tradition though not to open two gifts at the same time but to savor the moment and also enjoy watching someone else open their gift.

This is so sad! It is the first year when none of my 4 boys are believers... I fooled the 12 yo long enough ; ) I am just not ready to let go of Santa. I feel he will still leave some gifts under our tree.

At our house Santa wraps but only with the 'Santa paper'. Kid is smart enough to realize Santa gifts were wrapped like the family gifts even when he was really young.

Santa's gifts are not wrapped. Only the parents gifts are wrapped. My kids only get 4 gifts. 3 are not wrapped and 1 is.
This has been our tradition for over 30 years.

4-gifts came from baby Jesus receiving 3 gifts. The fourth is from is and it's a wrapped nice gift.

Remember .....

Gfdrbygk

My parents always bought wrapping paper with Santa on them. My sister and I would wake up at 4 or 5am every year and we were able to open our stockings......we'd beg our parents to get up and they'd always sleepily say, "another half hour"...this would go on until about 7am....THEN we had to wait for their coffee to brew! LOL...the anticipation was incredible! But so much fun! I have carried on this tradition. It never even occurred to me not to wrap. Interesting to see it's almost 50/50.

My son was an only child...he didn't have siblings to wake up with....so i think carrying on this tradition was a good choice.....to share in the excitement of Christmas morning!

@Mark... That's close to what I told my kids. Stop believing in Santa and he quits coming!

In the movie, "A Christmas Story", they WRAP the presents....so that MUST be the right way! ;-)

My parents didn't wrap Santa gifts; my in-laws did. When I had children, we compromised and left one big Santa gift unwrapped. Then the others said "From Santa". My ex liked wrapping presents more than I did. :))

@ lake1114
I was definitely not the one to do it. Personally, I somewhat doubt the actual figures lol :)

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I usually wrap my presents; makes it more exciting! I also use the (slightly) wrinkled paper from the previous years, as well as the ribbons. In case one would not want to buy special wrapping paper, one could use newspaper.

najeebah1 I am sooo relieved to hear that! I was really wondering what you did for fun. LOL

we did not wrap Santa gifts, as a nurse I worked my share of Christmas Days, we opened gifts when I got home. Their Santa gifts and stockings kept them busy till I was home ( and NO we did not want to wake them early to open gifts, I started at 7 am and who wants to come home to cranky kids and dad on Christmas??) I also used special tags and a friends handwriting to keep them guessing if Santa was real.

Santa wraps his gifts. Santa does not use the same gift wrap that parents use. Small presents in the stocking are wrapped in @ three layers of white tissue paper with really skinny metallic ribbon. Medium sized Santa gifts, under the tree, are the only ones wrapped in silver or gold foil with metallic ribbon.
Huge Santa gifts, like toy kitchens, doll houses or trikes are draped with a couple layers of solid white plastic tablecloths with really big metallic bows. They are not so much unwrapped as unveiled, like a statue. That way, they are all assembled and ready to go, yet still have the surprise factor of a wrapped gift. Santa never uses the same tags as the rest of the family.

Santa is out buying After Christmas sale wrapping paper at 75% off;)

I'm a little late i know, but I had to share my family traditions.

Santa did not wrap presents. He usually brought just one big present from the 'wish list' plus the stocking, that is filled with important things like a mandarin orange, homemade butterscotch candy, school supplies as required, underwear and socks (always!!), play-doh or a bottle of the older teen's favourite libation (back when drinking age was 18 in Ontario).

My husband and I continued this tradition with our children, but with only 2 kids, we didn't have the over lap of younger children who still believe and older teens at university, so stockings ended a few years ago. However my older son (in 3rd year at uni) now realizes that clothes can be an acceptable (necessary!) present!

Kathy-perhaps you're a lot early!

Najeebah! OMG!! I haven't laughed this hard in a long time! Totally amused by your explanation of how Santa did (didn't) do it all in one night! My kids are 39, 40 & 22 now plus I have grandchildren. I still wrapped for all till 2 yrs ago. Now; all they want is $. But I still wrap surprise gifts, and gifts for the younger kids. I had no idea that it was a 50/50 option (wrapping) till I read all these. But, let me tell you, that was one precious piece of work you shared. Wish I knew how to copy it for this next year & put it in with their checks! I'm relatively new to computer use. Glad I found this site! Way late or a bit early! Ho Ho Ho!

Hi misttree. Glad you enjoyed it :) lol.
if you're using the houzz app, you can't copy, but if you're on a pc, select all you're copying by left clicking at the beginning, holding and dragging to the end. then press 'ctrl/control', and, holding it in, press 'c'
when you want to paste it, press 'ctrl/control' and, holding it in, press 'v'

well since someone has reopened the site and Santa is due in exactly 60 days, seems we should start again. When I was growing up, my mother had issues with the Santa thing, so i think the max gifts we got from the man in a year were about 20. We celebrated Christmas on Christmas eve and always, no matter how many presents we got from Santa, we always received that plus a few more. All presents were wrapped.

When my son was a child, I started the tradition, this was to prevent the inevitable, why don't other children get as many gifts as i get. He was allowed one wish and one present. I would kill myself trying to make sure he got exactly what he wanted. Well except one year when he wanted a boat. Don't get me wrong, he did get one, a wind up one for the bathtub. It was then he told me he wanted a big boat! His present was always wrapped in special santa paper. I have always wrapped the presents for us and him.

One year a friend was being Santa. He actually would grow a long beard and bleach his hair. Most real I have ever seen. I figured he would be over kind, so i told him one gift only. Nope he insisted on 3! So, of course, since he was the real Santa, I had to get 3!

When my son got older and out grew Santa, we still gave a gift every Christmas morning. It was a game for all of us to play over the holidays. We did this for a couple years, even after he left home.

Now that there is a grandchild, I will go back to wrapping his gifts. (my son only ever wants money, and now he says nothing.)

I’m late to the party, but my statement to the kids, “those who don’t believe, MAY NOT RECEIVE”! It has postponed the nonbeliever chatter! Also, some times if I leave out wrapping paper, Santa or an elf MAY WRAP somethings…if he has time, if not, the paper is left untouched. But obviously they use the “same paper” you can’t possibly imagine Santa brings ALL THE TOYS AND ENOUGH TAPE and wrapping paper to every house!! 🤣❤️🤷🏻‍♀️