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When I was a kid....
we went on Christmas Eve, before midnight mass, "stole" a Christmas tree (there are usually places giving them away), and decorated it. That tree had all of our homemade ornaments, popcorn strings, fruit loops, etc. Before Mass, my mom always let us open one gift, but if she had bought jewelry that we could wear to church or jammies, that's what we got.
Eventually, we'll continue that tradition (though no live tree - DD is way too allergic), but for now, we just do the gift on Christmas Eve. It's always jammies.
In the morning, they can go to each other's rooms, but no one can wake us up or go downstairs until 7am. This is kind of a joke because I get so excited, I can hardly sleep Christmas Eve, and end up basically hiding in my room until DH will wake up. I leave one wrapped book by each of the kids' doors, and they can open those while they wait.
We do stockings first, and Santa gifts, which are unwrapped, under our tree in the family room. Next comes breakfast - something easy.
When the kids start to get restless, we open gifts to each other, which are under our living room tree. We take turns.
When we do our extended family party, which is over 30 people, we don't take turns opening one by one, but the person opening a gift has to make sure the gift-giver is paying attention.
we went on Christmas Eve, before midnight mass, "stole" a Christmas tree (there are usually places giving them away), and decorated it. That tree had all of our homemade ornaments, popcorn strings, fruit loops, etc. Before Mass, my mom always let us open one gift, but if she had bought jewelry that we could wear to church or jammies, that's what we got.
Eventually, we'll continue that tradition (though no live tree - DD is way too allergic), but for now, we just do the gift on Christmas Eve. It's always jammies.
In the morning, they can go to each other's rooms, but no one can wake us up or go downstairs until 7am. This is kind of a joke because I get so excited, I can hardly sleep Christmas Eve, and end up basically hiding in my room until DH will wake up. I leave one wrapped book by each of the kids' doors, and they can open those while they wait.
We do stockings first, and Santa gifts, which are unwrapped, under our tree in the family room. Next comes breakfast - something easy.
When the kids start to get restless, we open gifts to each other, which are under our living room tree. We take turns.
When we do our extended family party, which is over 30 people, we don't take turns opening one by one, but the person opening a gift has to make sure the gift-giver is paying attention.
He is also big on no presents under the tree until Christmas morning. Right now, the Little People nativity is under the tree for DD to play with, but that's it. Depending on when we open presents (after nap on Christmas Eve or AM on the day), I'll bring all the presents up from the basement. We let DD1 open at her leisure and play with things as she goes along. It's pretty overwhelming for her! DD2 got 2 presents from us, as there is really not much to get a 5 month old that we don't already have! We got nothing for the dog this year - we can take a rawhide out of the closet and wrap it up 
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