To wrap or not to wrap...

When I was younger our Christmas presents were not wrapped. Of course presents that were from grandparents and other people were wrapped, but the stuff that would come on Christmas Eve was not wrapped. My parents would take all of our presents and put them in individual piles. When we would come out Christmas morning we would find our group of things as identified by our stocking sitting amongst the loot. And things were always set up, like big Lego Pirate ships or Play Mobile forts. My dad would spend hours on Christmas eve setting all these things up. When we got older, we decided it was more fun to unwrap gifts than to come out and take in everything you had gotten in a glance, so we made my parents start wrapping stuff. Since having a family of our own, we wrap gifts and we leave everything under the tree with the idea being that we open things up one at a time and watch and enjoy what everyone else is doing. Jonathan thinks Christmas mornings with my family were over too fast because everyone just opens their pile of stuff at once and you never know what anyone else got. Of course this doesn't work out perfectly, as our children are always impatient to have the next present to open (especially Emily,) and watching someone else open a present is not nearly as fun as opening one yourself. But Jonathan makes an effort to drag the process out and involve everyone.