Ah! In our house, the only presents under the tree prior to Christmas morning were the gifts from the siblings to our parents and from sibling to sibling.

Oh yeah, Santa still fills the stockings at my parents' house. Except now I usually add stuff too. So, my dad fills them at night, and I sneak a thing or two in, when I go to bring them into my parents' bedroom where we open them.

When my sister and I were about 10 and 13, my mother started putting up a stocking on Christmas Eve and filling it with candy and little presents to herself after we'd gone to bed. When she was growing up, her family didn't have a tree or big presents on Christmas, but they did hang stockings. She didn't want to do that when we were little, but she missed it and decided that we were old enough to not get too confused at that point. She offered to let us hang stockings, too (though my father reacted to that with a "no they are not,"), but we both said no. (We got most of the candy from hers anyway.)

We didn't have a Christmas tree in Jamaica. My mother said that was a cold-weather western thing. I think our Jamaica house was the only place I lived with a pine tree in the front yard, but my mother didn't care.

Christmas morning two bags of (unwrapped) gifts arrived. In the house they still live in, my sister had one chair and I had another, and that was it.

I think delayed treeing made my sister (and eventually) my mother decorating Nazis. I never really cared. I'm really lazy.

My mom stopped doing stocking stuffers a couple years ago. There was much wailing and nashing of teeth from my siblings and I on that, even though our stocking stuffers were just silly things like pens, cards and candy.

Since my dad always waited until the absolute last minute to shop for my mom, her presents didn't show up there until Christmas morning

I think this is why I was a tad confused about the Santa issue early on. Because my Dad did his shopping on the day before Christmas, he put presents under the tree Christmas Eve by default. My mom, on the other hand, made a game of putting a new present under the tree every day in the weeks before Christmas, so that we would rush home to see who it was for, try to guess what it might be, etc.

Our stockings are usually the fabled orange, nuts, candy, and small toys. Sometimes an accessory for a gift we'd get later on or cassettes or gift cards.

I'm so stressed out. I don't think I can handle it.

I'm with Robin on Santa. He's a central figure in a great story and I bought into the stories. I believed in all of them. I remember figuring out about the Tooth Fairy when I was about 7. I made a quick leap to, "If the Tooth Fairy isn't real, then the Easter Bunny must not be either." I asked my mom and she confirmed my reasoning. I was okay with that.

Then, the next leap came pretty quickly,too: "If the Tooth Fairy and Easter Bunny aren't real, then Santa must not be either." That was too awful to contemplate, so I didn't ask my mom about it. I chewed on it for a good week before I finally resigned myself to it and asked her about it. She, again, confirmed that Santa was not a real person and that she and Daddy gave us the presents, but as long as we believed in Santa, he would continue to bring presents.

I still get a stocking from Santa every year.

When we were growing up, we got one or two presents from our parents. We opened all our family gifts on Christmas Eve. Then, on Christmas morning, all the Santa gifts arrived and we opened those. With 5 kids, that was a lot of presents. My mom and dad got stockings from Santa, but no big gifts.

As we've gotten older, Santa still brings us all stockings, but that's it. At some point, my mom stopped doing a stocking for herself so I started doing it for her. Christmas Eve after we go to bed, my mom puts out all the stockings. I listen for her to go to bed and then I sneak out and put out her stocking.

What's going on, Tom? Anything we can do?