My mother puts presents under the tree from herself, Santa, the pets, and whomever else she can think of. It's kinda hilarious. Also, Santa is always careful to leave a present for the pets.

It's weird - this will be the first Christmas we've spent together in... 11 years? Something like that.

I don't remember when I stopped believing in Santa, but I don't think it was all that traumatic.

Santa presents also tend to be the hard to wrap items.

Yeppers.

So, do most people get some from Santa, some from Mom, some from Dad?

Stockings are Santa's job too. Poor Santa gets a bad rep since he is as lame with the present giving as mom sometimes. Santa presents also tend to be the hard to wrap items.

Totally.

Oh lord, now I'm remembering, when my mom was sick and my sister and I went "OMG, stockings!" at like 10 p.m. on Christmas eve - those were some ghetto stockings, I'll tell you what. We filled them up with all kinds of shit we had lying around, including Diet Cokes straight out of the fridge. Laughed our asses off, though.

So, do most people get some from Santa, some from Mom, some from Dad?

When I was a kid, I got one present from my parents and all the rest from Santa. (And, of course, I got presents from my brothers, grandparents, etc.)

For those of you who read Slacktivist, this week's Left Behind Friday is especially good.

Mom and Dad and Ho Ho Ho (Mom still likes to put Ho Ho Ho sometimes. And pet names.)

Santa, the parents, sometimes something from one of Santa's elves or one of the reindeer.

I think our stockings were filled by Santa.

In our house, the presents from my parents were put under the tree before Christmas Eve, so they'd sit there and taunt us with all the pretty wrappings.

Then we'd leave cookies and milk out for Santa and go to bed.

On Christmas morning our stockings would be full, there would be more presents under the tree and there'd always be 1 unwrapped present for each of us.

Which Mom later pointed out they did to deal with the hard to wrap stuff, I never noticed.

The only consistent thing we do year to year is eat breakfast and open the stockings first. Everything after that is subject to change.

One year it was just me and Mom for some reason and we had gone last minute shopping so we didn't even wrap the presents, we just had a bag with them behind our backs and pulled out the presents with a flourish.

I can't remember when I lost faith in Santa either. I don't remember it as being traumatic. The last time the family was together properly for Christmas everything was wrapped, funny gift tags like Teppy's mom does, including a bunch from elves and santa and whatever worked as a hint for the present. Also, presents should be as disguised as possible so people can't guess what they are. You should have seen some of the clever things my parents did when compact discs first came out.

The magic in my heart is all about the candles and the smell of the tree and the lights and the ornaments and the egg nog. Christmas music and movies and the Santa watch are just extra icing on a damn good cake.