Creative Christmas Traditions: Opening Presents Youngest to Oldest

I've been to some Christmas celebrations where opening presents is a huge free-for-all. Everyone simply tears into their presents, sometimes pausing long enough to shout a "thanks" to the gift giver over the din of everyone else opening their presents. In many of these situations, several hours later, someone discovers an unopened present, either neglected or lost in the shuffle of the present opening insanity. It wouldn't surprise me if some of these present opening frenzies end up with broken presents, or gifts that remain unopened at the end of the day and have to be saved until the next time a geographically far-flung family gets together.

In my family, we have a very strict present opening policy. After the gifts are piled in front of their intended recipient, the youngest member of the family opens their present first. We make sure to take time to note who the gift is from, show it around to other family members, and thanking the gift giver. Then the next youngest member of the family takes their turn, and so on through the family, until the oldest family member has opened one of their gifts. Then it's back down to the youngest, and round and round as many times as necessary.

Of course, this does present all kinds of fun math, which somehow we need to go through every year. I am a month older than my cousin's husband, who is, in turn, a month older than she is. You would think that we would all remember Marcy, then Matt, then Dawn, but it usually gets rehashed every year. As we get into the older family members, we usually tease my uncle, who is the baby of his generation, and there is always some comparison of the age of each person's spouse or significant other with their own age.

This tradition has slipped a little bit with the addition of a younger generation into the family. My youngest sister is twenty-two this year, so she doesn't complain too much about not getting to go first anymore. But the grandchildren of my mom and her brothers tend to get more presents than the rest of us, so we tend to let them open two presents on each of their turns, hoping that they will open at least one gift that keeps them somewhat amused until their next turn arrives. Last year, my middle sister ended up with an extra turn at the beginning of each round to open the presents for her unborn baby, due in March. He was technically the youngest family member, after all, at negative three months.

This year, our extended family has exchanged names for our present exchange, which means that everyone will only be getting one present each. But for the immediate family, I suspect we will still follow our tradition of opening presents in order, which makes me the third from last in the order. I suppose I'll have to content myself with being amused by the attempts of my niece (20 months) and nephew (9 months) trying to open their gifts, since I'll have a bit of a wait before I get started opening my own gifts.