{"id":10419,"date":"2002-09-29T12:55:05","date_gmt":"2002-09-29T12:55:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/?p=10419"},"modified":"2014-09-29T12:55:40","modified_gmt":"2014-09-29T12:55:40","slug":"when-should-presents-be-opened","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/when-should-presents-be-opened\/","title":{"rendered":"When Should Presents Be Opened?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dear Ernest, <\/p>\n

I have a real problem. All of my life, my family opens presents on Christmas<\/a> Eve. A friend of mine says that’s against the rules of Christmas<\/a>. I follow the updates from the North Pole<\/a> every year but I usually have my presents opened BEFORE Santa<\/a> is suppose to arrive. What’s going on here?
\nRoger D. Hagerstown, USA. <\/em><\/p>\n

Hi Roger, <\/p>\n

The most important thing at Christmas<\/a> is being together. Santa<\/a> recognizes this and he works very hard to meet the needs and expectations of every family. Quite honestly, Christmas<\/a> could be celebrated on any day of the year. It just doesn’t matter to Santa<\/a>. What matters most is that people get together and have a great time. <\/p>\n

And that means sometimes Santa<\/a> bends the rules or expectations for Christmas<\/a>. Because some things such as family are just a little more important. <\/p>\n

Now, you folks open your presents on Christmas<\/a> Eve. Technically, that’s a real breech of Christmas<\/a> protocol. At the North Pole<\/a>, for example, our Christmas<\/a> party starts on Christmas<\/a> Eve and we have a great time but we know we cannot open presents until Santa<\/a> comes home and can celebrate with us. (We love<\/a> to watch Santa<\/a> open presents. He has every toy in the world but still he loves surprises.) So for the North Pole<\/a> family, the rule is “wait until Santa<\/a> gets home”. <\/p>\n

So you folks just have a different rule, that’s all. And it’s okay because you are just being together as family. This is part of the reason why Santa<\/a> has such a large staff of elves around the world. When special needs arise such as pre-Christmas Eve delivery Santa’s on the job. <\/p>\n

Most of the world opens their presents on Christmas<\/a> morning. And that’s why we track Santa<\/a> by the hour on Christmas<\/a> Eve. Because most of the world is watching then.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dear Ernest, I have a real problem. All of my life, my family opens presents on Christmas Eve. A friend of mine says that’s against the rules of Christmas. I follow the updates from the North Pole every year but I usually have my presents opened BEFORE Santa is suppose to arrive. What’s going on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4334,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","iawp_total_views":16,"footnotes":""},"categories":[90,86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ask-ernest","category-north-pole"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10419"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10419\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}