How do you spend Christmas Eve and when do you open gifts?

[Retmilleo909]

If you're not working how do you spend Christmas Eve and when do you open gifts/presents?
This year we'll be going to a Christmas Eve church service with our daughter and her family. We usually sit at home listening to Christmas carols or watching Dicken's Christmas Carol and eating popcorn and drinking hot cider. When the kids were young we opened presents very early on Christmas morning. Now we open them on Christmas Eve.
We usually decorate a 6' tree the day after Thanksgiving and start mailing out cards a week or ten days after 12/01.

[Jackalope]

We'll go to regular church service in the morning. Then to the mother-in-law's house, and go watch our traditional Christmas movie. This year it's that one with Ben Stiller in the museum. Then the Christmas Eve service at church.

Christmas Day we'll go to brunch at my father-in-law's house, then later to my parents house for Christmas dinner.

We haven't talked about when to open presents yet. It's been two years since I was on the same continent as my wife at Christmas, and I don't remember how we did it last time.

[Willowdared]

My family traditions:

We (extended family) used to go to an evening service on Christmas Eve, then head to my Grandparents for a smorsbrod spread and gift exchange.

My Grandfather's sister led the bell choir at the church service...I still love the sound of bells.

With great ceremony, my Grandfather would hand out a gift to be ooohed and ahhed over, one by one. When my aunt married a Catholic, those of us old enough would go to Midnight Mass with them.

The rule for the kids on Christmas day, when all the kids were up, we could open stockings and Santa Claus gifts....quietly....while the adults slept in for a bit.

Our stockings always had a huge apple and orange (Harry and David) and a giant Hershey's bar.

Now that I'm a single mom, it's a little flexible. Last year my son spent Christmas with his Dad as I had to work. This year, he'll come home Christmas Eve, and my Mom will let him stay up until I get home for family gifts.

Santa Claus and brunch in the morning, then I head into work at 1500......