Tuesday OT: Home for the Holidays (and what you hate about it)

[cyclones500]

We're pretty much past this stage, but for many years at my side of the family's Xmas it was the process of opening gifts. In all there were 18 of us, including 8 young kids. We'd start at the youngest and go, one person at a time, one present at a time, with plenty of time for "ooohs" and "aaaahs" after the opening of EACH gift. It would literally take no less than 4-5 hours to get through it. Excruciating. Painful. And it sucked.

My family used to do a version of this, but several "advantages" compared to your description (1) usually wasn't more than 8 of us, most of us adults (nephew was only "young" one involved) (2) after a couple of years of it, we customized and had each person open gift simultaneously for each "round," instead of 1 at a time. (3) we didn't have more than about five gifts apiece.