Flashback Friday - Christmas Presents

When did you open Christmas presents when you were growing up? Christmas Eve or Christmas Day? 
While I distinctly remember opening presents on Christmas Eve, I have a vague recollection that in my earliest childhood years, we opened them on Christmas morning.  I suspect that my sister K and I must have worn our parents down to allow us to open them Christmas Eve ... I mean, what child wants to wait to open presents?  ha!  I remember that after dinner, my dad would take us girls down to the basement to play while my mom stayed upstairs to clean up after dinner.  Then after a while, we'd hear some bells ring and before too much longer, my mom would come downstairs to tell us that Santa had been there.  In hindsight, I can't believe that we were so gullible to not figure out that it was my mom pretending to be Santa ... but it was a less cynical time when I was growing up.    

If you traveled, did your parents take the gifts, or did you open them early or late? Did your parents have Santa leave presents? Were they wrapped or unwrapped? 
A couple of Christmases, my mother's sister (who lived in Springfield, IL - about an hour and a half) and her family came down to visit my grandparents and all of us (my grand parents and my mother's other sister lived in the same town we did).  It was neat to have all the cousins together (2 were about 4-5 years older than me, 2 were the same age, and then there was my sister K almost 2 years younger than me).  I wish we would have done that every year.  

As I mentioned above, Santa brought all our presents ... wrapped.    

Did you have stockings? What was generally in those? Were gifts simple and practical or more extravagant? Did you give presents to your parents and siblings? Were they homemade or purchased? If purchased, did you pay with your own money or did your parents pay? What are memories of special gifts you received? 
We didn't have stockings.  Our gifts were generally toys ... nothing extravagant, but certainly nothing practical.  My sisters and I would pour through the Sears & Roebuck catalog (it was huge) and mark what we wanted for Christmas (no doubt we marked just about every toy in the catalog ha!). 

I don't remember giving presents to my mom & dad nor my sisters ... at least not during my childhood.  Maybe I did and just can't remember.  

I really don't have any memories, either, of any special gifts I received.  I'm sure I always got some of what I asked for ... the only year I remember being disappointed was the year that my sister L (who was 8 years younger than me) got more gifts than I did.  As a child, I didn't realize that an older kid's gifts would have been more expensive than a younger kid's gifts ... therefore the same amount of money would have bought more gifts for a little one than for an older one.  I liked my gifts ... but I thought it unfair that L would have gotten more presents.  Not exactly my finest moment ha! but hey, I was a kid.      

Did you ever peek and find out what your gifts were ahead of time? Did presents gradually appear under the tree in the days leading up to Christmas and were you allowed to touch/shake them?
I must have been in 6th grade or maybe even junior high, when my sister K & I discovered where mom hid our gifts.  I remember sneaking a peak ... I can't remember what we saw.  But I definitely remember peaking.