A new Christmas Tradition

This is the year that I break with a Christmas tradition and modify it to meet my own needs. I've toyed with the idea for a couple of years. I've run it by Lance who tentatively states "are you SURE you want to try that?". I've respected the honors of time and the ways of my ancestors. But this year I'm changing it.

I'm giving Christmas gifts to my kids starting on the 21th. We'll call it the "5 days of Christmas".

Reasons:
#1: It's too many gifts for one moment. I want to spread the special moments over more time.

#2: It's too many cool toys to play with in one day. If they had one new gift each day, it would be more played with instead of "cool, what's next?"

#3: The kids have little to do during that week before Christmas anyways except for ask how many more minutes until Christmas. If I hand over one gift a day, they'll be far more entertained.

#4: We spend most of the morning of Christmas opening boxes (that are designed to never be opened I may add) and installing batteries. If we spread the job out a little at a time there will be less weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth on both the parts of the children and the parents.

#5: I love to watch my kids open their gifts. Giving a gift for 5 days instead of 1 increases my joy by 500% -- who doesn't want that?

#6: The kids will whine less about how long it takes for Christmas to get here. Ok, less whining is still a theory, but I'm confident enough that I'm willing to test it out.

Here's how I'll do it:
I'll leave a note on Sunday the 20th from Santa stating his toy bag is too heavy and he'll be dropping some off early - one each day until Christmas. On the nights of the 20th, 21st, and 22nd of December, I'll put out one wrapped present per kid under the tree for them to open the next morning. It'll be like mini-Christmases.

On the 24th, we've been allowing the kids to open their presents from each other in the morning (instead of at night) for several years now. It's been so successful that this is what has inspired me to extend the gift giving a few extra days.

Maybe the goal could be to extend it to the "12 days of Christmas" in the future - a new tradition for our little family. This year we'll start with 5 days and see how it goes.