Christmas Q&A | Outdoor lights, stockings, gift exchanges, and more!
Every Monday, I answer a few of the questions that my readers send me. If you have a question you'd like me to answer in a future Q&A post, just leave me a comment here or email me (thefrugalgirl [at] gmail [dot] com) and put Q&A in the subject line. I look forward to hearing from you!
(edit: Though Christmas is the holiday that I celebrate, and though most of the questions readers submitted were Christmas-specific, I hope that those of you that celebrate other holidays are able to find some helpful and applicable ideas in these posts. Please know that I am not purposely excluding other holidays, but that I'm very much not an expert in those other holidays...Christmas is what I know, and so Christmas is what I talk about. 😉 If you know of some great online frugal resources about other December holidays, though, do feel free to leave a link in the comments.)
Do you decorate the outside of your house, and if so, how did you start the process of accumulating those decorations?
-Engineer Mom
We do decorate outside, but not in a super fancy way because Mr. FG and I both lack the patience required to cover the house in lights!
We have some lightsicles that hang from the front overhang of our house, some colored lights that go on our bushes, and a gaudy string of colored lights that goes on our mailbox, and we usually string some plain white lights over our doorway.
We also have shaped window lights that we hang in our 4 front windows, but I don't know if those count as outside lights! You can see two of them in this 365 photo.
We've bought most of our Christmas lights at after-Christmas clearance sales...I highly recommend that! I've also managed to find some new-in-the-box lights at Goodwill.
I'm a big holiday baker, but this is the first year that I've ever actually paid attention to how much I was spending at the grocery store. I'm trying to keep my family (I live with my parents and do the grocery shopping for the 3 of us) on a $100 per week budget, but I'm thinking I'm going to have trouble staying within those limits with all the holiday baking I plan to do.
This weekend, in addition to the regular groceries, I bought extra sugar (brown and white), eggs, and an extra 2 pounds of butter. This sent me $15 over, even though I bought the store brands and used a coupon for the eggs. I don't like the Aldi in my area (it's a bad neighborhood), and while I shop loss leaders and use coupons when I can, I'm worried about spending too much trying to bake goodies for work and as gifts. Any advice?
Butter is definitely one of the more expensive ingredients for baking, so rich butter cookies and the like will definitely cause an increase in grocery spending.
If you're wanting to go on the cheap with holiday baking for gifts, I highly recommend going the yeast bread route. Even rich yeast breads generally don't require nearly as much butter as quick breads and cookies do, aimply because excessively fatty yeast dough resists rising.
I've found giving loaves of something like Cinnamon Bread to be significantly cheaper than giving cookies or quick breads. Plus, since not a lot of people are good at yeast baking, the recipient is usually thrilled to receive it. It's a nice change from the ubiquitous cookie.
If the yeast option is not possible for you, you could try cutting some other things out of your food budget in November and December to give you some extra money for baking supplies. For instance, maybe you could eat vegetarian meals more often, or have a few more simple soup, salad, and bread meals.
1) How do you get families to agree to draw names?
2) Do you have any good gift suggestions for 20-something couples who don't need house stuff, and you don't see them that often? (These are grown nieces and nephews, but they celebrate all together with my husband's sisters and mom, so it would feel weird to get gifts for only part of those at the celebration.) And I have to mail these, so that precludes a food gift basket or something heavy.
-Jenny
Well, on my side of the family, my older brother suggested it, and none of us had an issue with it. It was a very peaceful decision. 🙂
I guess you have to know your family and decide whether or not this is a suggestion that will go over well.
If you do decide to broach the subject with your family, find a peaceful, neutral time to do it (a time long before Christmas might be good), and just present your case kindly with a list of benefits (we can all save money, we can be less stressed, we can spend more time enjoying each other than shopping).
I really, really like the drawing names thing we do with my siblings. We still have the joy of buying presents for each other, but it's not hard or stressful. Actually, having just one person (well, two since Mr. FG has a present assignment too) makes this process more fun for me. I can pour more time and money into a gift if my gift list is smaller.
As far as your second question goes, I'd suggest gift cards or certificates for restaurants, movie theaters, or music downloads. They're light and small for mailing purposes, and I bet a young couple would appreciate that sort of thing. I know Mr. FG and I would have! Other ideas are a magazine subscription or a subscription to a paid-membership website (like Cook's Illustrated).
We draw names between our adult siblings. We usually have a budget of $50 – $75 per gift. But with 2 on my side and 2 on my husband's side....we're spending $200+ on adult gifts, not to mention the nieces and nephews we buy for! I sew and love to make my gifts, but is there anyway to do this without looking incredibly cheap? After all, they spend $50-$75 on each of us. I don't want my siblings or my husband's siblings dreading that we're the ones who drew their name on any given Christmas!
-Kristen
WilliamB answered this on the post where you left the question, and said exactly what I was going to say! If you think it would go well, I would suggest talking with your siblings to see if they would be ok with putting a cap on the gift spending. Maybe everyone would agree to a $30 cap, or something like that.
Another option is to try to be really smart about your shopping. For instance, if your brother wants a $75 boxed movie set, maybe you could find a new one on half.com for $40. That way the value of the gift is high, even though you didn't spend as much. Thrift store and clearance shopping can yield the same results.
Hopefully your siblings are gracious enough to not be looking at this exchange in a mercenary manner ("We spent $75 on her and I can't believe she only spent $30 on me!"). I know that Mr. FG and I never think about our sibling gift exchange in this way...a gift is a gift, not a financial transaction, and we would never want someone to spend beyond their means to buy us a gift!
On my side of the family, only the adults do a gift exchange, and we don't buy presents for all the nieces and nephews. My siblings and I currently have 11 children between us, with one more coming in the spring, so trying to buy for all the kids is just too overwhelming. Keeping the gift exchange limited to the adults saves us all time, money, and keeps us from being overly stressed.
What do you put in your children's stockings?
-Lisa
That varies some from year to year, but candy is always a big part of what fills their stockings. Other things we sometimes add are drawing supplies, like markers or pencils, fun bath supplies, like fizzers, small toys, jewelry, and hair doo-dads. If I've bought some presents that are small in size, sometimes I'll put them in the stocking instead of wrapping them.
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Readers, what about you? How do you stuff stockings? Do you have cheap baking advice, or gift ideas for young couples? Weigh in!
Today's 365 post: Do you know what these are?
I agree with your advice to cook yeasted breads instead of cookies- they are generally very economical.
I made some saffron buns for a Swedish acquaintance who did me a favour and they were delighted. Admittedly saffron is expensive, but it was only a little bit and they did me a big favour!
We have a colleague of my husbands coming to us on Christmas Day. He is Hungarian and all his family is in Hungary, so we couldn't let him spend Christmas Day by himself in his little flat. Anyway, DD1 and I are going to make poppy seed Beigli http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Beigli-(Hungarian-Poppy-Seed-%26-Walnut-Rolls) Apparently it's the cake in Hungary at Christmas, and we thought it would be a nice surprise for him. The poppy seeds aren't all that cheap, but the rest of the ingredients balance it out.
I'm going to make some of your cinnamon bread for my grandmother. 🙂
Can you get your poppy seeds in the bulk spices section? WAY cheaper than buying the little bottles!
Thanks! Yes, my supermarket does them in packets along with the nuts and dried fruit- much cheaper than the dinky little glass jars!
We do stockings with an upper price limit of 10 GBP (about $15) which is a challange to fill it with things that are not 'tat' but I keep my eyes open all year for special offers or buy multi buys of some things to split between several people. For adults the stockings often include small bottle of wine or bottle of beer, mug, notebook, pen, shower gel and chocolate.
For my son who's 3 this year we have bought a lot of his stocking presents from charity (goodwill) shops so he has books, jigsaws and lego that we couldn't have got for the money new as well as a small car, some chocolate, drawing things, bubble bath and a bag of pasta (he loves pasta and we normally buy the cheap sort which is kind of boring looking, but last year I bought him some novelty shaped pasta which he loved so this year he has train shaped pasta!).
I find it is especially difficult to stick to a small budget for childrens presents without falling into the trap of buying cheap plastic toys that break or get played with for a short time then ignored, so second hand or spending a bigger bit of the budget on a couple of things they really like is the way I go. My son will only have 3 toys in his stocking - a jigsaw, some lego and the little car, and its a really small amount of lego, but I know he will play with all of them a lot and to him a little bit of lego is fine, as he has lots more to put with it.
The lego was actually from a huge bag full we bought at a goodwill shop ages ago in anticipation of him being old enough to play with it. He had had a small amount earlier in the year, we have given him a few bits every day in december in his advent calendar, there are a few bigger bigs in his stocking and we still have plenty left for other gifts / rewards. It is worth considering buying older toys if they are popular when you see them as classics like lego don't seem to appear in charity shops very often.
Hope you have a very Merry Christmas and a peaceful New Year,
We only buy for the kids on both sides of the extended family (no adults except for one special needs adult) and have done it as a gift exchange on one side for several years and will do it on the other side for the first time this year. The one side that's been doing it for awhile was an easy decision but the other was way more complicated. This is my side of the family and it not nieces and nephews but my cousins' children. Those who can afford it buy things for the kids, those who can't, don't. The problem is that one of my aunts has wanted to go the exchange route for years, but the ones with the children (except me) do not usually buy gifts anyway as they do not have the money. It took some complicated politics but I think we got it worked out and we will see how it goes.
My suggestion is that you do it like was mentioned, away from holiday time and also do it early in the year or suggest it for the next year b/c some folks (like me!) shop sales and shop early and have already bought gifts before say Thanksgiving. I ended up giving 5 gifts to our local toy drive since we changed to the exchange at Thanksgiving.
Oh, I'm really excited about today's Q&A, because I feel like I might actually be able to help with it!
To Elizabeth (baking): I buy baking supplies all year long. So when Hershey's chocolate chips are on sale, and/or I have a coupon, you can bet I'm buying 8 bags. When I found chocolate graham cracker crusts on sale for a quarter, I bought 10. For butter, I've found that half butter and half crisco tends to work pretty well, or subbing applesauce (which I'm sure you've heard of before) for part of the fat. Flour goes on sale (and Kristen goes nuts!), but I do freeze it when I get home to avoid the bugs. My dad always makes English muffin bread, which might also be a cheap (I don't think it rises, either) option.
To Jenny (20 year old gifts): My husband and I love magazine subscriptions. We're too cheap to get them for ourselves, but I love getting Us Weekly (yes, I know it's trashy) and Self. I read them at the gym. My husband gets Vegetarian Times every year from my parents. And gift cards to the "fancy" coffee shop.
To Lisa (stockings): My parents always gave us the toiletries we'd need for the next year, all wrapped up - but they might be better brands than we'd usually get (so a bottle of Pantene was fantastic!). I loved getting a new toothbrush every year - there's really nothing quite like that new toothbrush first brushing. The girls got nail polish or one thing of makeup, and my brother got shaving cream. My dad also ALWAYS put in scotch tape, batteries, and those little hand warmer things from LLBean. Everybody got candy and lottery tickets, too (and I always won because I was the sixth one in line to get the ticket, and they win on average every 4.5 or so, and that was always me. My siblings were irked in a funny way). However, my husband told me, quite bluntly, that "toothpaste is not a present", so this is probably something you have to start young.
I wish he'd make me a stocking with toiletries, though... then I wouldn't have to think about them for a while the next year.... perhaps I'll tell him this. 🙂
We have always put toothbrushes in stockings and Easter baskets in my family. The kids love it when I get them the character ones. Which reminds me that I need to pick up a Jessie (from Toy Story) one for my daughters stocking!
I also put toothbrushes and toothpaste deodorant and shower gel in stocking, plus a few goodies
I want to second the advice about suggesting 'drawing names' WAY in advance of Christmas. Nothing annoys me more than someone coming to me just a few short weeks before Christmas and saying "you don't need to buy me anything this year." I do my shopping all year long to take advantage of deals and unique items, as well as to reduce my stress levels in December.
As for the nieces and nephews, I have 9 I would have to buy for and that's a lot! (Not as much as 11 though!) We enjoy giving gifts to them, but so we don't go over budget, all the aunts and uncles decided to split up the children so they all receive presents, but each couple only has 3 to buy for. On the gift tags we write "From your Aunts and Uncles" so they know the gifts are from all of us. It makes it much more manageable and still allows us the fun of watching them open up their gifts!
Here's what we do for a gift-exchange with my in-laws. My husband is one of 6 kids and there are 12 kids between us. Rather than buying gifts of the 17 other people, we do TWO draws: one kids pool and one adults pool. Each kid draws the name of another kid and each adult couple (or single in the case of the kids who have graduated to the adult pool) draws the name for another couple. It works out very well. The limit for the adult gift is $40 and for the kids it's $20. When we get together (week before Christmas - potluck style), each person/couple should have ONE gift. At the end of the evening before everyone leaves, we draw names for the following Christmas so we have one whole year to shop!
Gift certificates for the "graduated" neices and nephews are well received - for movies, dinner out, their favorite store, etc.
As for baking - if you see butter on sale throughout the year, I'd stock up. Butter freezes well!
We used to buy for all our friends children. I wasn't able to address this as I was one of the last to have children, and I didn't want them to think that I had stopped buying because we weren't receiving in return - this wasn't the case. It was actually the logistics (rather than the spending) of buying, wrapping and distributing that was becoming incredibly time consuming (particularly in homes where Santa visits - it was becoming very tricky!). I now do not buy for any friends or their children. I took the bull by the horns two years ago when my second child was born and said to everyone that we wouldn't be exchanging gifts, but if they wanted to we were very happy for them to buy their own children something on our behalf instead of getting our children gifts (this also meant they could get something their child wanted and I wouldn't duplicate). For me this was the best approach as I didn't want to come across incredibly bah humbug (or offend anyone) as for some, gift giving is an important part of Christmas.
This year my brother asked our family about drawing names. He was very gracious in how he asked. This is the gist of what he said: "I'd really like to be able to get nice gifts for all of you, but all I could afford would be a nice chocolate bar." It communicated that he cared about us and wanted to splurge on everybody, but realistically.....and he said it with just a touch of self-deprecating humor. I think it can be a difficult thing to bring up, but he did it very well.
Also, I TOTALLY agree with the earlier post about bringing this up early in the year and not right before the holidays.
Our gift exchange with our family has gotten easier as our grandchildren have grown. We set a dollar limit for each family member and give each person that amount of money. Except for the little ones. (We have three grandchildren, age three and under). We still buy them gifts they are happy with and don't spend a fortune.
Our grandchildren are pleased with money from us because other relatives give them money as well. They collect their "loot" and purchase the "gift I really want" after Christmas. Also, our children and their spouses appreciate money of their own at Christmas time.
Baking was a joint-family-affair this year. My two daughters and I set aside last Friday to bake cookies together. We baked 8 different kinds between us. Most of the cookies have been given away to friends and also at places of employment. I purchase in bulk the ingredients, beginning in September.
Holiday decorations are simple. A small tree, decorations we have had for years. This year was simplified even more as I did not use all the decorations we have (No rule that says you have to). We tried to keep the central theme the birth of Christ. An XM radio (gift from my son several years ago) plays beautiful Christmas music all day. We are blessed.
Thanks for everyone's input on the 20-something gifts. We did end up getting them gift cards to stores their parents suggested. I really dislike buying gift cards to chain stores since I would much rather support local merchants, but we sucked it up and did it since we don't know what local stores are available where they live! (And we were running out of time.) I did pretty well keeping my spending in line with my budget AND my values this year, except for those.
Michelle, I loved your brother's tactic. Seems like no one could be offended by that comment!
Growing up I always got at least some school supplies in my stocking and a big orange so we've tried to continue the trend of the stocking having only some candy and mostly little practical things. My girls like to draw so there's always some kind of cute pens and notepads available. I also do hair accessories. We've also developed a family tradition of socks. It's kind of nice to get new socks just as the cold weather sets in. We also put chestnuts in the stocking and everyone puts theirs into a big cast iron skillet and we roast them later in the day.
I appreciate the comments about yeast bread. I was going to make cookies but I think now I will switch to festive breads for some things. Thanks!
You are so right that yeast breads go over well with those who may not even know how to turn on their ovens (Yes, I know quite a few people like that!) One Thanksgiving at my house, my sister-in-law actually "stole" the extra braided bread loaf I had baked. She said I could always make more....and I did, That's what she got for Christmas! 😉
To Elizabeth-
if you are making baked goods as gifts, then the extra grocery expence should come from you gift budget instead of your grocery budget.
I've carried on the stocking tradition I had when I was a kid. Little boxes of sugary cereal. Fruit, usually apples or oranges maybe some candy or candy canes. This year I will add pop tarts. Basically junky food that my kids are not allowed to eat on regular basis. I also love the presidential dollar coins so will add that. The hubby will get a bottle of Bailey's. I love the same thing every year. I so look forward to stockings. All the regulars that you only get on Christmas morn and a little surprise too!
I save on my Christmas budget by shopping year round for gifts. I'm always on the lookout for hints and ideas when I'm around our family. I keep them on a spreadsheet (yes I'm a geek.) When I see the item or something I know the person would like (like my Lego maniac nephew) goes on sale, I buy it right then and there and indicate it on my spreadsheet. By the time December rolls around I have a big chunk of my shopping done.)
Sometimes I do a family gift of a zoo membership,etc. if I know the family will use it.
My husband is one of four kids, and our first Christmas was VERY expensive. We ended up asking to both lower the cost per gift from $50+ to $25, and last year my mother-in-law suggested we switch to a gift exchange among the siblings (apparently my in-law siblings were feeling squeezed, too!). The gift exchange has worked beautifully. We don't pick names, as there's only the four of us, and hubby and I count ourselves as one unit, since we're the only married ones. We do this:
1 buys for 2
2 buys for 3
3 buys for 4
4 buys for 1
Next year:
1 buys for 3
2 buys for 4
3 buys for 1
4 buys for 2
And it cycles through, so every year we know who we're buying for all year in case we see something that person would like in the middle of July.
On my side, it's not as formal, but used gifts (used books, movies and music handed from giver to givee that giver knows givee has been lusting after, etc.) are much more acceptable, so my budget of $15 for each of 2 siblings goes a lot farther than it does for my in-laws!
We're the only family with any kids, and we only have 1, so both families and all siblings tend to give our son gifts. However, usually several people go in together on one gift, so it's not present overload and it doesn't break the bank for the givers. I really like that option, since we don't have a lot of room for tons of toys, and our son is only 2 - he's completely happy with some new track for his Thomas set or a box of brand new crayons and colored paper!
Mrs. Frugal Girl, I love keeping up with your budgeting and money saving tips. I was wondering how the rest of your budget looks each month, besides groceries. What do you put aside for things like Goodwill shopping, clothing, and entertainment? My husband and I are trying to cut costs and I was just curious ways you have fit other items into your budget. Thanks! Merry Christmas!
On my mom's side of the family we have done a drawing since, well I can't remember, I think always! There are just way too many of us! We do a kid pool ($25) and an adult pool ($75) and even though I am 30 and married I can still choose whether or not I want to be an 'adult' or a 'kid' or not participate at all that specific year. We usually pick names some time in September or October so we have some time to get good deals.
On my step-dad's side of the family we do a Yankee Giveaway - where everyone brings a $30 gift and we all pick a number. Number One picks a gift, Number Two can pick a gift or steal, and so on until all gifts have been stolen three times or the last gift under the tree has been picked.
Now, I can't say that everyone is my family would agree with me, but I consider that gift price a 'value' not the actual amount of money I need to spend. For instance, one of my Yankee gifts this year, which needed to be a $30 gift, only cost me $9 out of pocket! And that was mostly thanks to some great internet sales a few months back where I managed to get $24 worth of that gift for $3!!!
So anyway, that's my two cents about the whole Christmas gift-giving thing!
I do a lot of baking at christmas time. What I tend to do is buy my flour and sugars all year. I put the bags in gallon sized ziplocks and store them. Butter freezes well and when I can find it on sale I buy a couple of boxes and also put those in ziplocks and freeze. I also like to make cookies from cake mixes. I can usually find the cake mixes on sale for less than $1 each and I just store them.
My biggest expense when it comes to holiday baking once I get to that point in the year is usually the veggie oil and eggs. Since I stock up all year on everything else. But then I am a little OCD and make my planned baking list the year before. So I know what to buy when it goes on sale through out the year.
I've only skimmed the replies so hopefully I'm not repeating anything.....
I had a thought about Elizabeth's question: If you're new to budgeting (I'm making this assumption since you said that you were starting to pay attention to grocery spending), then don't forget that you're making gifts. For the type of budgeting that I do, since the baked goods are gifts, I would categorize the increased cost of the groceries used for the baking under "gifts" instead of "groceries."
If you follow Kristen's suggestion of using yeast breads instead of butter based recipes, then your gift budget should have more room and your grocery budget should be the right on target.
Another way to keep yeast bread recipe costs down (besides buying ingredients on sale) is to use a sourdough starter with a recipe that doesn't use any additional yeast. Sourdough does takes a little planning, though, since you'll need to grow the culture and might need to let the bread dough sit overnight. For the bakers in your life, you can always give the sourdough starter as a gift, too (I'm doing that for one friend this year).
For Kristen who doesn't want to spend so much even with the gift exchange, see if your families would be willing to treat you as a couple (1 exchanger) instead of as two separate people. That way you would still give and still receive but for fewer people which would save some money but keep the fun and hopefully not hurt any feelings.
I liken Christmas stockings to birthday party loot bags - over-excessive, over-expensive, and over-hyped.
Now that my 4 children are almost grown, the youngest is 16, I put my foot down this year and declared that there would be no more stockings filled at Christmas. In hindsight, if I had to do it all over, I would not have done the stocking thing at all.... please don't this too negatively, but, years ago, the stocking was the wrapping paper for the gifts ( a more frugal and ecologically-minded generation). Now we somehow feel compelled to provide a stocking AND a bunch of presents under the tree! Too much!
We are not doing our children service. Money allocated to stockings would be better used to feed the hungry. I wonder how many children died of starvation in the time that it took me to write this comment.
Our children ( and ourselves) have far too much already.
By the way, I've blown my Christmas budget again this year. (Just so you know.)
I love drawing names for Christmas. It allows me to shop for something special, and not have a crazy Christmas budget! In my husbands family this year we have 3 draws, one for the men, one for the women and one for the kids. I love that I will be buying a female gift this year and not trying to figure out what to get for one of the guys! We drew names at Thanksgiving, but in Canada that is the second week of
October, so it gives you a bit of time to plan! We have a budget of $40, which allows us to purchase something nice, without completely breaking the bank. We do have a NO cash, no GIFT CARD rule, to "encourage" people to really consider what the recipient would appreciate as a gift! I'm personally not a big fan of gift cards, I have a hard time remembering to use them, sometimes I have had to visit a store I don't usually go to just to use them up, and if they are for a smaller amount of money I end up spending extra just to get something I like, which may not be good for the budget!
In my family we don't exchange gifts for the adults, but we do buy for all the kids, as there aren't that many yet! We don't set limits, but it is usually reasonable, and sometimes people pool their resources to get a larger item. The adults decided two years ago to do a games night on Christmas Eve (when we celebrate) instead of adult gifts, so after the kids have opened gifts we play board games. It is wonderful! We laugh and smile and enjoy spending time together... what I feel the holidays should be about! We have found some amazingly fun games this way and I can't wait to see what this year's favourite game will be! (Quelf, and Settlers of Catan are the top picks from the last two years, just in case you were wondering!) We don't miss the gift giving and receiving as we are too busy enjoying being together!
Merry Christmas to you all!
A great deal of people are living with their parents. The ones that are not are telling me they cannot afford food or can bake. Expenses exceed income now a days. I am wondering what is the best gift anyone ever got that is frugal too? I would say my free tv set that has lasted and lasted.
I have to share this since it was very frugal and fun! This year my group at the theatre wanted to do a secret santa. I thought about buying yet another cheap box of chocolates and I thought there had to be a better way. So, I had an idea that we could each draw names and then draw an activity that we would perform for our special person. We kept it a secret who we had and what we had to do, and then had a wonderful performance where each person called up their recipient and sang a song, recited a poem, or did a dance etc.. It was very funny for all and the love that was put into the gifts was PRICELESS. Just a thought for upcoming family gatherings. Merry Christmas!
I've enjoyed reading the other comments as much as the post today! I like the idea of a no cash and no gift card rule for the gift exchange. It seems like to me, if you're just giving someone cash, you both might as well not participate. You could just each keep your own money, rather than switch dollar bills between you. I have three teenage children, and I actually let them know this year, that I thought it was rude to ask for those items in a GIFT exchange. In my opinion, a gift exchange is supposed to have thought for the other person put into it. However, I might be weird as I love really putting thought into gifts. Maybe too much, since my husband seems to get impatient with me, when I'm researching and comparing gift ideas! Lol
Stockings in my family growing up were unique, as far as I can tell. From the day we put them up (usually sometime right after Thanksgiving) until the 24th there was something small in our stocking each morning like a Hershey's Kiss or other small candy or some small hair thing, school supply that was unique or other small fun thing. Come Christmas morning, it was presents under the tree only and not gifts in the stocking. I don't think I even knew there was another way to do it until I was an adult and even as a teenager I remember enjoying a little treat each morning since those things were unusual in the normal course of our life.
I continued it with my kids and they are always clamoring to get to their stocking in the morning for their small candy cane, little car, chapstick or other small thing. I shop throughout the year, buy packs of things on clearance and always end up with cheap little things along with the cheap candy. We have four kids ages 4-9 and they still love it and hopefully with continue to enjoy the daily treat! We tie it into our advent celebration (do our advent activity, then they get to open the stocking), but that is optional of course.