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What we do does involve gifts, but that's not all. Christmas eve we give the first gift and it's always pajamas (the big kids love to roll thier eyes and say "gee I wonder what it is") the kids and adults all go put on thier pajamas. Then We do the kids gifts to everyone. These ae either home made, or bought at the school gift thing they do or from the dollar store. the pick out each gift and they wrap it! (love some of those little kids wrapping jobs with half a roll of tape and gift still falls out!) Anyway, we have a whole bunch of Christmas books we have collected over the years. We read a book and then do the youngest child and then read a book and then do the next child, etc. We always end with "Twas the night before Christmas" and the Bible. While dad is reading, I bring in hot cookies and hot chocolate (with candy canes to stir it!) The kids love thier turns to hand out the gifts and because they have recieved no big gifts yet, they appreciate the smaller ones. It's really gotten the kids excited about the giving aspect as we make a huge deal over each gift. Now all this is usually after church. Before church we do an international meal. Since we have kids adopted from Poland and Russia, we order food from those places, and last year my neices who are half Mexican were living with us so we had enchiladas, and then we had French bread to celebrate the Frence ansestory of our family, as well as Latkas for the Jewish part and we had something Irish too, I just can't remember what. (not beer!) Anyway, the older kids all helped with the cooking and we talked about where the different foods came from. Everyone started out with just a bite on thier plates of each thing and then after the sampling they could eat more of what they liked. It was a lot of fun and a fun way to celebrate all the nationalities we have.
You can also do a gift exchange with ornaments. We do that with a group of friends. Just one ornament wrapped. (or sometimes you can do white elephant, which is fun) and then everyone draws a number and the person who draws number one takes a gift and opens it and shows it to everyone. The person who has number two can either steal number one's gift or take another. Each gift can only be stolen twice so the third person to get it gets to keep it, it's then safe. We have had a lot of fun doing this even with kids involved.
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