What goes in a Christmas Eve box

The four that do the work

Almost every good box is a version of the same four. Everything beyond them is decoration, and decoration is what makes a box expensive without making the evening better.

• ·Pyjamas — the signal that the evening has started
• ·Something to eat: hot chocolate, a candy cane, something to leave out for Santa
• ·Something to do quietly: a book, a puzzle, a card game
• ·Something to watch, so the last hour has an obvious shape

Leave the loud toy out

A new toy in the Christmas Eve box competes with Christmas morning and rarely wins. Worse, it is the thing a child then wants to keep playing with at nine at night.

The box works when it points at bedtime. Anything that points away from bedtime belongs under the tree instead.

Where a Santa video fits

If you have a personalized message from Santa, the box is the natural place for it: a card with the link tucked in with the pyjamas, watched once, together, before anything else is opened.

It sits well there because it is the one item in the box that is genuinely about your child rather than about Christmas in general — and because watching something is a settling activity rather than an exciting one.

Keep the box itself

A wooden or fabric box that comes out every year becomes part of the tradition in a way a printed cardboard one does not. Children remember the object.

It also quietly caps the cost. A box that has to be filled every year is a box you will be tempted to fill more expensively each time; a fixed-size one you already own is not.