All the shopping is done for Christmas for me so I've had to find some pretty good hiding spots. Where are all yours hidden?

My son is very curious and more aware this year of I have some under a pile of jumpers and sloppy joes in the top of my wardrobe, a bag is hidden just inside the ceiling and another is in an old fridge used for storage down in the shed. I just don't trust him not to go snooping .. it's like a game of cat and mouse.

Have you got any good present hiding stories?

I keep mine in my wardrobe. My son and husband stay out of there and my daughter is to young to know yet about Christmas.

My sister uses the shed at mum's house as her kids are older than mine. I think I will have to try that one soon (and more for my husband's gifts than the kid's).

Does he still believe in Santa? If he is searching then presumably he doesn't, or isn't sure.

When my children were young I was still with my ex and I had a sewing room which locked so all presents went into that room which is one they never went anyway as I always kept it locked - it was between their two bedrooms and I didn't want them messing with my stuff.

I just took them all next door (not the answer for you Jill, you would meet yourself coming back, around Easter I guess.) But the next door neighbours just delivered them in the night. Easy.

One year one of our neighbours got us to look after the new bike for their seven/eight year old. His parents came to collect it Christmas Eve after the children were all in bed and the man was late and said they had a terrible time with the boy as someone in school had told him there was no Santa and the kid was bereft, thought that his letter asking for a bike would be ignored. He didn't know whether to believe the boys or his parents, he wanted to believe because he wanted the bike!

To this day, I don't know where Mum and Dad hid my presents when I was little. Maybe at my Aunt's down the road Our old neighbours used to hide presents in our house - usually on top of the wardrobes - and we also had a bike stored in our shed until Christmas Eve. Like others mentioned, they waited until the little boy and their daughter were in bed, and then came to collect the presents. These days, the presents are still stored in the wardrobe, but no surprises any more
As much as I love Christmas, I can't remember going "present searching" when I was little. When presents were placed under the tree, I might feel them, and have a guess what it was, but never open them until Christmas itself.

I have an armoire where I normally keep all of my work-related stuff. During the holidays, I hide gifts in there, stuffed amongst papers and files. My son knows The Truth, but my daughter is blissfully unaware!

In my closet. Everyone knows that presents hide there, and so everyone stays out, because otherwise the surprise would be ruined. When the kids were so little that they couldn't 'get' that concept, they also weren't ever left unsupervised long enough to hunt for presents.

Although my kids did believe in Santa, they knew that most presents at Christmas came from "people" - mom and dad, aunties and grandparents. I come from the Germanic tradition, where Christmas is celebrated on Christmas Eve, while my husband followed the more common Christmas morning tradition. We dealt with this by allowing the kids to open one present on Christmas Eve. It felt more like home to me that way, and it cut the anticipation down to manageable levels.

Ah, my parents never let us open just one on Christmas Eve, despite my dad always saying 'Maybe this year...' He still says it, and my brother who is 18 now, still goes "Wow, really?!" and then is disappointed when my mom says "no, no, wait for tomorrow!"

I never figured out where they were hiding presents, either. Probably at their offices for awhile (my mom often does shopping on her lunch hour but then doesn't want to bring a lot of stuff home on the bus), or in the trunk of the car or something.. BUT when we were little and in school all the time, they always had Remembrance Day off, and did a huge chunk of the shopping for us on that day, so I assume they brought the gifts home and put them somwhere. Don't know where though, and my brother is like Sherlock Holmes when it comes to hidden stuff that he wants, and never found anything. I never recall going looking myself though.

And even after neither of us believed in Santa (in retrospect my mom was never that great at the Santa thing - Santa seemed to leave price tags from Zellers on a lot of gifts and "oh, Santa already put his milk and cookie dishes in the dishwasher..."), she still didn't wrap and put the gifts under the tree until late on Christmas Eve, until the last couple of years when we've been going to bed way later than she does. Now I think she hides a few things at a time, wraps them sooner and they go under the tree. I do the same things with gifts I buy for the family, pretty much wrap them right away, or if I have to store them for a couple of days, I just put them in a bag in the corner of my room. The room is a huge mess, no one goes in there, lol.

When I was small my mother found me in her bedroom playing with mys sister's Christmas present which I found in the bottom of the wardrobe!

My sister and I found our Doctors Kits in the top of my Grans cupboard (she lived with us) when we were little. We used to take them out and play with them, then pack them up and put them back.

I always hide them in my cupboard but I have been told my kids often went and found them. Well they only spoilt their own suprise.

Yes, I think he still believes in Santa. Not long now and his belief will be gone His cousin who is 2 years older than him is already starting to tell him that Santa isn't real. Luckily, he doesn't listen much to what she says.

I have just spent the last 3 hours wrapping the Christmas presents for this year (including one for myself) while my son is at Nanna's house and husband was asleep after having a few too many at the work Christmas 'do' this afternoon.

Now to get the tree up...

After my daughter found out I bribed her each year not to tell her younger brother. I think she was quite sad when someone told him the truth.

I stopped believing the first year that I would have known that he was supposed to exist, probably at about three. We went to my grandmother's home for a party and the only fireplace was in the room in which we were sitting and Santa came through the door to the room. I asked an adult how he had got in and was told that he came down the stovepipe in the kitchen. I went and looked at it and there was no way anyone could fit down there. Also he was in different shops in town, no one thought to tell me they were Santa's helpers so logic told me it was a load of old tosh. Also as I have already said, I found my sister's present in my parents' wardrobe then she received it at Christmas so it wasn't brought down any chimney. I was quite happy to visit them in shops though and get my gift each year.

I used to be annoyed with my ex, he really ruined Christmas for me when the kids were young, apart from all the rows about our different ideas as to how it ought to be he even refused to leave the fire unlit on Christmas Eve so Santa could come to visit my kids. Mean thing.

I'll have to keep that in mind for the next few years I think...

The best idea I have heard is that you tell them when they ask, that he will come as long as you believe in him. When you stop, then your parents take over. Seems to work quite well.

I started wondering if Santa existed the year that I was too afraid to tell him what I wanted to his face, but I wrote a letter, without my mom knowing, and I didn't get anything I wanted. It was confirmed a few years later when we found where the presents were hidden, my brother was looking through the dirty clothes hamper for a certain shirt and there were all of our presents.

My son just recently stopped believing, he so did not want to stop, he kept insisting he heard the sleigh bells and Santa saying "Ho, Ho, Ho" outside (of course he did, it was me underneath his bedroom window, I knew he was still awake). When his friend who is a couple of years younger told him it wasn't true, he looked at me and I could see he was trying so hard not to cry.

Now he has turned into a little booger about the presents (I hate that I can't say "Let's see if Santa gets it for you" anymore) he told me yesterday that he knows some of the things his grandparents have bought for him, he has been reading the receipts that my mom's husband leave under his wallet in the kitchen.

I gotta tell ya, I have googled everyone's physical address, and if you don't email me within the next five days with intentions of payment to me of $50 US dollars, I am going to overnight express delivery your hiding places to all your children. Sorry, but times are tough right now.

Living up to your name Nightmare?

My boyfriend has a son and is having a bad year. So this year I'm surprising them both with the Santa that is only supposed to be going to the child's mothers house. Every other year Santa came to both houses so I can't stand to think the very last year he will likely believe, is the one year that Santa won't come here. So I've been hiding some in places they won't look, for example the cupboard with the glass cleaner and toilet cleaner and rags to wash the floors. And bigger things at my grandma's old house.

My mom told me as I got older that she used the trunks of their cars.

My mom also threatened my brother and then me as I got older that if we ever didn't "believe" or ever stated that Santa may not exist that we would not get gifts at all. And up until I had this potential stepson I still had received gifts from Santa and it only stopped then because I needed someone else to sign his name so we wouldn't get caught by the handwriting on the gift tags. (that was how I found out, was rather odd that him and my mother had the exact same writing)

But it's fairly easy for me to hide the gifts since the boy is only here part-time so we are always here with him and my boyfriend hasn't a clue what I'm up to so isn't even looking.