Mom Details How She Handles Christmas with 8 Kids — and Why They 'Don't Do Santa Claus' (Exclusive)
Mercedes Lynn explains her Christmas routine with her eight kids, including five presents apiece and zero visits from St. Nick
Mercedes Lynn explains her Christmas routine with her eight kids, including five presents apiece and zero visits from St. Nick Mercedes Lynn/TikTok; Getty Mercedes Lynn explaining her Christmas plans; a stock image of stockings on a mantel:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():format(jpeg)/christmas-with-8-kids-tout-120624-2ebd4e8439624b809de02fed2750b4d3.jpg "christmas with eight kids no santa. Mercedes Lynn")
One mom on TikTok is sharing how she handles Christmas with her eight children — and why she and her family “do not do Santa Claus.”
“On Christmas Eve, each of our kids gets to open four presents,” Mercedes Lynn says at the start of her video, which has now been viewed more than 490,000 times. “They get one new book, one new outfit, and two presents that are just fun things — either a toy, a game, something fun that they wanted.”
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“Christmas Day they get to open what’s in their stockings and at the bottom of their stocking there will be a small little piece of wrapping paper. And then they take that piece of wrapping paper and match it to a present under the tree because they each get one present on Christmas morning,” she continues.
Lynn says she grew up doing the wrapping paper in the stocking bit, and that the system's goal was to “help keep things fair and not chaotic.”
Organizing a holiday celebration for eight children is a feat few parents can pull off easily, but it seems the issue most commenters have with Lynn’s approach is actually the absence of Santa Claus.
“You lost me at no santa,” one commenter writes, while another pipes in, “my kids loved the magic of Santa!!!” Getty A stock image of Christmas presents
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“We used to do Santa when my oldest few kids were little, but as they grew, and we had more kids, we just felt convicted about trying to keep up the lie,” Lynn tells PEOPLE. “We would lie, and then we would have to lie again to cover up that lie. It put us in a bad position, and as Christians, we wanted to make sure our kids had the right focus.”
Knowing Santa Claus isn’t real also isn’t schoolground gossip for her kids to spill to their friends, Lynn says, since many of their friends’ families “feel similar to how we do.”
“With most of our kids being homeschooled, we really don't have to worry too much about them ‘spoiling’ it for other kids,” she says.
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The single present on Christmas morning is what Lynn calls each child's “special” gift, though she clarifies in the video, “that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s their most expensive one.”
“It’s just something that means the most to them or something that they really, really wanted, you know, trying to make it special,” she explains in the video.
“The stockings and one ‘big’ present on Christmas morning is something my kids really look forward to,” Lynn says to PEOPLE, calling the routine a “fun tradition” for her family.
