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Then we started giving them choices - "Santa" could come early and they'd have a pile of gifts under the tree as they arrived, or they could wake up Christmas morning to the stuff. They chose (like we did in my house - like their Grandma still does) the first, so now life is easy for me. I put up a tree and wrap the presents as they come in and put them under the tree. No hiding gifts.
This is one area where DH and I still disagree, and I have to admit that last year we had a HUGE debacle with DS and his Asperger's over this. Let's just say that eliminating the morning surprise doesn't always eliminate the drama.
I grew up with the gifts being THE Christmas decor. We do the traditional holiday season, the 12 days, so we do not put up the tree until the first day of Christmas -- Christmas Eve. The only "Christmassy" thing we had in the house up until that point were the gifts, piled artfully in a corner.
I had always preferred to do this, mostly because I make a big deal out of making the wrapping on each gift a work of art, and it just kills me that no one gets to see the hard work I put in on that. DH felt that putting out the gifts with children in the house was a cruel thing to do; letting them see them but insisting that they could not touch. (Personally I don't mind if they touch to try to guess, as I think that's half the fun of Christmas, but DH *hates* the idea of anyone guessing what a gift is, or peeking.)
Last year, when DS was 11, DH finally caved and said that we could put the gifts out a week or so early, but insisted that I NOT put tags on them yet, so that the kids wouldn't know which were which, to try to ward off guessing and peeking. Too bad he didn't take the time to properly explain that to DS. DS was upstairs studying, and happened to go downstairs to use the bathroom right after I had put the gifts out. I had told DS that I was putting them out for display early, but I didn't think to tell him that under no circumstances was he to open them; I mistakenly assumed that at age 11 he would know that. Ten minutes later, DH came into the room to discover DS methodically ripping the wrapping off of every gift, and he had unerringly managed to go first to the ones that were his. (He said that he had to open all of them because there were no tags on any of them.)
I was down in the basement putting some things away, and I just bolted upstairs when I heard hysterical shrieking. When DH found DS in that pile of paper, he went off on him like a Roman candle, took every package away, and swore that Christmas was cancelled and that they were ALL going back to the stores. He meant it, too -- to DH. peeking is a capital offense. DS was just wailing, partly over losing Christmas, but more because his Dad was screaming at him. The truth is that I was pretty furious with him, too, because the wrapping of those gifts represented a fair amount of money and about 30 hours of work, and he had ripped up gifts that were not even being given to family members.
Once he finally calmed down enough to be understood, DS' explanation was that for his entire life, he had been allowed to open gifts on the day that they appeared, and why would this year be different? The gifts were there, therefore he thought they were fair game. I think that he was being somewhat disingenuous, because he was still in school, so it obviously was not Christmas yet, but he did have something of a point -- we changed horses midstream without taking sufficient time to prepare him and fully explain, and we did bear some responsibility for that.
DH, of course, insisted on carrying out his threat part way. He returned every gift that had been opened and bought something different, and I ended up spending the entire week before Christmas staying up until 2 am every night re-wrapping everything.
I will remember that as this is probably the year they all cross over. 
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