Magazine says it's 'vulgar' for people to open presents on Christmas morning

Christmas morning means one thing and one thing only: a panicky wake-up from your kids/partner/an alarm you excitedly set for yourself the night before. Then, a few mumbles of 'happy Christmas' to everyone else in the house before a deep dive under the tree to commence present time.

That's how Christmas morning goes in my house, and the houses of a lot of others I know.

After having waited 364 days for an hour of non-stop gifting, we're only human for wanting to jump into it first thing.

This lack of self control, however, is seen by etiquette experts as 'vulgar'.

Journalist Sophia Money-Coutts wrote for the 2014 print issue of Tatler magazine, "Are you one of those families who open their presents before breakfast on Christmas Day? Oh dear. That's considered a bit vulgar and unbridled. Sorry, we didn't make the rules, it just is."

The gifts in stockings, she writes, are fair game before breakfast begins. But for the others, "it is generally considered more acceptable to wait until that lull between the morning church service and lunch".

In fact, if you want to go ahead and appear really high society, you should wait until after lunch.

"If you're very grand, you may even wait until after lunch and a bracing walk, but this also requires you to have children with the self-control of an ancient yogi," Money-Coutts writes.

Look, waiting until after lunch is all well and good for etiquette experts but I'll give it a pass. Happy to be considered a lowly peasant if it means I get to tear into pressies at 7am Christmas morn.