Just stop all this crap buying?

Yep, half a lump of coal and a shot of espresso.

Good grief.

I love Christmas and why not cheer up mid winter with gifts and feasts. I understand the plastic tat sentiment and most people have dialled that back, but buying sweets, chocolate, good quality bath products and items that can be used through the year, saving the recipients money (as they don’t need to buy their own) is lovely. I’m not ready to cancel Christmas just yet!

So what is your suggestion? Complete austerity? A lump of coal?

Seriously, I bloody hate mindless consumerism - I agree about the landfill issue and supply chain impacts. The world is an environmental dumpster fire.

BUT;

I think that the world needs a respite from being a terminal shit show from a social perspective..

Your post comes across as sad, tired. Solution less. How do we balance social and environmental priorities?

This is a genuine question.

You buy what you want... then we both have to share the same plastic-saturated, landfill-choked, ocean-poisoned planet.

I despise seasonal tat. I refuse to be called miserable and joyless about it, too. Hope for a cleaner, calmer world is my biggest joy, and the sooner the tat-buying stops, the closer we all get to it.

We definitely need to suck out all of the Christmas feelz, to match the rest of the years shit.

Why do they need Christmas pjs?

Don't buy tat yourself.
Silently judge away.
Don't rant publicly about people enjoying the festive season.
Don't be a misery guts.
Mind your own business.

Rules to live by.

The world is a miserable shithole. A little joy can't hurt.

You're right OP, its bad for the struggling environment and its not great for kids to have so much shit. But you will get called a Scrooge because apparently living in a world that is full of plastic tat is more important than all the microplastics in our brains.

How does consuming vast quantities of plastic tat purchased from Temu, Shein, et al drive the economy?

Who's we?

I do hope you're an equal opportunities disrespecter of all world religions OP, not just Christianity.

Just because of a fairytale about a virgin birth sometime in December possibly the whole countries been brainwashed for years,into thinking people have got to have presents and secret santas and lucky díps etc?

Most of it's pagan/midwinter etc. not Jesus. Evergreeens, candles, food, we need cheering up in the middle of winter. Almost every cold country has a midwinter feast. No tat needed though! We don't do boxes and pyjamas and crap. Just lovely food, same decorations as last year and friends and family.

I think it’s sad because Christmas can be so nice without all the tat. Choosing one decoration a year to put on the tree is lovely and it builds up which is nice. The rest of it I just don’t get, special curtains and cushion covers and whatnot just for December? Not for me.

Everyone has too much money. I think we should tax them more.

Dickens said it better:-
Merry Christmas! Out upon merry Christmas! What's Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, but not an hour richer; a time for balancing your books and having every item in 'em through a round dozen of months presented dead against you? If I could work my will," said Scrooge indignantly, "every idiot who goes about with 'Merry Christmas' on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He should!"

I absolutely agree.

We don't need it. The people we're giving it to don't want it usually and wouldn't spend the money on it by their choice. We can't afford it and it is causing environmental degradation to countries poorer than ours.

Your Christmas tat is making someone else's life somewhere else more miserable by the chemicals/byproducts of it's production and also by being dumped elsewhere at the end of it's short life - so happy Christmas to them eh?

We do Christmas Eve boxes but it’s literally just some Christmas pjs and socks to put on, nothing major. Also do the breakfast on Christmas Eve morning but it’s snowman and Santa Claus pancakes so doesn’t take massive effort nor expense. Just small traditions we’ve done since they were toddlers, now the older DC are teens and they still expect it!

I mean I kind of agree about the tat and don’t like getting it or buying it on a personal level.
I’m not sure you can dictate that on a global level though because some people do enjoy it.
Also, if people didn’t push the boat out at Christmas wouldn’t the economy suffer?

But consume, consume, consume is what drives the economy! Growth is what we desperately need right now!

Agree OP. I also don’t see the need for elves, Christmas Eve boxes, reindeer breakfasts, etc
When I was a child we were excited to open a window on an advent calendar to see what the picture was!

As a Christian I have to disagree. It’s not all about consumerism for everyone.

Agree, I have said to some people let's stop buying for each other any it's gone down fine.

I'm with you OP, can't stand all the mindless consumption and waste of Christmas. Martin Lewis has it spot on about the pointless tit-for-tat giving.