What does a middle class Christmas look like?!

[Petitepenguin]

Just wondering if the cost of living is changing things ... I'm not mc but live in London. My most mc friends spend xmas in London up to xmas eve & head to Norfolk for xmas day & the following days. Then head off skiing to France the day before new year's.. Their run up to xmas with the kids is super busy too filled with carol services, Christmas events & art workshops. It looks idyllic.

Small kids dive in at 5.00 am; that's understandable. Adults wait to share opening gifts until most of the party are present to share the moment.

That is UC. I am MC and always have been and Christmas is always spent at home with family.

But you dont put your tree up until Christmas Eve and take it down on the 12th night and no one rushes to open gifts. Everyone has to be there and then one of the children play Father Christmas and give the gifts out

I don't know..we are MC I think, both have professional jobs. Definitely no second homes or skiing holiday! Have some turkey and go to church!

It's a great notion Funny, but the G C are too young to read this year.

People just differ. we often ski but not this year although one of my children and her children are skiing over Christmas. Church. Choirs. All these things feature but it just depends on the family.
Our tree goes up on 14th and is down on Epiphany, 6 Jan, not earlier.

I always thought the working class tended to spend more than middle and upper class at Christmas in terms of cost and number of presents actually!

I know a couple who earn tons trading oil...they rent a luxury barn for xmas and new year...have mountains of expensive gifts...walk the dog....posh breakfast...get changed for lunch and dinner etc..country pubs and then go skiing also....they buy me a mountain of expensive useless tat each year which goes straight to local food bank to give away....

Surely most of the time people just travel to visit family. Naice people I know seem to travel on to somewhere fun for the New year but xmas is surely just about family. All our family lives in London so we usually have one or two activity a weekend for the whole of December - carols, lights, national gallery xmas things, a play but then spend xmas itself with my parents just chilling out. It's nice as they do live in the centre so we can enjoy a bit more of the central london xmas vibe. Never been skiing at xmas - not sure I'd trust the weather, Feb half term yes, Xmas wouldnt bet on most of the European slopes having snow

I don't care what class you are, but who makes their kids wait till the afternoon to open presents?! 😲

I'm a teacher, so moved up into the middle classes. I married beneath me though and my kids go to the local bog standard. Think I'm a bit like Paul Morrell's mother.

Xmas is: work like an absolute twat until the last day. No films. You are not a children's entertainer.

Catch the ill that everyone else had a week off with, on the 2nd to last day.
Do fuck all with your kids cos you're knackered, sick of teenagers and wish you'd become a hermit in someone's folly.
Drink too much, then spend 3 months trying to lose 2 weeks of indulgence.

What job do you do where you have to work from home on Christmas Day?!

Lots of Carol concerts/events at both kids’ Sussex private schools in the run up to Christmas, some drinks parties, two lunches in London lined up, Christmas Day at the in-laws (just ordered the pudding from Fortnums) with a family quiz between courses, I’m off to the house in Cornwall on Boxing Day then when DH and DS’s have been pheasant shooting on the FILs estate they will join me. We’ve booked St. Petrocs for lunch and a day’s golf. There you are, I am a walking cliche.

other than the ski-ing it sounds quite standard MC I spose. We pretty always go to my family in the shires for Christmas. It is nice.

Are you trying to write a news story?

I do?! and we did when we were kids.. 1 present in the AM and then the rest after dinner. Maybe 2 in the morning for little ones. I don’t think it’s THAT unusual.

🤣🤣🤣 The barbour🤭 sounds lovely though all the same!

My parents did this - 1970s/80s. We weren’t allowed to open any presents until 5pm on Christmas Day. We had church, then a late lunch (2ish), and then presents after that had been eaten and cleared away,
Sometimes we weren’t even allowed to open them all on Christmas Day and had to keep some back for the next few days.

Not a middle class household. We were very poor indeed but got lots of small presents from distant relatives. I think the idea was to spread the pleasure over several days because it would be another year until there would be anything new. As a child it was torture. Christmas Day was the longest, dullest day imaginable.

👐🏼

So if going to Norfolk to stay with their parents for Xmas day is middle class that puts them in the same bracket as me, Kate and William.

Mind you, I'm ten mile away from mine, 2 mile over the border in Suffolk and not up north where the poncey foreigners live 😁 but I int going down London for Xmas eve.

I think people up the social scale don’t start Christmas too early. Barely any of my posh friends have started Christmas shopping yet and I’ve been nearly done for a few weeks.

They also always seem to have hundreds of extended family members or friends arriving at some point over Christmas Day . Not stuck in with immediate family.

We are upper MC hubby has a high earning job.

We have a fairly normal Christmas family over but tradition is we always go away skiing to France on Boxing Day till just after new years we come back around 2nd Dec we have a place there

We live just outside London we commute but also have a flat in London for stay overs and work . We usually go out in London in the run up to Christmas for pantos for DC Christmas drinks with friends or just Christmas Shopping so fairly busy time

In our village we go to the local carol singalong around the tree and support the local Christmas farmers markets

No way there's only lower, middle and upper class in England.

That's not normal to us. But if he works hard then enjoy everything you can get from life

Actual ‘posh’ MC (as opposed to the arrivistes) won’t do many presents at all. Maybe one or two high-quality, self-improving items, certainly nothing as vulgar as a games console. They will do stockings for the labrador(s), which will get walked near their Home Counties home before any presents are opened. Christmas lunch will be organic, free-range and possibly include a nice side of salmon or some venison caught / shot by a relative. There will be midnight mass or carols. Board games will be played instead of TV.

My DH comes from an upper middle class family and their Christmas were bloody miserable.
His father would be pissed on whiskey by lunchtime, then he would be verbally abusive to everyone.
Fortunately on boxing day he would take off to his golf club playing golf for the day, unfortunately he would get pissed on whiskey in the clubhouse after and return home to verbally abuse everyone.
The kids stopped getting Christmas presents when they were sixteen because ' you're not kids anymore '
If that's an upper middle class Christmas you can shove it.
Give me my ordinary family Christmas any day with, as a poster up thread said, lots of Slade, selection boxes and a bloody good laugh.

I’d have thought a Boxing Day walk in the countryside with the dogs was de rigueur.