My best Christmas tip

[Frynye]

Buy decent sticky tape and a good dispenser. Makes the whole thing so much easier.

I disagree.

You don’t have to do what she says! Someone else wrote to get out of the house for an hour. Nope. I’m not leaving the house, but I’m not going to take offence at their ‘tip’.

Also, family wise, we buy for nieces/nephews and not our siblings. In my friendship group though we stopped buying for each other’s children, and just buy for the adults, and each year we just buy for one person in the group of 4 of us.

One tip I learned from here years ago was to have 'Santa paper' and to keep it at the office and wrap things there.

The MNetter who shared this said her children had exclaimed with delight; 'Santa uses the same Christmas paper as you do mum!'.

What?! You always remember the presents!

Me too! We adults love our gifts!

When you are putting away your Christmas lights wrap them around a bottle of wine and tuck an envelope with some cash between the lights and the bottle.

The next year you can treat yourself to wine and have the money for a takeaway once you've decorated.

Same here. I can't imagine a Christmas without presents!
(I agree with the March sisters absolutely!)

BEST TIP EVER!!!!!!!

My only tip is to make mince pies in advance. Make them, freeze them in the tin so they hold their shape, then tip them out into freezer bags. You can cook them from frozen, only need to cook as many as you want at a time, and it is lovely to be able to offer visitors fresh cooked mince pies! You can make them when you have plenty of time in November and then you don't have to worry about making them when you're really pressed for time before Christmas.

And I am all for presents for everyone! There are no children in my family yet, only my own adult ones, and Christmas would be a bit thin if there were no presents at all.

I prefer everyone else in the house to do that, then I get an hour of peace alone at home. It's usually spoilt by torrential rain these days.

Buy Christmas fabric and ribbon and make drawstring bags of different sizes. Make the rule that they must be reusable ie once the gift is removed, the bag comes back to you ready for next year. Mine are more than 25 years old now that I think about it.

I would buy a fresh roll of paper for Father Christmas presents and use that the next year for odds and sods.

You will remember some presents (for
good and bad reasons) but often people can’t remember what they got the year before.

Really?! I find that very strange but hey, we're all different!

Mine is to work on a farm, to have a very good reason to spend at least half the afternoon outside 💕

Yes for duplicate stockings, but put them at the end of the beds (for young children). We did this so they could bring them into us and open them, then play with the small toys in them while we had a slower morning than before we started this.

Nailed it.

Right well let the immature adults get on with their silly gift-giving and you can enjoy your smug sense of superiority

I feel no smugness or superiority at all at not buying or receiving gifts. I merely feel immensely relieved to not have that stress included as part of preparing for Christmas or during the celebrations.

😅

That wasn't directed at you. It was at the pp who said any adults with maturity or sense wouldn't buy presents for each other.

It's not an order. It is sensible. Gift giving is not the ultimate indication of love in an adult setting. Kindness and being there in times of need works much better. Lots of adults (not saying you BTW) give extravagant gifts out of guilt for one thing or another, and many don't bother seeing each other from one end of the year to the next, but are oh so giving at Christmas. Loving someone is not a commercial transaction. That's my view anyway.

Secret Santas are much better where there are only adults. I don't have children either. DH and I do not buy for each other, we have everything we need. We go away for Christmas instead. But I am not the type that likes gifts, I feel quite embarrassed to receive them, since I don't need anything now. But I am very grateful and gracious, and obviously will return the favour!

If we didn't buy the adults gifts no one in our family would get any presents at all and that would make us all sad. We will continue to buy each other gifts I think.

To join the derail. I actually think it’s good for kids to see adults having gifts as well. Does not need to be huge piles of them or even expensive but good to teach them to think of and appreciate people in their lives.

When you’ve almost finished buying, I have 3 children and do the below…

I lay it all out of the bed in 3 rows and make sure it looks pretty much fair. Then take a photo on my phone so I can remind
myself later in the month about what I’ve bought them so I don’t ’over -buy’