To think Christmas has got quite of hand

[Himalaya]

People seem under so much pressure to make a picture perfect day - beautiful coordinated decorations and wrapping, elaborate Christmas dinners, mounds of presents, homemade everything etc...

Do you think Nigella, Delia, supermarkets, magazine have conned us (.....modern, overeducated women...) into an arms race of competitive christmassing?

We've deliberately not made a massive deal of it. We are all excited but I don't want some Perfect Day I just want a nice relaxed time really. Xmas day is just the four of us and we are doing a buffet snacky thing because we just plan to spend all day playing with the DCs and their toys (DD got lots of board game type presents)

On boxing day my parents and nan (and my parents' lodger or she would be all alone) are here and I am so grateful that they are lovely relaxed people. They won't judge me if the house is messy. MN has really opened my eyes to the difficulties some have with demanding MILs etc especially around Xmas!

Yes Trillian that's what I meant, something like that. Not that women are absolutely overeducated, but that they tend more than men to be relatively over educated for the roles many are in.

Our generation was educated to think we could achieve as well as the boys, could have fulfilling, creative and well recognised jobs. But many in the important but low status and frankly often mind numbingly dull business of housewifery, or in local, constrained 'mommy-track' jobs. I think it's all that frustated creative energy is what marketers are tapping into.

Sometimes that can be a positive thing. Mumsnet serves the same core market. But sometimes we can be taken for a ride, buying into unachievable ideals.

Hope everyone has a good Christmas whether you are doing it slovenly, simple or super-stylish.

I don't know, I agree to some extent that you choose to get on the OTT bandwagon, but I dont think it's always a conscious choice IYSWIM.

I really think media has a lot to answer for. Advertising, property shows, films etc, it all portrays the Perfect Life (not just Xmas, but things like weddings and having a show home style house) - it's just that some people are more susceptible to this than others. It's also a big factor in personal debt IMO.

I am generally not bothered by this, I'm quite happy with what I've got and I'm not materialistic. But my one exception is Property Shows - I just can't watch them. They make me miserable. I see all these programmes where they criticise a slightly old fashioned kitchen or whatever, and I find myself thinking I'd kill for a kitchen like that.

Xmas has been turned into one big HYPE. . . .too much fuss over one day. . .
With my kids away at their dads this xmas its just me , my DP (when he gets back from his working week away, and my doddery old parents. . .so xmas this year is rubbish. . .

No one in my family has ever bothered or cared about christmas hype. We're not religious or very materialistic. It's just a time of year when we all have time off work and a good excuse to come home to my parents' house. I can't remember the last year we even had a tree.

If anyone suddenly started trying to emulate Nigella or Jamie we'd be worried for their mental health.

who the hell looks at an advert for a food shop and thinks that's what a normal family christmas table should look like???

after reading MN i realise that i'm very very fortunate and unusual to have family and friends who love me and want to spend time with us rather than judge our mince pies or home decor or tidiness or any other way we live our lives.

of course it is...it's a clever marketing/money making ploy , to make you feel a failure if you don't have the perfect matching placemats and serviettes etc etc then your day is ruined. I know too many Christmas-zillas..just relax, it will be fine, if you let it! Merry Christmas to all of you

DS2 commented on that M&S ad the other day - the one with the groaning, laden and beautifully decorated table and hoards of friends and rellies piling in.

Said something to the effect of: 'these Christmas ads are really annoying, they make you feel like that's how Christmas should be.' Out of the mouths of babes....

Sadly he's never seen a Christmas like that, but I don't think he'll be disappointed in ours, just us lot and a big turkey etc.

Although most of the decs didn't go up this year as I was ill and DH supervised it, put most of it back in the loft.

TBH I don't feel at all competitive (stoopid thing to have a competition over and people should get a life), but it still feels too much - it's the expectations of everyone else that I feel enslaved by. Massive piles of presents they don't use, food they don't eat and games they don't play. All because of someone else's ill thought out 'tradition' from years back based on different people at different times.

I am definitely over educated for most of my job. A lot of it is nodding and smiling while younger, less experienced people patronise me with 1980s management speak whilst completely missing the big picture. I did that in my first job at 22, and I am still doing it a couple of decades later.

"someone else's ill thought out 'tradition' from years back based on different people at different times."

I agree, we are trying to look at everything we do and say "why are we doing this?". If the answer is "because we like it", great, if the answer is "beause you're supposed to have X, Y and Z at Christmas" then we ditch it.

Advertisers and magazines have always portrayed "perfect" Christmases that we are supposed to aspire to.

They do the same with everything - perfect home, perfect family, perfect birthday party, perfect hair, perfect figure, perfect skin, perfect group of mates ... you name it it's up there presented as what our lives ought to look like.

I don't think the pressure is any worse now than it was 30 years ago - or if it is, it's only because advertising is more prevalent.

The key is to ignore it all. I have never known anyone have a better Christmas because of matching placemats anyway.

agreed Trillian

For example my boss, a younger woman with comparatively limited work experience and a habit of rubbing colleagues up the wrong way, sat me down just before Xmas and told me off for using the word 'apparently' in an email in relation to telling my team to do something, implying that this meant I did not agree with the particular edict I was supposed to be passing on. Well, duh, of course I didn't agree with it, hence my choice of word. But I know that when I tell me team something really important and this kind of word isn't in there, they will listen to me a lot more closely and do exactly as required. As I say, duh.

We don't go ott at all, dh spends days in the kitchen doing Heston Blumenthal stuff but that's because he enjoys that sort of stuff and doesn't get the time.

I've spent most of the last few days snuggled by the fire reading while dh has been pottering in the kitchen and ds quite happily in his cave with a stack of dvds and occasionally having a friend round.

Xmas day will be more of the same. No rellies, just lovely food, watch a couple of dvds together and have some nice wine.

I used to feel really inadequate seeing the M&S adverts but got over it by not watching live telly any more. Haven't seen an ad for about 4 yrs

It doesn't get out of hand for us.

This reminds me of one of the best Christmasses we have ever had. Everyone piled into our house (about 15 of us) but we had only just moved in and we had concrete floors and bare walls with the wallpaper just scraped off. The pictures look terrible, it is like we are in some concrete bunker. But we had the best time ever.

Riven..nothing wrapped???? the pressies under the twee(xmas trees are always twees!!) is the best bit..if youve brought the pressies why not wrap them?? not critisizing or anything..just confused ...

Totally agree, but you don't have to get suckered into it all. Have sent no cards - doesn't bother me at all if people send or don't to us - if people are offended by that (no has unfriended me yet )too bad.
Amazes me that people put so much store into one day - no wonder there is disappointment all round. Likely scenario tonite - kids carol service, non-competitive drinks with a neighbour, then we put out the carrots etc for Santa, next morning will get up, kids will open their stockings, we'll go swimming (local open air heated pool - tremendous fun!), have smoked salmon bagels there, come home, DC will open their other presents, will have mince pies etc, sit around chatting, lunch will cook, same as any roast lunch with Bernard Matthews froszedn turkey, ready made stuffing, sausages etc all from ASDA, and only the other bits we like, set fire to the pud, watch dvd, tv or play a game, no pressure, no tears. I will not wear anything special, the table decorations will be whatever the kids spill,DH & I will drink lots of champagne and we'll all go to bed early.

I don't feel the [ptessure tbhj. I buy my dc's stuff from the internet and DH wraps them. Don't send cards and don't overeat. We then spend Christmas day at my dm with my siblings and their partners, we don't bother buying each other presents.
I think if you expext the picture perfect Christmas, you will be disappointed, i'm just grateful for some rest.

same here, Bobmarley. Have just moved,,bare paintsplattered chipboard floors, boxes everywhere. NO table at all as we had to ditch our huge and only one! we will eat off our knees ,watch crap tv, be cosy and happy. In a lot of ways, has taken all the pressure off. Can't change our surroundings right now, so am making the most of the no pressure! No tree either. Sounds crap but its not..we are just happy to be together in a cosy new home..it's company that matters, not all the xmas associated trimmings.

You have to step back because the children and husbands do not enjoy all this crap it's purely self inflicted pressure which i did once and never again.
We have M&S party food for tomorrow after a big cooked breakfast, lots of games to play and none of this huge meal that Mum spends all day in the kitchen cooking nonsense.

Well I have a completely poncey OTT Christmas. And I thoroughly enjoy it. I like the pressure, I like making the effort in serving "home made" everything. I enjoy preserving things in advance to serve with leftovers, I enjoy making hampers for the old people on my street who don't get visits. I enjoy a tastefully decorated house.

I must admit I feel a bit faint at the thought of people a)eating junk food and b)doing it on Christmas day. Each to their own.

Christmas is supposed to be fun.

If you're stressing about it, it isn't fun. People should just do what they like. My aunt likes to get all hyped up about it and have everything matching. Whatever. I can't be arsed, I just want some nice food and some family time. I find cooking, decorating and housey stuff hugely boring, so it would be a waste of time me doing it.

My mum did the stressy, crafty, everything homemade version. Sometimes it was memorable because by the time we sat down to dinner we were all so tense no one could speak to each other, and my mum resented that we didn't appreciate her efforts.

My PILs do a trad but relaxed Xmas - plastic tree, paxo, bisto, mini Xmas puds from m&s for those who want. Some other readymade desert for those who don't. I must admit that when I first got married I thought it wasn't Xmas without the fuss and stress and foodiness. But I've come round. Like mamatomany said the children and DH don't care about this stuff so why put yourself through it.

We do do nice magic- of -Xmas stuff, but only the stuff we want to. Me and DS2 are keen on gingerbread houses. I'm doing the MN inspired pyjama thing this year.

Don't think xmas is particularly more out of control than the other perfect life stuff people mentioned - kitchens, birthday parties, beauty etc...it's just more noticable because everyone is doing it on the same day.