To remind people that the shops are only shut for one fucking day?!

[GlitteryHair]

Please, give me strength. Why do so many people panic buy, pile their trollies Sky high and get rude and stroppy with retail staff at this time of year? No, Armageddon isn't coming, it's Christmas! The shops are shut for a grand of one day, 24 hours later they will open again on the morning of Boxing Day. Please consider this when you are filling you're trollies with about 17 pints of milk and 20 loaves of bread or having a go at a sales assistant for ruining your Xmas. I wonder how people coped back in the days when the shops shut for several days?!

My Facebook feed is full of stories of people fighting over sprouts and having fights in car parks because they are so busy. I went passed my local Morrisons earlier and the traffic was backed up around the car park and onto the road.

Quite frankly if you leave it all until the last minute to do your shopping you are a knob who needs to be more organised next year, and honestly the sky will not fall in if you don't have sprouts on your plate come xmas day.

People need to getting a sodding grip!

I actually ran out of milk today. I felt like I had lost the game as I had to go to a shop. I became one of them. However did only leave with milk.

The people who host two Christmas dinners on Christmas Day and Boxing Day - what did the guests eat on Christmas Day? Do they just wait for Boxing Day?

And I get the idea that no-one wants to set foot in another shop again for days but that doesn't account for the hordes who seem to love getting up at the crack of dawn for the Boxing Day sales.

I bet it was those fuckers who stole all the red cabbage!

If you have 12 people to stay and the all eat toast for breakfast you can say byebye to 2 loaves a day easily, plus all the milk for kids to be drinking and teas and coffees etc. That's why some people stock up...you clearly don't have any experience of hosting a large gathering for a few days. It's a bit weird how you think everyone should do what you do at Xmas. No way would I just serve turkey and chips to people coming over on Boxing Day.

Send him out tonight unlucky? Sorry about your parent. Or if you have a local high street it'll be easy to buy stuff there without having to go to a supermarket. Which I've never found to be too bad on Christmas Eve.

I haven't been to the shops at all but the sheer amount of miserable people out on the roads is staggering!
Where have they all come from? :o

disclaimer. I had to go and fetch my dd who is disabled from respite-a 1hr 15min round trip took 3 hours!

SwedishEdith - this year i'm doing something abit different on Boxing day than another roast, but normally it's Turkey and all the trimmings on Christmas day, beef roast dinner on Boxing day. The boxing day guests have usually had turkey on Christmas day, so I don't feel the need to do as many trimmings and sides as Christmas day, but still a roast. This year we're doing slow cooked pork (which will be set going overnight on Christmas day), jacket potatoes and various yummy things which will take as much time and effort as a roast really...

Roast dinners are nice.it's nice to have them 2 days on the run.

I don't understand why people are so bothered about what others do.

If you don't want to/need to go shopping don't but don't have a go at those that do

unlucky, actually think tomorrow will be less busy than today - but does it really matter if you don't have parsnips and sprouts?

do you have a local greengrocer? I find it's easy to forget mine, they are tucked away in a bit of the high road that I don't need for anything else.

hope your dad is okay.

BeccaMumsnet I'll do peace and love as long as they haven't bought the last pack of pigs in blankets - they are mine, mine you hear!

The bit I really don't get is that for every household doing a massive shop because they have lots of family coming (DBro and family, PILs, etc.) there should be two or three household barely needing to shop at all because they are going to be eating their way through the trolley loads of stuff bought by household 1. But it doesn't seem to work that way and guest households 2,3 & 4 are also out panic buying trolley loads of stuff (even though they won't be at home to eat it all).

Who is eating all this food? And how much of it goes straight to landfill?

But people who have been hosted on xmas day, sttill need to eat on Boxing Day or the 27th.

They may have guests and they certainly won't want to shop (plus no left overs).

Tomorrow I need bread, milk, cream and lettuce. That's it. No doubt I will be in the shop for two hours, queueing behind people with trolleys piled high with booze, loo rolls, pickles, nuts, foil, chocolate biscuits, potatoes, pet food, tea bags, you name it. Oh well, I've got nothing else to do all day!

Exactly. I will be fed on Christmas Day and Boxing Day, but still need food for the other days and don't particularly want to go food shopping over the Christmas break.

Your attitude pisses me off. I pile my trolley high because although the shops open again Boxing Day, I don't want to be going anywhere near Tesco! I want time away from food shopping etc. so stock up now!

Thanks - I am wondering if I will be able to get everything I need locally...I am going to check before I go and face the supermarkets (10 mile round trip) ...we don't have a greengrocer but we do have a pretty good local shop...
I know parsnips and sprouts don't matter - I'm the only person who eats them! But the DCs help with the veg prep and one of their favourite jobs is peeling the sprouts...and I do want to keep it as normal as possible.

Having worked in retail, I try to avoid the shops on Boxing Day etc in the vain hope that if the footfall is low they might let their staff have another day off with their families in the future. So I'd much rather go shopping every day this week for last minute purchase than go next week.

unlucky - I'm sure you can find something more fun for the DCs than peeling sprouts.

go local. Relax. it will all be fine. (I'm going to start a "Calm Down for Christmas" campaign).

I haven't got my Christmas dinner food yet will go tommorow, mainly I only just got paid today and after working and picking up dc I just want to relax. I will most likely do my weekly shop tommorow instead of at the weekend so I can chill some more..

People wbu to fight over food.and stuff but anbu to buy as much as they like.

people sometimes last min shop because thats when they got the money. or they might eat it like me.

i only normally spend 20-30 pounds more on shopping than normal. but i was a proper prat and went shopping when hungry. and i bought so much shit and my shopping is double what it normally is!!!

I was one of those people with trolleys piled high today OP. I'm off on holiday tomorrow. DD has a 4 week old baby, DIL has a 16 week old baby. Both their DH's are working until 4/6pm tomorrow. Both DD and DIL have a dreadful cold/flu viral thing. Both my DS's will be covering our business so DH and I can have a week in the sun, therefore they're not around to pick up the extra slack of shopping for DD and DIL. Both had intended to have the food shop done but due to illness couldn't manage to get out. So yes, I had four trolley loads and four trips to the car to make sure both DD and DIL had enough food to last them through the week. Neither DD nor DIL are "knobs" as you so eloquently describe those you ASSUME leave shopping until the last minute.

Wishing you a Merry and peaceful Christmas.

rosewithoutathorn- quite right.

I was there too. A big trolley piled with food, but also booze that we wouldn't normally drink ( for us and others) a few last minutes gifts, PJs, chocolates etc.
Because I knew we were doing a big shop I have also included the normal weekly shop- cereal, loo roll, but had let usual supplies dwindle a little at home because I had planned on doing this big shop.

I don't see why the OP is so upset.

I make sure I have all the important stuff (turkey, chocolates, alcohol, stuffing ingredients etc) organised, hidden in a cupboard or in the freezer well in advance. Anything else can be done without and doesn't require last minute panic-buying in the shops! Turkey will be collected tomorrow from the farm, chocolates and alcohol have been bought over the last few months whenever I've seen an offer, sausage meat is in the freezer, herbs I grow anyway and veg I grow too.

That said I did go early yesterday morning to do a regular weekly shop and get it out the way before the crowds really set in today and tomorrow. I do stock up a little because I like to have a few days of not having to do anything, even nipping to the co-op for a pint of milk!

I have never stressed over Christmas - it will be as stressful as you make it! Organise properly and it's a breeze!

PerspicaciaTick - I do think it's the being off work thing - with so many people off work so not buying lunch out, breakfasting on cereal at their desk or picking up bits on their way home, people need more food in the house. children being off school means lunches for them need to be made rather than eating school lunches.

(BTW - has anyone spied game pie anywhere on their travels? Tesco and Waitrose don't seem to be selling them this year, it's become a bit of a Christmas Eve lunch tradition since the year I added one to a food order by mistake but suddenly they seem to have gone out of fashion )

dodobookends - if you just stick to what you need and don't get tempted to buy more stuff, you can go to the lotto/ciggerette kiosk with 5 items or less in most supermarkets, today that was very empty in our tescos as everyone was queuing up with full trollies.