Ridiculous made up 'traditions'

[Sittinonthefloor]

Looking at you on your shelf, Elf . It actually has the word 'tradition' on the box, after what, 2 years?

Also spotted today 'Christmas Table Favours' eh? Not a thing! They were like wedding favours (also ridiculous) but gold and silver. That's what crackers are for surely?

Advent calendars for grown ups, Christmas pjs, also Christmas Eve boxes (haven't dared discover what they are though).

Love, love, love made up / evolved family traditions but feel irrationally enraged by the commercial ones, and more so that people seem to fall for it with enthusiasm!

I'm loving that there a few of us who read The Dark is Rising

I try to go for reading exactly in synch with the dates, but her carried away sometime round Christmas Day and read the rest in one sitting. :)

I remember an apple and orange in my stocking with 50p thought I was a millionaire if I gave that to my son he would. A) think I'm trying to poison him with fruit b) think he was hard done by... Gone are the days of old traditions which is a shame but we are all guilty with all the modern technology that we have today

I love Christmas and had wonderful, simple ones as a child.
Our family traditions now I have 2 DS of my own are still fairly simple - they visit Santa (once), luckily the country park in walking distance from
our home has used the same guy for the past 4 years and local drama student elf helpers. They're fabulous and really get the boys excited. We do this in a big group - usually 10+ kids and parents with flasks of hot choc and mince pies.
We use the same felt advent calendar every year with a chocolate coin each in the pocket.
We add a tree decoration to the collection every year from somewhere we've visited as well as a school/home/nursery made one from each DS.
We leave Santa a mince pie and a glass of brandy and Rudolph a carrot.
The boys hang stockings and open them together in our bed.
I have bought Christmas jumpers but felt coerced!
My Mum died in September 2014 and although we bumbled through that Christmas in a total haze we couldn't face it last year and decided to go abroad.......it was so wonderful to be away from a commercial Christmas and the kids loved being on the beach and bbqing Christmas dinner!
So good we're getting away from
It all this year too!

My facebook feed is full of those creepy wee elf's, luckily my dc haven't asked why they don't have one, they get Now That's What I Call Christmas played full blast on Christmas eve and that'll be all. I can't be bothered with anymore Christmas crap to buy.

LoisWilkersonsLastNerve I tell mine that not only will I not allow a tell-tale elf in this house, but I also trust them to make the right choices most of the time.

I think what I dislike is how the shops appropriate people's traditions and then sell them back to them with a huge helping of Fear of Missing Out so these things get out of all proportion and become yet another opportunity to purchase stuff.

Not just appropriate but , as in the hideous elf on the shelf, make up.

I hate Christmas (and all the cheap tat and frenzied spending that goes with it and the teeth achingly twee "snuggling up in our Christmas pjs with hot chocolate and newly invented "traditions)

I've hated Christmas since around my mid teens. Nothing terrible happened to me, I've never been hard up so I don't hate it because I'm missing out because I can't afford it or feel hard done by- I just can't be arsed with any of it.

And I'm bored, bored, bored by being asked "am I organised for Christmas?/done all my shopping?/what am I doing for Christmas?"

Christmas died a decade or so ago. Whatever this spending frenzy may be, it isn't Christmas, nor are any of the "traditions" that go with it.

Same with all the old festivals: Easter, Hallowe'en, Guy Fawkes. They are all dead. All we have left are advertising campaigns and bland municipal "events". I wish Scrooge would come and put a stop to it, because it's just not fun any more.

Lasswithedelicatehair so glad I'm not the only one. My college friend tells me I hated Christmas way back then (we're 64 and 65 now). Even in the 70s I developed a dislike of all things Christmas. My perfect Christmas involves being with my children and grandchildren and having a meal together, just like any Sunday as my son puts it. Presents for the children, money for the adults. Church in the morning, walk in the afternoon, that's it.
Commercialmas can pass me buy. I am just coming up to my annual boycott of Tesco (music so loud I can't think) which is a tradition I invented myself!

Only if you believe the adverts etc toad

Yes I agree for some people it has just become a barmy spending frenzy but for many others it is still a wonderful time....

...presents are part of Christmas, but only one smallish part, in my family...the rest is about Carol concerts, and christingle, and finding Christmas lights to admire, and cuddling up to watch a Christmas film, and getting together with family friends we don't see that often, and wintery walks collecting holly, and baking and making decorations...

I hate Christmas (its smacks of people trying too hard to have fun/show that they have the "perfect life") but now have a toddler so I think maybe this year I'm thawing a bit. We will have a tree (mid Dec) and our new family tradition is to let toddler choose a tree decoration each year. I've labelled them by year and keep them in a separate box and I hope that these are a nice thing for our child to one day use on their own tree to remember christmases past.
This year we'll make some decorations and paper chains I expect.
Other tradition include pub on Xmas eve and roast goose for Xmas dinner. (I think turkey is so tasteless..... I'd always rather have chicken or beef) and Xmas tea time cheese and crackers and mince pies.
We have 3 sets of grandparents plus aunts/uncles and I'm actually worried about the amount of presents that are likely to turn up for our DC. It can be overwhelming for them and the level of poverty and deprivation in the world makes me feel uncomfortable.
In future years when DC are old enough we will have a pre Christmas toy donation to charity.

throwing

I've spent the last two months trying to avoid the adverts. It sends that hiding in a nuclear bunker is the only way.

The problem is not commercialism or anything else. The problem is social media and being aware of Other People's Christmasses.

If I had a pound for every time a friend confided in me "I do love but spending Christmas at their family's house is weird. They do

Its smacks of people trying too hard to have fun/show that they have the "perfect life"

I'm confused by this. Who are they trying to show this to? There's no one but our family in our home on Christmas Day.

Facebook usually.

Of course. I quit Facebook a couple of months ago and I already forget how toxic it can be. (Lovely too of course but mostly toxic!)

Personally I find the bog standard Xmas - buying presents & wrapping, buying cards & writing, buying food & cooking, putting up a tree, Xmas parties, advent calendars, school shows, seeing a santa, visiting family and friends more than enough to be getting on with without adding a load more extras in to make it more 'magical'.

Santa coming on Xmas eve with presents to all the children in the world on his magical sleigh pulled by magical reindeer is magical. If you're into it, celebrating the immaculate conception and birth of the saviour of mankind is magical. A creepy elf pissing about with kitchen condiments over advent is not and even if it was the season is overflowing with magic already! January is a month that could do with a boost if anything. I don't get Xmas eve boxes either. I've only read about them on here but again it just seems yet another thing that you just don't need.

Yes I don't have it but the teen DSs do. Christmas morning it will be awash with pictures of every aspect of the day.

I'm intrigued by all the pyjamas. Where do you keep them all? I have visions of piles of pyjamas and jumpers growing taller & taller every year. Perhaps in the linen cupboard along with the bedding that is washed daily/hourly.

Personally I find the bog standard Xmas - buying presents & wrapping, buying cards & writing, buying food & cooking, putting up a tree, Xmas parties, advent calendars, school shows, seeing a santa, visiting family and friends more than enough to be getting on with without adding a load more extras in to make it more 'magical'

Yes! North Pole breakfasts, Christmas Eve hampers etc are just overkill.

I dont get the whole toxic Facebook thing. My friends and I have similar values, and I have never once thought that any of them was doing something to show off for Facebook. One friend does amazing, elaborate birthday parties, because that's what she likes. Another goes on fabulous holidays. Another one always seems to have a house full of children doing crafts because that's what she likes. Another has has a beautiful house. Another one has a Facebook feed full of photos of the gigs she goes to.
None of them do all of those things. And there plenty of other posts full of the other, less fabulous elements of their lives - the health problems, family squabbles, worries about elderly parents, redundancy threats etc.

I think that Batteriesallgone is right, and that people are just shocked that not everyone does things their way.

I can go from thread to thread on MN and be accused of being ridiculously extravagant and a miserly skinflint, of showing off for social media and of not caring enough what other people think.

Sorry but Xmas wouldnt be Xmas without Christmas eve pyjamas and fluffy xmas socks. Definitely a thing in Liverpool. You got a bath, into your new Pyjamas and then got stupidly excited about father christmas coming in the morning.

Our pyjamas are kept in our chests of drawers. And we wear them at night, until they are outgrown/worn out. Just like pyjamas bought in October or February would be.

Wtf is a North Pole breakfast? I don't think it's a coincidence that all these ridiculously complex new traditions have appeared at the same time as the professional mummy blogger.

I've never had new pyjamas for Xmas eve and don't look like a swamp monster wrapped in dirty rags in the few photos that were taken of a childhood Xmas. Ds doesn't have new ones on Xmas eve either, he has clean ones on like very night. The magic of Xmas still happens here!

I dont get the whole toxic Facebook thing. My friends and I have similar values

I also think that Batteriesallgone is right, and that people are just shocked that not everyone does things their way.

I don't have FB because I don't really need it, plus I don't really get it.

Teen FB at Christmas is a massive boastathon though.