Don't want to celebrate Christmas

[ThisBigSky]

But both our families do (and Chanukah, which we don't want to celebrate either even though we are slightly observant).

Any suggestions? It's mainly due to the excessiveness of Christmas and the blurring of our religious beliefs with other religions... We've kind of picked and chosen the best of the world as we see fit for our home.

Not sure how to handle this when we have kids though.

Celebrate the New Year?

Are your kids interested in Christmas?

What have you been doing until now?

There is a You Tube folk singer called the Creepy Bard who happens to be Jewish and has a brilliant song expressing frustration about people treating Chanukah as "Jewish Christmas". If people around you are celebrating both festivals perhaps explaining who is doing what and WHY would be better than trying to ignore them. Surely information and experience can only be good. Kids will hear all sorts of messages about Christmas and Chanukah, so make sure that you have something positive to say too which fits your worldview.

This is our second year together - last year we just asked for people to donate to charity or to handmake us something - no kids yet. This year we've asked that people give us ideas for fun things to do together or send us a favourite recipe.

I don't really want to do the Santa Claus thing with my children due to child sexual abuse and because i believe it gives the wrong message; I also don't want to have presents given based on behaviour and I know our families are likely to go overboard as well. So no kids to worry about this year, but want to start the traditions now that we can keep going if you know what I mean?

We both have mixed families (from Africa as well as Europe), and we both have religiously mixed families as well)... We plan to move back to Africa with young children as well and we don't really want to take big European, gift-giving Christmas's with us, particularly as there is absolutely no religious element in it for us!

Thanks for the youtube link- off to have a watch of it!

Start as you mean to go on, tell your respective families you won't be observing Christmas, if they insist on giving gifts to your child for instance, ask them to contribute to a savings account/trust fund. My dh is a christian west african, and he doesn't really 'get' western versions of Christmas so I try and pare things back a quite a bit so as not to overwhelm him. Luckily my family are not silly over Christmas and tend to give vouchers/cheques which we save for the new year. I follow a lot of minimalist blogs as I'm not keen on how the celebration has evolved. From a Christian perspective, bishop Stephen Cottrell did a semi humorous advent calender called 'Do Nothing, Christmas is coming', provides reassurance to those of us that get anxious/unsure/pressurised at this time of year whether we should be doing more. I have it on my kindle and read it every year.