Scrooge-like I know but all this lark is getting a bit much...

[Jacobandcara]

Are we ruining Christmas? I remember only 30 years ago Christmas was mentioned a few times the weeks before, I got a quick visit to Santa at the garden centre, wrote a letter and sent it up that chimney and wore an angel costume made out of a pillow case. Magical times.
Nowadays it's all gone crazy. Mums on our local facebook 'what's on' page are clamouring over booking several 'experience' events which cost 20-30 pounds a ticket. So Santa on a train...or visit Santa cove or lights all over the local zoo and we will charge you an arm and a leg. And from the reviews on Facebook people are splashing nearly 100 quid and often these events are badly managed with hours of queing and disappointment.
Christmas eve boxes. And now today I'm a grinch for not doing a 1st of Dec box. Wtf.
The bloody elf on the shelf....yawn.
It used to be just the occassional oddball that put their decorations up in November and now it's ten a penny.
Supermarkets selling ready made nativity costumes for 15quid.
A friend of mine has just paid 20quid for a personalised Santa letter reply. Honestly.
Wheres the charm and magic when it's all drawn out over weeks and weeks?
Bah humbug

[elQuintoConyo]

Christmas should be renamed KeepingUpWithTheJonesesMas. Colleague has an Echo - i want an echo. Child's peers have Hatchimals, i'll buy a Hatchimal. Some InstaTwat did EOTMS* so i want to do it. We must have Lego/Playmobil/M&S/Wankee candle calendars cos we all need 24 presents between 1st December box and Christmas Eve box.

Do things, or don't do things. We don't go overboard - town lights are up and DS is doing crafty things at school and crafty things at home, he is already pretty excited and it is still only November.

• i just googled these things- they cost HOW FUCKING MUCH?!
  ** Elf on the Motherfucking Shelf.

[TammySwansonTwo]

I should add, my mum passed away a few years ago, and those trips and her love of Christmas are very special memories for me. I love Christmas probably party because of her immense effort to make it special. Perhaps some people are going overboard these days but still.

[HuskyMcClusky]

Advent calendars get me, what’s wrong with a £1 chocolate one?

Or even the ones that just had a picture behind the window. The excitement was in seeing a new picture and counting down the days.

Why does everything now have to involve consumption??

[expatinscotland]

If you don't like it, don't do it. Things aren't like they were 30 years ago . . . because that was 30 years ago! All these threads smack of 'Back in my day . . . ' misery bollocks. Even my dad laughs at people like this and he's in his 80s and counters with, 'Back in my day, a lot of stuff really sucked!'

[elQuintoConyo]

It is ds' birthday soon. We cut out strips of paper and drew pictures on them, then sellotaped them into a large paper chain. Every day he cuts a link off as a count down to his birthday. He is ECSTATIC every morning to cut a link and see his birthday getting closer.

I drew a pic of FC with 24 circles for his beard, every day DS will glue a cotton wool ball to his face to create his beard. I have also got a pot of mini FC chocolates and he'll get one every morning after Pritt Sticking Santa. DS is 6yo and loves it.

[thegreylady]

I agree. However, I am now 73 and always had new pyjamas or nightie on Christmas Eve. I continued this with my own dc and now do it for my dgc.

[ssd]

its the way people need to tell everyone what they've done, I mean I could be sat here in my xmas jammies with the three and decs up, elf on the shelf, santa letters going on, santa train and fair booked.....but if I dont splash it over social media, who the hell would know?

do what you like, but keep it to yourself, no one else gives a shit and life isnt a competition

[Theimpossiblegirl]

I love Christmas and am pretty organised but it's behind the scenes stuff. The magic can wait until December and I don't spend a fortune on experiences. We go to the panto and Christingle and anything free.
We have had a elf for years, but he just sits on the shelf watching.
My tree goes up next week.
I try to buy thoughtful gifts I know are needed/ wanted.
I totally agree it's consumerism gone mad.
You can have a magical Christmas without the tat and stress.

[dingdongdigeridoo]

Oh god what is a first December box?

I blame Instagram and Pinterest for a lot of this shit. Like matching pyjamas and glittery reindeer food. In the old days it’d be contained to a few loonies. Now they’re all at it!

[SabineUndine]

I’m with husky. It’s about getting people to spend money they cannot afford on things they don’t need. It’s mostly bollocks.

[SoMuchToBits]

YANBU. It's mostly just consumerism.

I love Christmas, but there's just too much "stuff" these days.

Ok, I'm an old codger, but when I was a child Christmas went like this.
Advent calendar (cardboard one) from 1st December.
Christmas carol service one evening and a party one afternoon at school.
Make a decoration to take home.
Put up tree and a few decorations (same ones every year) a few days before Christmas.
Christmas Eve - listen to carol service on radio, mince pies would be made.
Christmas Day - a stocking from Father Christmas (small items, mostly useable e.g. edible/bath stuff/socks/small toys that lasted). One main gift from parents under tree, other small gifts (one from each close relative) under tree.
Christmas lunch (roast chicken/turkey and trimmings, home made Christmas pud). Christmas cake at tea time.

That was pretty much it, although we did have one or two seasonal foods in the house (satsumas/dates) over the Christmas period.

No elves on shelves/grottos/winter wonderlands/Christmas jumpers/Christmas Eve boxes etc etc.

But I have brilliant memories of Christmas - just things like the decorations going up and hanging up the stocking seemed magical!

You don't need a lot of "stuff" to make Christmas a lovely experience.

[BillywilliamV]

There are too many people in the world, these people need to eat. A lot of people finance their eating habit by making stuff. If we dont buy that stuff then those people don't eat.
The commercialisation of Christmas is the commercialism of society, its largely due to overpopulation, (as Mums we cant really complain too much).

[ssd]

although I must admit and I'm being a pure hypocrite here, I like going on fb on xmas day and seeing all the bollocky posts from couples and families who can't stand each other, smiling at the table and waving crackers and saying what a fab time they are having, or seeing some spoilt kid beside a big pile of presents and knowing he'll' still be asking for something else cos he really really wanted it....

I'm a sad git really

[geekone]

Dear Mumsnet I would like to confess ((hangs head in shame)) to vocally judging those who decorate in November

However I am a sucker for all things Christmassy and love the run up. I think we are of that age where we remember Christmas being magical and we want that for our DC but maybe we try too hard. I too have the .........elf........ please forgive me mumsnet.

We don't do a box we do church then new Christmas pjs and a box of smarties, exactly like my Christmas 30 a'hem years ago.

[aintnothinbutagstring]

Elf on the shelf is creepy and too much faff so I refuse to do it. I know plenty of mums in RL that do it though, not just a MN thing. I will do a xmas eve box but it is made up of xmas books and dvds we have gathered over the years with some sweets maybe some craft so I don't feel ours is an exercise in consumerism. Not keen on buying new xmas themed pjs for the box though when their current pjs are perfectly adequate. I do agree its all getting very silly, I work in retail and see xmas stuff from August onwards. I hear of lots of people who get depressed in Jan/Feb but I love the simpleness of these months, no extravagance. Decs will go up on the first Sunday of advent and down before Epiphany. We focus more on the religious side of things than Santa, but even nowhere in the bible does it tell us to celebrate his birth, only to commiserate in his death so we wouldn't be bad Christians for not doing Christmas I feel. And given that Jesus was born in the most impoverished of circumstances, it seems ridiculous to make xmas all about greed and gluttony.

[Jacobandcara]

I think some things... like new pjs are sweet... but honestly there's so much angst here with things getting booked up in fecking July for Santa experiences.
July.
I blame social media and consumerism.
My kids will have a lovely magical time but I'm trying to not get drawn into the madness as once it's started there's no turning back and it all becomes a circus

[AlternativeTentacle]

I drove to the doctor's yesterday evening to drop a prescription in.

Erm, nobody told me I'd moved to Blackpool. My eyes!

Garish flashing tacky lights everywhere. Probably bought from the new Aldi round the corner.

I drove back to the village sharpish.

[ArcheryAnnie]

No Christmas Eve boxes, Christmas jumpers, special bedding, Santa trains, breakfast with santa at the garden centre, elf on the fucking shelf, Black friday, Cyber Monday, secret santas at work, nobody put decs up before about 15th December.

Would also add hot chocolate to that list. It's a perfectly ordinary winter drink, not a magical elixir. And the special bedding and the special tableware and the special plates and the special pyjamas - where does anyone store this tat? Does everyone apart from me have an enormous house?

And don't even get me started on waste, competitive consumerism and downright GREED. I don't care how much you are spending on your children, how big your pile of presents is and how much you #lovethekids.

It's possible to bring up a child who doesn't feel s/he's been deprived of a ~magical~ Christmas just because there isn't 35 presents under the tree.

[BarbaraofSevillle]

I went to a Christmas fair at the weekend for a group of animal charities where people had put christmas jumpers on their dogs (most of which looked bought, I haven't been to a pet shop recently but I expect if you go to somewhere like Pets at Home, they will have a doggy christmas jumper display) and were queueing up to take their dogs to see Santa .

I agree that it's got too much. A nice meal, Christmas lights, gifts for DCs (but not massive piles), sensible advent calendars (ie not £300 ones or £50 for a load of Zoella tat), token gifts for adults, enjoyment of time off work if you are lucky to work somewhere that closes at Christmas, walks, seeing friends and family, fine.

Dec 1st boxes this is a new one on me? Also starting all the crap in the shops any time before Bonfire Night, massive piles of presents for DCs, buying for all and Sundry, some of whom people hardly know, angst because DH didn't buy his DW a huge pile of thoughtful perfect presents, and all the other over commercialised gubbins that has sprung up over the last few years, I agree is far far too much.

I particularly don't understand presents for adults with their own money. If you want something, buy it. Don't turn it into a huge charade where sometime in mid November, you think 'I want a new handbag so DH can buy it for me for Christmas'. But I want a particular one so I have to send him the link. You've done all the work apart from put in your card number.

What's the point? So you can go round telling people your DH bought you a nice handbag for Christmas? Why? If he didn't think of the present himself and buy and wrap it himself, it's not a present.

That's why presents between adults should be limited to very close family and friends only, and just tokens - a bottle of gin or a nice box of chocs, something that the buyer knows the recipient likes.

[LunasSpectreSpecs]

My main issue with it is the "stuff". We're literally killing our planet with plastic. The oceans are full of it, we're running out of landfill. But Christmas is the ultimate stuff-fest. Miles and miles of paper, and those shiny ones can't all be recycled. Packaging. Cheap plastic stocking fillers and pointless novelty toys which use resources and energy to produce, ship half way round the world and then get binned first week in January. Same with decorations and Christmas products - people buy santa plates, table runners etc and then bin them because they've no room to store all this stuff for another 364 days.

And that's before we get the threads advising everyone to serve Christmas lunch on paper plates and use disposable everything to save on the washing up.

[GreatWesternValkyrie]

Oh god what is a first December box?

Ditto, what is this?? Is it filled with (bah) humbugs?

[ghostyslovesheets]

I loved picture advent calendars as a child - 24th was always Jesus in the manger

We used to get a new outfit for Christmas day made by my mum and we were allowed to open one present on Christmas Eve before church

I do a Christmas Eve box because it keeps the buggers occupied (always has a game, baking kit, books and a DVD) but I don't do EOTS I don't get it!

EOTS seems to be about the adults trying to out do each other on FB than about the magic of Christmas

[BarbaraofSevillle]

What I want to know is whether some/most people actually like all this stuff or are they doing because they feel obliged to and think that everyone else wants it too, when in reality they don't?

[LunasSpectreSpecs]

Barbara - many moons ago I worked in marketing for a now-defunct pet store. We had a huge "it's their Christmas too" campaign and the stores were packed with cat advent calendars, petfood crackers for your hamster and santa hats for dogs.

They FLEW off the shelves. Head office retail jobs are even more depressing - planning and buying for seasons is 9 to 12 months ahead, People in John Lewis, M&S or Tesco will already be starting to plan Christmas 2018.

[PrivateParkin]

I completely agree with you OP. I just try to block all (well, most) of the commercialised crap out. Why not have a look at the "simple things you remember about Christmas" thread (now moved to classics) for some lovely nostalgic festive memories.