... to be sad at the way Christmas seems to have changed?

[MereDintofPandiculation]

I was brought up to view Christmas as a magical time, but a time above all for giving. Getting together as a family (grandparents cousins, aunts, uncles) because it's one of the few times that the family does get together. Making sure no-one is left out. Learning to enjoy yourself and have a happy time with others even if your home is full of relatives, or you spent an hour on Christmas morning travelling to other relatives who don't make the bread sauce and brandy butter quite as well as your mother.

Nowadays on MN "family" means "me, DH, DC" and Christmas is all about receiving and not giving. "You have a right to spend Christmas in your own home". Everything centres around making it perfect for the children, without any thought of modelling for them the qualities of thinking about other people.

AIBU in thinking this not only makes life more unpleasant for older relatives who are excluded or barely tolerated, but that it also bodes ill for the future, in moving society more towards "it's all about me" and less about taking responsibility as a society for the welfare of all its members?

HarrySinger I am sorry that you had awful parents. Honestly not all parents are like yours.
In order to give DCs as pleasant a Christmas as possible I sit with Ex and I am pleasant. What my real feelings are would close this website forever but I have done it for those younger than me.
I have had the younger generation getting drunk and obnoxious at Christmas which ruined the day but still I kept being pleasant.
As much as you think old people are horrible, I have found younger people to be horrible. It is just our individual experiences making us think that way.

Just realised we've never once had a Christmas with just dh and the dcs. The dcs love being with extended family. They start planning it all with their cousins from about July. They're more bothered about where we stay than presents.

My childhood christmases were similar. Friends Christmas Eve. Close family Christmas Day, extended family on Boxing Day. It's only 2 days. Which I appreciate may be 2 too many and thoroughly unbearable if you have difficult family dynamics. Mine had its fair share but people could usually behave themselves for the 2 days.

Stillme1 Do what you like - spend time with people you like, make whoever you like happy - but don't martyr yourself on other's behalf and expect some glory to be applied to you...if you do want to be a Mmas martyr do it quietly without all the whinging about spending time with people you don't like - even on here!

HarrySinger I hardly think I am being a martyr. It is one day out of the year and it is for younger people.
Sometimes we should do a bit of endurance for the greater good.
If adults can not put aside their animosity for one day for the sake of children then we are in a worse state than I thought.
I think you sound very bitter and I am sorry about that. If you had a bad past it is sad, but it does not give you the right to say that older people are stress and drunk. I had a different past which can not now be replicated as the participants are long gone. Times have changed and the new normal I my own opinion on my own life is that things are not so nice now.

that things are not so nice now Rose coloured specs? - things were not so nice back then - all this back in the good old days is such bullshit - no one ever talked about how it really was years ago - no dirty linen being washed on Mumsnet.

HarrySinger with all due respect you seem to have had a rough time but your story is not the only story.

I realise that I was very lucky in the past. My parents were comfortable. We were never freezing although there was no central heating in the past. We all had bathrooms in our houses from pre 1900 days. I did not live with my parents in anything less than a 2 bedroom house. I was at private schools. Both parents had cars. I was never the victim of physical or sexual abuses. Food was plentiful and good. We had carpets in every room. There was rarely any alcohol seen in the past days in my family/friends circles. There were definitely no drugs. There were no people who broke laws or landed in prison. I had at least 2 holidays every year. I really do think I may have had more than some other people when I was young.
The younger people around me are involved with alcohol and drugs. The language is horrendous. People have committed crimes and been in trouble, some have been in prison. I believe there are some very strange problems going on. Behaviour is not good and could be abusive.
I may well be paying for the life I used to have because I am mixed up in stuff I really don't know how to handle.
One thing about your post concerns me. You seem to think that you know about life when I was young. It was a very long time ago when I was young. You claim that I have rose tinted specs. I don't. I remember the cold of no central heating and walking to school in snow and none of the girls in tights or boys in long trousers. I would hardly imagine that you could also have lived anywhere close to where I lived, that would be too much of a coincidence.
I don't see how you can comment on my life with any accuracy.

@Slapmyarse - sorry, your ILs gave you notice of eviction on Christmas Day? Their own son and grandchild?? (and you too, of course)

WOW!!

Do you still speak to them? I don't think I would!

My family are pretty toxic and I have no interest in spending time with them at Xmas for the sake of my health and my son. I’m 41 and Xmas has been commercial since I was a kid. Everyone has different experiences and I don’t recognise your bygone Xmas I’m afraid OP. I do what’s best for my husband, son and me

It's lovely spending time with wider family IF they make the effort to be festive and pleasant. Not everybody's family does.

The comments about families now having two working are spot on - and Christmas entertaining has become a bit over the top in some ways. We don't all need to spend weeks preparing .......

My wonderful Mum-In-Law was lovely company at Christmas, at our home or hers. My Mum was a difficult emotional roller-coaster, but we did our bit and invited her to ours.
Mum-In-Law was very ill for her last Christmas and just asked to be left to have a quiet day; we respected her wishes, and Skyped her in the afternoon for live gift unwrapping. It was bitter-sweet.
The four of us - two teens, me & my husband - like to hole up and shut out the world on Christmas Day.
Once our boys have left home, I would be delighted if they wanted to spend time with us at Christmas but I would never want them to feel obliged. A quick chat on Skype would be fab.

I get where you’re coming from OP. I have fun memories of Christmas growing up. Me and my brother mooching for presents. My poor mother waiting until 2am to put the presents out to ensure we were asleep and then within half an hour of her going to bed we were both up and ripping open pressies because we were never asleep in the first place .

Mom slaving away at dinner and my Nan coming over (all my other grandparents died before I was born so only knew/had one Nan). Nan would help with dinner and be forced to play with me and my brother on whatever new toy we’d had for Xmas.

Dad snoozing on the sofa after dinner whilst mom, Nan and us kids watched Xmas films and were allowed a babycham.

Friends and relatives popping by over Xmas eve and Boxing Day to drop off gifts and have a Xmas drink.

Ah I miss those days.

I guess at the same time though, people like to make their own traditions when they have their own children. Doesn’t always mean grandparents/aunts etc are left out. People can still spend quality time with relatives on Boxing Day etc too. And maybe some people don’t have nice families they want to spend the time with and feel it would be a negative experience for their children?

I had magical Christmases as a kid in the days where there was no WiFi, no computers, no phones, no Xboxes etc.
People say and talked to each other.
Kids were not the spoiled brats they are today. They were happy with one big present ( a game of some kind ) and a few little odds and ends.
I LOATHE what Christmas has become and I refuse to buy into it.
It is one disgusting overly self indulgent greedfest orchestrated by retailers and the media.
And I also refuse to spend time with relatives I can't stand the sight of.
It is absurd, vulgar and wholly unnneccesary to spend obscene amounts on children whether they deserve it or not just because it's Christmas .
I couldn't care less if Christmas was permanently cancelled.
Be nice to folk all year round not just for Christmas that's my mantra.

It’s only changed because you decided to change it, you can make this Christmas any way you want!, invite your family invite your husbands family If you don’t want a ton of cooking invite everyone Round on Boxing Day and have a party. In our family once u hit 18 you don’t get any presents! All the spare cash is spent on kids presents and food and drink. And remember only one present from Santa as his magic sledge can one give each child in the world one present!, The rest that arrive on Christmas morning are from family and friends which in most family’s will be a ton!, Play games sing songs on the karaoke full out over monopoly and eat and drink too much!! Thank god it’s only once a year!!

YABU. My estranged father is an alcoholic. MIL is a manipulative, passive aggressive nightmare who along with FIL refuse to have grandkids in their house...

Sounds so festive, doesn't it...

We used to have Christmas morning just us opening presents and have a Christmas lunch, then get ready, take our favourite toy and go to my DG house for a buffet and to see the rest of the family. I used to love it and really miss it.
Now we have Christmas morning at home me, DH and the DC, open presents and them go to my DP house for more presents and Christmas dinner and go to see my DH side of the family on boxing day for a second Christmas.

I don't think the op is talking about specific families and individual situations but more a general trend towards isolation and slight selfishness. I have said the same myself. People on MN often say "tell MIL NO, stay at home with your own 'little family', she's had her chance, make your own traditions" etc. Which is sometimes warranted but I've seen it when the MIL in question is utterly benign and just lonely. There can be a compromise. It's the extreme of the statements. "Christmas is for children" "Christmas is for just the four of you" "Christmas is about spending time with the whole family and leaving nobody out" All ridiculous absolutes. Christmas is personal. I do see, however, friends for whom it's all about the pile of presents and not much else. It's a thing. Possibly more so nowadays when it's all documented on and influenced by Instagram for example.

I grew up with a mother who would not countenance seeing her MIL or FIL over Christmas. I never saw my grandparents around Christmas time and we were all they had. They were nice people and so, so lonely. I had 18 Christmases at home with a mother who chanted "It's about the children" and looking back, I could cry. My grandad died when I was 19 but my grandma is 96 and we've had her over for Christmas every year since having our own home and she fucking smiles and smiles and smiles.

OP Forgive me l have not read the full thread but l wanted to give you hope .
DH & I and my DSis & Dbil are not buying any presents for each other. We will be buying for others.
We have always had ppl to Christmas dinner with us , ppl who have no one to go for Christmas dinner to , not relatives either .
I think as we get older we find we don't actually want or need any more STUFF..... so although you may think Christmas is all about 'Me , DH & DC ' it actually isn't and the spirit of Christmas is alive and thriving in good old Blighty .
I know it is early but 'Have yourself a merry little Christmas time'
All is calm . All is bright

Ah, I too Yankee for the good old days when mother broke her back making a meal for 20 while her MIL tells her how she's doing it all wrong. The men all sitting in the next room talking and having a brandy. I love the good old days.

You have to wonder how the "Christmas is just for the ( our) children" , "Christmas is for our own lil family" brigade will cope when their kids are a bit older, and moaning that theyd rather be anywhere else than with their parents on Christmas Day. Or on a forum saying how their parents insist on them coming for Christmas ( visits which now bore and irritate them) because " "traditions" .

Be careful how you treat those "older" relatives now- that could be you in your teenage/ 20s + beyond's eyes sooner than you think. Your turn to not be part of their "little family". Life moves quickly.

*hanker not Yankee!

Actually, Dh and dd are all the close family I have in this country, so travelling at Christmas becomes extremely stressful and expensive. People don't live around the corner anymore.

If you get plenty of time off or book annual leave at Christmas its fine but when you get just the three bank hols (or even less!) there just isnt the time or energy to fit everything in!

I hate not having close family to visit at Xmas. If I did I would. I can’t wait for big family Christmases when my kids have families of their own. Xmas is all about giving for me. I never get presents but make sure the kids have an amazing day. Two years ago a lady from work bought me a bag of pressies to open as she couldn’t imagine someone having nothing to open on Xmas morning for me it’s the norm but it did feel exciting to have my turn to open a present! For me the run up to Xmas is better than the actual day.

Perhaps these elderly relatives that you think are being left out, do actually want to be left out and might not give a fig about Christmas. My parents have stopped bothering with the Christmas tree and say that after all these years they are bored with it and to them it's just a normal day.

It’s not changed for us. We spend it with DP, Dsibs etc. All crammed in. Spend money on the travel/ flights/ food rather than extravagant pressies. But we like our family. I know plenty of people who do it like us. I also know some who don’t but that is usually down to an issue with PIL or Dsibs or similar.