to refuse to buy into the "Christmas Eve Box" fad?

[HearMeSnore]

I mean, when did this shit start? I never heard of it until this year but now I keep hearing about it in every shop as if it's as essential a part of Christmas as trees and turkeys.

Fortunately it doesn't seem to have made it into DD's hearing yet but I'm dreading being asked "will I get a Christmas Eve box this year?" as if I wasn't already spending most of the Christmas budget on her actual presents.

I'm not a "bah! humbug!" person. I love Christmas. But this is just unashamed capitalist exploitation. Like when the greeting cards industry tries to introduce "secretary's day" and shit like that.

Seriously. Can we make some kind of pact to not do it? Make it die a death before it catches on and we're all pressured into buying even more crap that nobody needs?

I mean, when did this shit start?

We have never had a 'Christmas Eve box' but DD has always had new PJs on Christmas Eve, brought by a Christmas Fairy on Christmas Eve to my parent's house. Usually these were in a nice Christmassy bag along with a soft toy, a book and chocolate.

She's now 16y and this has always happened. She checked with my mum this weekend that the Christmas Fairy will still be coming this year!

I don't take pictures of my kids as they open their stockings,

And? That's your choice. Lots of people do like to take photographs, and some people like that their children are wearing nice new clean PJs in them. I have always taken photographs of DD opening her gifts and enjoying Christmas Day. I like photography. I don't post them to social media, but I do save them and have them on a page in our annual phonebook I have created.

IME its nothing new. My parents used to take photographs, and sometimes cinefilm/videos, of us seeing that Father Christmas had been. And yes, we are usually in clean new PJs and nighties on them.

I'm mid 40s - so definitely not a new idea and definitely not just linked to SM.

No tidal wave of tat or massive surfeit of food, just carols, films, telly, stockings, a nice dinner, a walk, a log fire

That sounds absolutely gorgeous! Easy going and stress free! My family are big Christmas type people and my DH never had any of it and I know he can find it quite overwhelming and it can overface him. He's used to it now but he used to just sign up to all the shit shifts for double pay to have a bit of downtime

If you are loosely Christian then there is no need to make it an ever bigger month long fest of gluttony. You celebrate Christmas as the day all Christendom celebrates the birth of Christ. Without that focus, it’s a bit empty

Historically Advent was a time of fasting and penance like Lent. It still is, in the Orthodox church. In the secular world it has become the opposite.

I don't do it , sister in law does . Some of our kids are the same age and probably talk about it but it doesn't bother my kids that they don't get one . They get enough on Christmas morning

Electric

That's hilarious

I DONT HAVE A LOG FIRE.

I burn shards of Christmas Box instead

I always had one, PJ's special hot chocolate and a vhs

I have honestly never heard of this!

I have only heard of it on here. Not intending to ever do it as it is just something else to do.

Lol. All of you people with your pyjamas and hot chocolate must be feeling terribly inferior now

It does sound a bit OTT but I make a chunk of my income as a children's writer. It's just my trade. I self published it with a photobook company for a few quid. My point is that it's a box full of personal items, and apart from the food and a boardgame it's the same stuff every single year.

But if it brings the parents joy to watch their kids open it blah blah then who cares? Isn't it the same as any other frivolity?

See to me there's a huge difference between having stuff like new pjs once a year and favourite books in a box for Xmas Eve, that to me is family tradition stuff that you happen to keep in a box, and is nice. We used dig out our favourite books and videos, we just didn't have a box lol. But what I think of as a Chirstmas eve box these days is this: (which I think is ott and very commercialised)

www.amazon.co.uk/Christmas-Deluxe-Luxury-Filled-Wooden/dp/B07JM9QSFZ/ref=sr_1_4?s=kids&keywords=christmas+eve+box&tag=mumsnetforum-21&ie=UTF8&qid=1542136958&sr=1-4

I would love to do that, it sounds amazing

I feel vaguely stabby at the whole Christmas Box thing. FFS. I suppose I should be grateful that my DC are late teens now, as it's not an issue. But if it weren't for MN, I'd never even have heard of Christmas Boxes or Elves on Shelves. [have I made my point yet]

Of course no one is forced into doing a Christmas Eve box but I feel sad that so many people do feel pressurised into thinking that buying more and more gifts is a way of showing love to their children.
I’ve been on Mumsnet over 18 years and every.single.year there are threads from Mumsnetters despairing about how they have got into debt over Christmas. That’s what I think is really sad.

Choose your own traditions......

We have a Christmas Eve family box - with new jarmies for the three of us, hot chocolate, sweets/chocolate, popcorn, reindeer dust and a dvd chosen from our christmas dvd pile. This is my 33rd christmas and I've had new jarmies every christmas eve, since being born, shared sweets with my siblings/parents and watched a christmas film - it just wasn't in a box!

We also have a mischievous elf, put our decs up the last weekend in Nov as my birthday is the first week in December, my turkey is served on my late nannas platter, and my son always receives a shiny £1 /2 coin in the toe of his stocking, which is filled with small wrapped presents and left on his bed for christmas morning.

These are our family traditions, and things we enjoy doing. We wouldn't force them on others or expect people to do the same

@Ragwort Me too! (over 18 yrs on MN). How things have moved on...

ElectricMonkey you may like this poem by Patrick Kavanagh.

Advent
We have tested and tasted too much, lover-
Through a chink too wide there comes in no wonder.
But here in the Advent-darkened room
Where the dry black bread and the sugarless tea
Of penance will charm back the luxury
Of a child's soul, we'll return to Doom
The knowledge we stole but could not use.

And the newness that was in every stale thing
When we looked at it as children: the spirit-shocking
Wonder in a black slanting Ulster hill
Or the prophetic astonishment in the tedious talking
Of an old fool will awake for us and bring
You and me to the yard gate to watch the whins
And the bog-holes, cart-tracks, old stables where Time begins.

O after Christmas we'll have no need to go searching
For the difference that sets an old phrase burning-
We'll hear it in the whispered argument of a churning
Or in the streets where the village boys are lurching.
And we'll hear it among decent men too
Who barrow dung in gardens under trees,
Wherever life pours ordinary plenty.
Won't we be rich, my love and I, and
God we shall not ask for reason's payment,
The why of heart-breaking strangeness in dreeping hedges
Nor analyse God's breath in common statement.
We have thrown into the dust-bin the clay-minted wages
Of pleasure, knowledge and the conscious hour-
And Christ comes with a January flower.

Gosh, I'd be a bit concerned if I felt "stabby" over a Christmas Eve box

We don't do elf on the shelf. I think it's a lovely idea but it just never really took off in our family. Yet every year my MIL moans and moans about how I SHOULD do it and it's not fair on my poor deprived children 🙄

We do PJS and hot chocolate delivered by the elf on xmas eve but that's it, which they love.

People have been getting into debt at Christmas for donkeys years.

I don't see half the stuff online people say they do on this thread, because probably I don't use Instagram which I peek at now and again and don't like.

I don't understand what pyjamas particularly have to do with Christmas Eve. Can anyone enlighten me? I mean, why would you need to have different pyjamas on Christmas Eve than on any other day?