Christmas - the MN way

[cathf]

When did it become a 'thing' to compete with others about how low-key/crap you make make Christmas? With added bonus points for ramming your self-styled ethical credentials down people's throats at every available opportunity?
There are loads of threads running at the moment, pulling apart others' festive traditions and indulging in one-upmanship in reverse.

A true MN Christmas must follow these rules, it seems:

1. No Elf on the Shelf they are vulgar and modern
2. No Christmas Eve Box - they are also vulgar and modern and no-one needs one pair of pyjamas a year, that is wasteful. CEB may be allowed if filled with twigs and leaves from the garden.
3. In extremis, an Advent calendar with pictures only MAY be allowed. No chocolate, certainly no present-type advent calendar. Although for some reason, Playmobil and Lego calendars seem to be permitted. A reverse advent calendar to collect food for foodbanks is certainly allowed, but only if you make sure everyone knows you are doing it.
4. Nothing that you usually use is permitted in a Christmas design - so absolutely no to Christmas duvets, towels and most especially festive-scented handwash. The fact that you would be buying eg handwash anyway is brushed over in a bluster of eco-virtue signalling.
5. Grandparents are not allowed to buy gifts, especially paternal grandparents. They need to be gently told that the children don't need anything but their time and attention. The children are absolutely fine with this .
6. Something you want (as long as it's wooden and sustainable), something you need (but no pyjamas - see above), something you use and something to read (we can all agree on this one - cue competitive bookworm comments)

Honestly, when did we become so joyless?

I feel duty-bound to caveat this with I won't be doing half of these things for various reasons but am I alone in getting fed up with reading the hierarchy of frugality from people who are convinced their way is the best way and everyone else must be shown how wrong they are?

I disagree kurri I don’t think that is the tone of the thread. It’s a lot easier to be eco friendly and give your children ‘experiences’ rather than gifts if you can afford to buy what they want/need year round. If your brassing it must be really tempting to try to get together a pile of (plastic) presents. I really think the frugal lot are more often virtue signalling than genuinely broke or struggling.

Now that's what I call creepy

Bang on OP. MN Christmas has always been competitively worthy though. I remember posting her ten years and and being at the way people claimed to spend their christmases. I honestly don't know anyone in real life that has Christmas like that.

I used to live in Germany. When you go to see father Xmas there he has a list of what you’ve done that’s naughty and nice* and tells you off love the Germanic efficiency

*obviously came from the parents but I still don’t know how

What sort of things did you find unbelievable Carol. Genuinely interested?

I do find it a bit disturbing that those who wish to stick to simpler or more traditional Christmases are being described as 'virtue signalling' or 'competitively worthy'.

It's quite nasty and almost like an attempt to bully people into buying into the modern and very commercialised Christmas, even if they don't like it. Otherwise they get sneered at.

A bit childish.

I think you're coming across as judgy and a bit mean. I don't limit my kids to four gifts, we do normal xmas dinner and I wouldn't want to spend xmas alone but what bothers you so much about other people doing things differently? A few of the threads you're referring to are just describing their personal view of how they want xmas. Doesn't have to be the same as your personal Xmas but live and let live.

Any sign yet of the Oxfam Goat crew? I must admit I salute Oxfam for coming up with the most perfect passive-aggressive gifting ideas ever - 'Dear friend/relative, I have made a charity donation in your name just to remind you that you are a thick, greedy, materialistic piece of shit and I am much more worthy than you are...'

Now that is a nasty and spiteful post.

Just stop buying so much plastic tat, crap and shit toys your kids will play with for 5 minutes just so they have more to open. And using plastic shitty wrapping paper.

That's my only bug bear 🤷🏼‍♀️

Do what you want with your christmas box or whatever else. The whole point of the festive season is to have fun and spend quality time with family and good food.

Making it about piles of presents and only for kids is a really shitty way to 'do christmas'

I love Christmas 😊

Brought an Elf On The Shelf, did it for one year (when I remembered) then realised what a pain in the arse it is and it's been in the box ever since.

Don't do Christmas Eve boxes, but only because my oldest 2 were a bit too old when they became a thing and my youngest is autistic and doesn't get it all.

Love a festive handwash 😂

I hate how people get abuse for putting their decorations up 'too early' or before people think is acceptable 🙄
I say do what you bloody want in your own home! If you want to put your decs up in August, do it! It's nobody else's business!!

I love Christmas. Everything about it. But, in recent years, I’ve taken stock a bit, looked around and thought why do we need all this stuff? The planet is quite literally drowning in rubbish that no one needs. But people buy it, so it gets produced, so people buy it, people don’t have enough space, it goes in landfill, people have enough income that they regularly chuck away perfectly good things. Etc.

This year, for the first time ever, adults in the family are not buying each other gifts. This has been agreed on by everyone. And my nearly 10 year old DD’s big peresent is an ‘experience.’

Everyone is different but I feel strongly that we are in danger of filling our homes and our lives with stuff we don’t need. My kids have accumulated so many toys, craft things etc and they play with a quarter of it, if that. One of my big jobs is to sort it all ready for the charity shop. But I don’t want to simply replace it with more.

YANBU OP

If you like a big Christmas with lots of presents (gasp!) than you'll be festooned on MN as a brain washed, morally deficient, gluttonous show off. No matter what you buy it will be decried as "plastic tat". If you buy lots of pressies you clearly don't bake, make crafts or spend quality time with your children and loved ones. Your commercialized addled brain must have forgotten the true meaning of Christmas.

There are always a lot of sanctimonious yobs on MN (myself included ) but the ones who bang on about Christmas excess do seem a particularly joyless bunch.

Mine are teens and we do Elf on the Shelf, Xmas Eve box and gorge ourselves. DH and I get drunk with friends. It's a Yuletide feast, not an exercise in abstemious extremes. If you chose to do that, that's your lookout, but fgs, shut up about it. It's boring as AF.

What a load of absolute shite Fixitup.

Most of the Christmas threads I've read on Mumsnet seem to have weird obsession with wearing 'PJs' permanently until new year arrives and bolting the door against any visitor who dares to turn up

meh, I will be doing the usual extravagant breakfast and dinner, copious amounts of different gin's and other drinks, shed loads of presents and lots of slobbing round. Ds's are 22 and 26

Well this thread is saying more about some posters than the threads they are moaning about tbh.

Yes I agree Sally.

How on earth is it 'joyless' to love an old style Christmas that isn't spent tearing around crowded shopping centres, watching your kids barely look at one present before they're on to opening the next, before leaving half of them lying around unused and still in the box 6 months later, and putting the decorations up so early the novelty and excitement has long gone before Christmas day?

I don't buy into a lot of the excess of modern Christmasses. Bbut I get great joy from going to my niece's nativity play, attending our local candle lit carol concert, helping to produce the panto in the community hall, and making mince pies and Christmas cake Also from sitting around with my family enjoying a traditional Christmas dinner, getting lots of books for presents that I can curl up with on miserable January evenings and yes, giving presents in return but not making shopping the centre of Christmas.

Nothing joyless about it. And neither am I virtue signalling. I just don't like a lot of the shopping and spending and hassle and stress that seems to have become part of Christmas nowadays.

There's nothing modern about excess at Christmas. Its roots are in a pagan Yultide feast that people used to hold back animals to slaughter for, get epically drunk, have contests and eat too much, even needlessly and wastefully use wood to make a huge wheel to set alight and jump over.

Okay then, they way it is returning to the excess of many years ago, as opposed to the simpler and more enjoyable Christmases of recent decades.

It's not joyless to have what you think is an old fashioned Christmas it's joyless when people clutch pearls at what others do.

Not to mention the awful threads where posters are encouraging each other to leave elderly (not toxic) relatives alone at Christmas, because it's all about them and whatever makes their 'little family' happy

Yes this. Or make elderly people come to their house for Christmas because small children suddenly find it too stressful to travel for a couple of hours in a car at Christmas, though can manage perfectly well any other time.

The threads where people who are alone at Christmas and don't want to be being told by other posters that they are lucky and they wish they could be alone are also really insensitive. Especially where that person is then told to volunteer - as if they are not worthy of having a bit of time to chill and relax the,selves and so should serve others.

My dad, mother in law and I are all doing Christmas Eve boxes for each other this year. We're all adults and the mass onslaught of my mother in law's relatives starts Christmas Day!

Nearly forgot. No adult is allowed to have a present either and to want something is entitled.