AIBU to wonder why so many women martyr themselves at Christmas?

[HappyHarlot]

All the things they MUST do or Christmas is ruined!

The children won't remember half of it. The women won't have the time or energy to actually enjoy the experience.

Why don't they delegate?

Christmas is the same date every year so plan accordingly and avoid the last minute stress.

Are they just drama llamas or am I just not getting it?

I agree that delegating is hard work. I also think christmas reflects your normal family set up. If your partner works away all week they arent going to appear and do all the driving to extra events, ditto shopping and gift buying. If you normally do all the meal planning its a bit odd to suddenly say that is someone elses job this week as its got a bit harder.
My DH is at the supermarket now and has done at least half the gift shopping as thats how we normally do things at the moment. Some previous years he's flown home christmas eve so has been less useful.

I have very low standards:

• no decorations (just one plastic tree)
• no elf
• no Christmas Eve box
• no big clean

But if I want my kids to have wrapped presents that arrive on time, I need to organise that. DH wouldn’t bother wrapping, or doing stockings, he thinks the presents are the same no matter how they’re packaged. I think the kids would mind. Am IBU?

I’ve been to a lot of of plays, carol concerts etc for the DC. DH will go to one or two, I’ve been to all of them (minus one, which was a clash). The DC really want one of us there and say so - am IBU to make time to attend?

@Bitofnamechanging I'm excited too of course! I just don't see the point in shaming people that get stressed

YANBU, some people create extra Christmas work that’s all totally unnecessary, I’m desperatsly trying to keep things simple and not create extra stress for myself.

MIL keeps asking me if I have done these ‘essential’ tasks e.g. have you bought your matching Christmas Eve PJs for everyone? Have you put your Christmas bedding on yet? Have you had your hair and nails done ready for Christmas?

And then there are the women that come on here and tell other women...stop moaning it's easy see how good I am at it! Women are great at making other women feel shit

It's not about trying to make anyone feel shit. How many threads do we see each year about "ungrateful kids" and "unappretiative husbands/wives/family"

How many times does this have to happen before peope realise that everyone's at work all year, kids are all at school, it's dark.its cold everyones tired and all everyone wants to do is sit around in their pants/pyjamas and watch tv. They dont want to be dressed up in scratchy sweaty clothes and made to "perform" for the masses. They dont want to sit down to.so.much food they dont know.enere to start theres no room.on the table and everyone petrified of dropping they fancy cups that come out once a year.

No one wants to have it all.hyped up so much long winded rituals that theres no way even the best standard of presents,.well.everything is still going to he a let down because how can it not be. Not helped of course by again being expected to perform constant acts of grate fullness before peope start moaning at them for being rude. Despite the fact they ignored all requests just to shove a fiver in a card so the kid could.put it towards something they wanted, because they decided they had to have something to unwrap instead .

The first once or twice this happens yes if course people are sympathetic. If you continue to do this despite the fact it's a disaster and its clear no one really wants it then hows it making people feel like shit to say it's ok to lower these standards no ones really that bothered and stop doing it to yourself. At some.point you kinda have to realise you bring it on yourself if you could easily forgo it but chose not to.

We all say "sit down FFS Anne" and it's always "no no I've got soooooo much to do there's no TIME to sit down

So instead of saying that, why not say, " I'll carry on serving, here's your plate love" ? I detest that " sit down" rubbish when you are in the middle of something. It's soooo undermining, like " what ever you are doing is stupid, why don't you sit on your arse like like me?" Anne can't say, I'm serving the wine , coz last year granny poured the red wine into the sprouts due to not wearing her glasses. Help the poor woman.

I have a big family and I love Christmas. So do they. But I do serve the dinner to prevent my mum saying " I didn't get any......" Kids taking all the gravey, knocking over stuff, then put the extras in serving dishes on the table.

If you don't enjoy it, change it, don't follow Facebook, but most of all stop judging, and if it's not you at the helm, roll your sleeves up and help!

I adore my mother, but her Christmas martyrdom drives me crazy
Every Christmas Eve she doesn’t sleep, because she’s too busy preparing a five course meal. If my siblings and I offer to cook she gets upset.
On Christmas Day , she will serve the food like a waitress and will refuse help from anyone.
I don’t buy into the whole Christmas commercial nonsense and as a result don’t feel the stress. I buy a few presents online, wrap them up when they arrive.
My husband buys a few drinks, treats and that’s it

I must have missed the memo where you're supposed to serve a starter for Christnas meal what do you all have?

With a roast dinner and Xmas pud there's no room to be pre-filling unless on quality street anyway is there?! (I'm not a competitive under eater btw, quite the opposite!)

Because we live in a patriarchal society where women are fed messages from early childhood about how you must provide a certain type of Christmas in order to be considered a good wife and mother

Or you could take the view that a lot of women are control freaks and won't let anyone else do anything unless it's not perfect. For example, moaning because the "useless" husband has wrapped the presents in the wrong colour paper. Surely as long as they are wrapped it really doesn't matter?

I've had to do present shopping but I've been doing that for months to spread cost. We don't go overboard with food and drink so we only really had a few chocolates, the turkey and extra veg to buy. Already had a Christmas pudding from last year which is past its best before date but will be fine.

What about all the dc’s Christmas discos, brownies trip to the panto, school nativity, carols in church, school Christmas fair etc. This is all the extra stuff

What about it? Doesn't sound like it's more work except for being a taxi service.

“I don’t understand” a very simple concept pretty much means “yeah, I’m doing it so much better than you”.

brownfox we don't have a starter either.

I also go and do Christmas Day parkrun on Christmas morning so have a proper breakfast beforehand but don't need any food afterwards until we have our main meal.

It's become competitive. Posts on Fb about cleaning house from top to bottom (why?), lots of photos of coordinated Christmas trees that were put up in November, lists of things that need doing so we know how busy they are. Gives me a good laugh though.

It's important to realise which things you actually like doing and want to do (both personally and as a family) and then only do them.
One year I got conned into the homemade daily Fun Family Activity advent calendar idea, so I made (yes fucking MADE) an advent calendar and then spent ages looking up ideas for what we could do each day (making biscuits! going to see the lights! movie night with hot chocolate! etc etc).
Fucking nightmare. We never felt like doing that day's activity because we were exhausted from the general run-up to Christmas stuff going on, and actually some of the stuff we did anyway but just whenever we felt like it, not because it was Today's Designated Activity. I began to resent what the next day's activity would be.
That was when I realised that this was not something that we were enjoying and so we didn't have to do it any more. And that is what I stick to now every Christmas. We ahve our own traditions which we all take part in and enjoy. We each do the bits that we like and so everyone benefits. And some stuff doesn't get done at all and you know what? It's still a really magical, wonderful time.

• What about all the dc’s Christmas discos, brownies trip to the panto, school nativity, carols in church, school Christmas fair etc. This is all the extra stuff

What about it? Doesn't sound like it's more work except for being a taxi service.*

I think I would like the school your dc attend @BlaueLagune .
Where we live discos often need parental help, likewise panto trips. School nativity means getting a costume and perhaps learning lines. The school fair requires donations brought in. They all require copious amounts of small change for dc.

Posted before adding they also require a lot of parental attendance.
There is no reason why mums have to do all of this but it is a fair amount of effort.