To be thankful Christmas is over for another year....

[Oakenbeach]

Presents opened by 6am.... Dinner eaten and decorations RIPPED down and back in the loft. Roll on New Year.

22TB

Wow....that's a lot of digital memories.

Hope they're all tagged for fast recall.

So your life is one big, long stretch of aimless, unplanned nothingness that is occasionally punctuated by a lucky spark that makes a happy memory.... Well, imagine how much better your life would be if every day was planned to be packed full of those sparks, content in the knowledge others (or perhaps only a very few) hadn’t bettered your experience.

So not only you don't understand callanders you can't read either.
Maybe you should plan some English lessons with emphasis on reading comprehension in the new year?

If you haven't time for memories then why bother making them? What an inefficient way to use up your precious time!

I hope you have a little book of memories. Those are really useful to keep. With time stamps in. Cross referenced. Or tagged for easy recall

It will be on an excel spreadsheet with the filters activated and vlook ups to other years on different tabs

I can imagine the op with a stop watch demanding her family Make Memories Now before moving them along to the next scheduled Memory To Be Made. All filmed by her dh. Logged and catalogued for future reference in case her dc should ever claim they had a horrid childhood

So your life is one big, long stretch of aimless, unplanned nothingness that is occasionally punctuated by a lucky spark that makes a happy memory.... Well, imagine how much better your life would be if every day was planned to be packed full of those sparks, content in the knowledge others (or perhaps only a very few) hadn’t bettered your experience.

I think your life sounds utterly joyless, tbh. Who wants to be scheduled to the nth degree? Some of the loveliest moments in life are the most unexpected – running into a friend you haven't seen for ages and going for an impromptu coffee, turning on the telly to find your favourite film is playing, nattering to an elderly neighbour whose grateful you've stopped to give them the time of day. Moments like those can't be set to a timer. Or do you just spend the entire time checking your watch and telling them you have to get a move on because your next memory needs to be made in two minutes?

OP is so respectful of 'traditions' yet thinks Christmas starts in November and ends on Christmas Day. Lunacy. What you espouse (whether genuine or not) is rabid capitalism, instant gratification, anti meaningful, soulless nonsense.
IF this is real and true, you have a problem. In fact, you are a problem. Attitudes such as these are the economic neo-liberalist's dream.
You wouldn't know what a tradition was if it smacked you in the mouth. No doubt you take your cues from the John Lewis Christmas advert. Once that airs, it's Christmas right?!
I don't know why I keep revisiting this thread, it's made me irrationally annoyed.
I wouldn't care what you do if you weren't so dammed sure it was the only 'right' way to do it.
It's the combination of arrogance and gross ignorance that is so bloody irritating.
Ah fuck it. I have to stop reading this (feeding LO to sleep and MNing is sometimes not a great idea).

Some people (IMO balanced people) have a mix of planned and unplanned things. e.g. today I had relatives round - we had an approximate arrival time (give or take an hour) and loose plans to choose a film or two to watch when they were here. We had fun choosing which movies would suit all of us in the particular mood we were in today, we had nibbles of various types (which had obviously been purchased in advance for the visit), then watched a couple. The time they left was flexible depending on when people felt they wanted their dinner so went home, as the agreement was that people would have their dinners at home.

So a mixture of planned (date, approx arrival time, nibbling type food being there, & watching films) and unplanned (exact time of arrival, which film, time of departure). No floating through life aimlessly, enough planning done to ensure we were all comfortable & enjoyed the afternoon but no rigidity - we get that enough at work!

And no NYE is NOT the greatest event in the year for me. I detest it for various reasons, some of which relate to the drunkard throwing up all over my car bonnet on the way home & having to wash that off at 4am so it didn't bake on too much one year - an event I couldn't have planned against so being organised wouldn't have helped with that. And I can't sadly prevent my neighbours in all directions from setting off fireworks from 9pm until about 3am, all I can do is try to get to bed early with a sleeping pill or five.

The thing is that what PPs are not realising is that the OP is suffering from

Premature treejaculation

The act of erecting one's Christmas decor in any month other than December.....

It leads to many issues!

I think the OP is a fairly dismal wind-up. But if she isn't that she isn't being unreasonable. If I lived with her I'd be thankful christmas was over for another year too.

One of the most magical days I have had was many years ago when a friend and I missed our flight home from Milan - through sheer incompetence/faffing etc. It was stressful at the time but we took a train to Venice the next morning to catch an evening flight to Heathrow on the same airline. We got on the train in Milan and got out - in Venice - on the water. It was like landing on the moon. You just don't expect Venice to be Venice. We spent a magical day there and flew home. I still remember it. Far better than a planned trip to Venice because it plopped on our laps unexpectedly.

So your life is one big, long stretch of aimless, unplanned nothingness that is occasionally punctuated by a lucky spark that makes a happy memory.... Well, imagine how much better your life would be if every day was planned to be packed full of those sparks, content in the knowledge others (or perhaps only a very few) hadn’t bettered your experience

I plan maybe at the most a week -10 days ahead. Everything turns out great.

If I planned more then I can guarantee it would all turn to shit.

Isn’t the point of making memories is that you can remember highlights

If you have to refer to video evidence then the day can’t be all that memorable

Why can’t people respect traditions any more...

The irony of reading this statement in one of OP's posts