To feel guilty about ordering prepared Xmas dinner

[merrygoround51]

Just that. I orderEd a slap up meal from a local fine food shop /deli. Everything is cooked or prepped.

Cost is quite high but we can afford it but I have a niggling feeling that I should be doing what my mother, grandmother and aunties do/did - ie martyr themselves for 3 days prepping Christmas and Stephens day dinner. Maybe it’s particularly Irish but an exhausted, wrung out mother almost seems part of Christmas and I feel like I am somehow letting the side down with my laziness and am tempted to give in and prep it all.

I’ve considered not even cooking Christmas dinner and doing it on a different day so YANBU! I don’t want to be slaving away on Christmas Day but I likely will be 😅

On another note, a few years ago when I was pregnant and very ill with morning sickness with Dd I was cooking Christmas dinner when mil nipped over to see dc. I wasn’t well at the time and I had bought frozen products so I didn’t have to go shopping last minute for fresh plus for quickness (I’m talking veg etc). She told me it wasn’t a proper Christmas dinner as I didn’t make it all from scratch! 🤛

Anything to make it a bit quicker and easier imo.

don't feel guilty.
I have ordered a selection of frozen food ready to cook for this year.
I might even use gravy granules.
it will be tasty with a lot less effort on my part.

Cost is quite high but we can afford it but I have a niggling feeling that I should be doing what my mother, grandmother and aunties do/did - ie martyr themselves for 3 days prepping Christmas and Stephens day dinner
Do what you like if you're happy and it suits you but why on earth would 2 dinners take 3 days worth of preparation. Unless it's a state banquet it sounds like they were martyring themselves. Christmas dinner doesn't take days to do.

I suspect the third of people saying YABU are saying that you are unreasonable to feel guilty, and the two thirds saying YANBU are saying you are not unreasonable to supply a pre-prepped Xmas dinner, FWIW, as I can’t see why anyone would be bothered by this, especially at the moment!

Anyone who spends three days on Christmas and Boxing day meals isn't doing it properly, get organised, CHristmas is a big roast with a few more bits, that's all, it has the advantage that few really like turkey so it doen't matter of it's a bit naff.

If you are supporting a small independent business in this time of Covid, YANBU to do this.

YABU to feel guilty about ordering prepared Xmas dinner!

Enjoy it! This is the first year we've got a proper full turkey, we usually get a small pre-prepared joint to just bung in. Everything else is ready prepared. Why have more stress on Christmas day! More time for drinking and tv watching and scoffing chocolate

Guilt of this kind is a switch that can just be turned off, as far as I’m concerned.

This ^

@merrygoround51 You have landed the jackpot in life, you can afford a luxury to make you life better. Please, grab the opportunity with both hands.

Be kind to yourself. Don't allow guilt to undermine your success.

Are you mad? As pp said, you are helping the economy. Put your feet up and enjoy and to forget the work ethic for one day

I get you with the Irish Catholic guilt

I’ve ordered the lot for collection from Sainsburys all to just be put in the oven & I’m feeling guilty - even though I’ll either have a brand new newborn, be in hospital or 10 days overdue!

@merrygoround51 @MaverickDanger Ah, gather round the fire so that I may tell you the story of an Irish Christmas miracle. My Irish grandmum would use The Guilt rtm so all seven of her children would come home for Christmas. Once every bedroom in the house was full with seven original adults, six spouses, at that point 120,000+ grandchildren, she’d be so stressed out her bin, she’d start doing her impression of a chimney at 4am. Then the smoke would slowly get into all the other rooms, in a family where everyone had headaches or asthma, and everything stunk. Finally, the year all the toilets broke and overflowed ON Christmas itself, the worst holy show you can possibly imagine, and Grandmum was crying for the 20th Christmas in a row, my uncle, the eldest son who, of course, worshipped his ma, stated, “We’re all going on holiday next Christmas or we’re not going to survive it.” And the following Christmas... we all went on holiday, and no toilets overflowed and Grandmum didn’t chain-smoke and no one tried to cook. And after that, no one ever tried to all stay in one house again and everyone got assigned part of Christmas dinner to cook. Truly, a miracle. Light a candle in remembrance.

Grandmum’s gone now, probably guilting and/or organizing the angels, but it worked out beautifully for about 10 years.

Sometimes you have to break the pattern, even if the pattern is in your blood... or on Grandmum’s best Christmas plates

@RightYesButNo oh that sounds like a very typical Irish Christmas !

@RightYesButNo that’s had me in stitches, I can picture it entirely!

Absolutely enjoy it.

I'm quite pleased with the way I've managed to develop a new tradition of team prepping the Christmas Dinner.

Anyone who will be there for Christmas Day (just us this year) comes over on Christmas Eve, brings wine, chocolate and a peeler and we prep all the veg, wrap the pigs in blankets, stuff the turke, round the kitchen table whilst getting slightly tipsy and having the kinds of conversations you only have when slightly tipsy and there's no eye contact.

It's the best bit now, for me.

All the comments agree with my pov but the voting doesn't. Yabu for feeling guilty. Your course of action is fine!

Do you know what...women need to stop with the whole feeling guilty over innocuous stuff. The amount of times that I see threads about "I gave DD a biscuit and feel so guilty" "My food wasn't homemade I feel terrible" etc is ridiculous.

Women are not inherently guilty beings. We are socialised to think we are always in the wrong/not good enough/not doing our best, despite the fact we pick up the mental load, the physical load, and often the financial load. We are set to impossibly high standards, and we have been convinced that as a result we need feel guilty over perfectly reasonable stuff. Stop it - it only feeds into the narrative that whatever we do isn't good enough.

And do you know what, no one else thinks you're in the wrong with the innocuous stuff. No one in their right mind would give a shit if the Christmas dinner is homemade or pre-bought. It's only us.

Next time you begin to feel guilty, ask yourself, would a man feel guilty about this? No - he'd probably be applauded by everyone for ordering food in and not feeding the family twiglets and Percy pigs for Christmas dinner. If a man wouldn't feel guilty neither should you.

I mean...a stressed out Irish Mammy who’s been up at 5 am every day that week to prepare for the birthday boy’s celebration is part of the Christmas experience so if you’re happy to deprive your poor offspring of that most sacred tradition, go ahead.

My mother near passed out the first time she was served a turkey joint already boned and rolled by the butcher. The mortification of it all!

Over the years, and following none of her daughters taking up the Mantle of Womanly Guilt for Christmas, she’s mellowed as is known to purchase the oul bag of frozen veg herself.

She’s a phenomenal woman but 100% of the generation that believes fighting, crying, stressing, cooking, and martyring oneself = maternal love.

Enjoy your lovely stress-free meal!

Also OP my mum did the martyr thing when we were growing up. Spending all day Christmas Day - and a good portion of Christmas Eve too - slaving away the kitchen, snapping at anyone who came in, getting stressed and grumbling that one one was helping (we did offer, she said no). Yes YY w food tastes good but honestly we'd all rather have had our mum with us on Christmas Day, playing with us and admiring our new toys, than a cranky Scrooge of a woman. Which is why I never home make Christmas dinner I order everything in packets except the meat

Next time you begin to feel guilty, ask yourself, would a man feel guilty about this? No - he'd probably be applauded by everyone for ordering food in and not feeding the family twiglets and Percy pigs for Christmas dinner. If a man wouldn't feel guilty neither should you.

THIS.

It drives me mad the way so many women willingly play into this narrative. For no good reason whatsoever.

Martyrs are a scourge, esp. when they raise helpless mummy's boys (and shame the next generation of women into running themselves into the ground pandering to the useless little twats they reared).

Yes, absolutely, every man in known would be pleased with himself for getting a meal on the table, even if it had been delivered ready prepared.

Definitely don't feel guilty! I've started a new line on my husband 4-5 times a month. What would you like for dinner or shall we support a local business? I'm so bored of deciding what to cook, never mind actually cooking it, and the local restaurants are desperate for trade. Win, win!

@BrandyandDeath precisely. It's bad enough others heap expectations on women, we don't need to be doing it to ourselves

YABU to feel guilty.
DH and I cook together with gin fizz and genuinely enjoy it. If we didn’t we would order in!