To not understand matching pyjamas and Christmas Eve boxes

[Fatas]

I don’t understand where all these new traditions have come from. Whole families wearing matching Christmas pyjamas and Christmas Eve boxes.

Do you do it? Or are you also confused?

Is there anyone that does not dress their baby up either for Christmas, Easter, world book day or Halloween? I mean what enjoyment does the baby gain from drawing up. I just find all these new norms a little odd, or am I just miserable?

I find it fascinating that some people on MN get so offended by a box designed to do something nice for children!

Guess what, Christmas changes. It was different in the 1950s, then the 1980s. That's how society works.

I like Christmas Eve boxes, so I do one. I don't like elf on the shelf, so I don't do it. What I don't do is piss on the chips of everyone who does have an elf.

@nosswith

I understand these ways of getting people to spend more money on non-essentials over Christmas, and do not participate in them.

I'd polish your halo, but it's a single use shine pad and would be wasteful.

Participate or don't participate in whatever you choose, but I'm pretty sure that if I went through your Christmas shopping, I could find a couple of non-essentials in there.

Anyone remember the woman from one of the pre-Christmas versions of these threads a few weeks ago who was so moralistic about not being "wasteful" that she ended up claiming that she doesn't own a single thing that isn't "necessary"? Brilliant stuff.

I’ve always done it and I don’t use social media. They have a wooden Christmas Eve box and I put pyjamas (not Christmas ones, this year I got brown ribbed ones from Zara), slippers, slipper socks, a mug, Christmas bath bomb and some Lindt chocolates inside. No waste there really.

Oh come on OP I think they look awful too and kids get enough presents without needing Christmas eve boxes but it's silly to claim you don't understand them. Some of these new traditions have come about due to SM and people wanting a cute picture to post, some are just because of consumerism. That said my DC got way too many presents so I can't claim the moral high ground.

My DC get pyjamas on Christmas Eve, it’s nice to have something new to wear on Christmas morning

What do you not understand about it?

@Plussizejumpsuit

What do you not understand about it?

How she can criticise them for being supposedly working class, or non-essential, without drawing criticism for whatever fun stuff she likes to buy or sounding hypocritical or prattish. Hence the "incomprehensible" rhetoric we always get round this.

[quote IrishGirl2020]@ChronicallyCurious

But do you just wear them once, then send them straight to landfill/charity shop and buy another pair the following year?
Even if you don’t, I reckon lots of people do and we all need to stop living wastefully in this way if there’s to be any future for our children on this overcrowded polluted planet.

Agreed that this year we were pretty short of Christmas fun but in general I don’t think encouraging our wear-once throwaway culture is a good idea[/quote]
I don't know of anyone who only wears Christmas PJs once, or even just for one week, and then throws them away.

Most will just wear the same PJs all year round, especially children. Some adults reuse the same Christmas PJs each year and store them with their other Christmas decorations/house stuff year on year.

What is confusing you?
Some like these things, others don't. If you don't then don't do it.
Not that confusing is it?

I mean, how much is there to understand? We have a Christmas Eve box and new PJs on 24th. It's a nice little addition to the fun. I struggling to understand your faux inability to comprehend that.

If this confuses you, you must be very thick

I said I wasn't going to do the Xmas eve box....but I caved lol. I always bought her new pjs anyway. We don't do family matching ones.

So this yr she had new pjs, slippers a book for bedtime and a small toy (was £2) to keep her entertained on Xmas eve.

@Abraxan

Some adults reuse the same Christmas PJs each year and store them with their other Christmas decorations/house stuff year on year.

Ah but then they won’t be matching the following year will they?

It’s really the people who buy new sets for the whole family every year that I was thinking of. But I think we’ve established that plenty of people do wear them all year round which I absolutely don’t have a problem with 😀

Anyone remember the woman from one of the pre-Christmas versions of these threads a few weeks ago who was so moralistic about not being "wasteful" that she ended up claiming that she doesn't own a single thing that isn't "necessary"? Brilliant stuff.

Yep. Even by MN standards she was special.

I was born in the 80’s and I never heard of new pyjamas or anything special aside from leaving carrot/sherry/mincepie out for Santa on Christmas Eve and having an excited bubble growing in anticipation 😂.
Midnight mass was the only thing I was aware of that some other kids did on Christmas Eve that i never did; if there had been extra pressies etc that I was missing out on, I would have known about it and would have complained accordingly.

I’m not saying it didn’t ever happen, just that it definitely wasn’t a “thing”.

I’m not saying it didn’t ever happen, just that it definitely wasn’t a “thing”.

Because you didn't know about it? Plenty of older posters than you recall doing it. Enough for many of them to consider it a "thing".

More annoying than the faux lack of understanding are the people who say something isn't a thing or well known because they don't do it or know about it- they don't seem to understand they are 1 person out of billions and their anecdotal evidence doesn't mean shit!

Not this again! Op what you do not appear to get is that other people have different Christmas traditions for their family that differ from yours and that is quite OK.

My DM still buys me a new pair of pj's and slippers for 1st Dec every year and every year on Christmas Eve she gives me a bottle of Baileys and a bath bomb or bubble bath and a book or DVD I am mid 40s.

Getting new things in early Dec or on Christmas Eve isn't a new thing. My DM has done this for as long I can remember. Defiantly when I was a young child in the early eighties and the baileys thing since I was eighteen.

What I do and buy for my own DC at Christmas is no one else's business, but mine and DH.

Here is a thread from mumsnet 2009 talking about how new pyjamas for Christmas and how they are not a new thing

Here is a thread from mumsnet 2011 talking about Christmas Eve Hampers and there are posters saying they have been doing them for years at that point

They are not new, they happened long before clinton's, B&M, home bargains realised they happened and made it easy to buy the extra shit to go in them.

My DGM used to wrap a shoe box in Christmas wrapping and we'd have our Christmas eve stuff in that, now you can buy one for £3 from Tesco.

@SpreadeagledSquire really?! Just because it wasn’t a thing for you it wasn’t a thing for anyone

I was born in the 70s and it was a “thing” for us.

I do Christmas Eve box. Simple

New pjs. Not matching lol

Christmas book to read

Xmas colouring book

Chocolate coins

Santa key and reindeer dust

Never done nor will do matching pjs

@Fatasive never understood people who don’t understand that ‘traditions’ have to start somewhere 🙄

I will never apologise for the cheesiness of matching Christmas pyjamas for my dc. They are getting to the age where they roll their eyes and sigh dramatically, and barely consent to a picture around the tree, so I will probably not be able to get away with it for much longer.

I don't post it on social media, it's simply for my own enjoyment.

I don't do Christmas Eve boxes, though.

@SpreadeagledSquire

I was born in the 80’s and I never heard of new pyjamas or anything special aside from leaving carrot/sherry/mincepie out for Santa on Christmas Eve and having an excited bubble growing in anticipation 😂. Midnight mass was the only thing I was aware of that some other kids did on Christmas Eve that i never did; if there had been extra pressies etc that I was missing out on, I would have known about it and would have complained accordingly.

I’m not saying it didn’t ever happen, just that it definitely wasn’t a “thing”.

I was born in 1986 and my Grandma did one for each of us. New PJs, slippers, socks, a new book or magazine and a selection box. She used to wrap up a shoebox for each of us. It was a "thing". We have always had new PJs on Christmas Eve, it's family law. My DGM was a seamstress and used to make them for my DM and DA. They are in their 60s

I don't remember ever talking about it with other children. It was just something that happened. We got them after the crib. Service at church.

Christmas Eve box & specific goods in the High Street shops is new to me. In my early days, it was a lump of coal, an orange & a small gee-gas in a capacious sock nailed above the fireplace.

Progress...