‘I’m not a Christmas person’

[Theanswerisblowinginthewind]

I keep hearing this a lot recently.

If you’re not a Christmas person, why?

Completely understand that it’s difficult for some people at this time of year with loved ones having passed etc. But if it’s not something understandable like that, why don’t you like Christmas?

I love it more now I have a Dd, but even before that I loved the lights, tree, presents, food, going out etc-what’s not to love?! 🤷🏻‍♀️

Surely the message from this is that we need to scale it down.
God knows I’m making an effort to.
The mental load can be overwhelming. Let’s all agree to simplify. Just even those on this thread who are dog tired by the hassle and spending. We’re supposed to enjoy it.

For the first time this year DH and I have agreed to not buy Christmas presents for each other because we don’t need anything or have anything that we genuinely want. We are very thoughtful with each other and give each other presents at other times, take good care of each other, so it would be silly to spend money just for the sake of it. My adult daughter has said that the adults in the family (her, SIL, adult Grandchildren) have agreed no gifts for adults this year, so the only gifts I need to sort out is for my other two grandchildren (their parents gave up on adult gifts some years ago) and my great grandson. That and spending our Christmas Day just the two of us, with our animals, and visiting family at New Year, makes it pressure free nice now. I avoid the shops (love online grocery shopping) though and incessant rubbish on the TV before it though. We have a small tree that will go up on 22nd/23rd and look pretty, but be down again by New Years Eve.

But you like food

The poster whom you were addressing may well like food but she doesn't appear to like Christmas food. She doesn't eat meat (so no turkey) and dislikes Christmas pudding and Christmas cake.

Don’t have turkey, Christmas pud or Christmas cake.
Have nut roast (I love) tiramisu and a caramel apple granny. Make it your own.

The 2 month build up doesn't help. You're almost sick of it before it's happened. I'd ban any Christmas ads, decorations etc before December.

I had a shit childhood - neglect, emotional and physical abuse- but Christmas is the only time I ever remember everyone being happy so to this day at aged 53, it’s my favourite time of year. Love everything about it, the decorations, lights, shopping, presents, food.

Christ Mass is the name. We all know the meaning.

@Dnaltocs

Christ Mass is the name. We all know the meaning.

We all know your meaning because Christians put their label on an existing Winter festival. You do you and let the rest of us treat it like the original version.

I hate Santa/Father Christmas. He ‘s a useless commercialized myth who steals credit from hardworking parents, especially mothers.

For me, it’s the crass commercialisation and materialism coupled with raucous office parties , drunk revellers & piles of vomit on tbe street. Bah humbug

@loveablequalities

I used to really love it. All through my childhood, teens, twenties and even a bit into my thirties but FML the stress of it now. My family (not dh and the kids but the rest of them) seem to except me to do EVERYTHING. I need to cook and host and sort out presents for everyone. Provide them with specific suggestions for gifts for my husband, my kids, me. I'm done in with it. I've put the foot down this year and said I'll cook (even though I don't like roast dinner very much) but I'm dammed if I'm doing all the thinking for everyone. Sort your own gifts. If you can't think of something then money in a card or nothing. I couldn't give a shiny shit about a gift. The gift of not having to be personal secretary to the rest of yous: that's what I'm giving myself.

@loveablequalities are you me?? I have also had enough of the fucking lists and told them all to sod off this year. Managed to scale back the present buying for adults a few years back but it still drives me bonkers for the kids. Demands for a list of items costing no more than £10 that the children will really enjoy, that can be purchased online with no delivery fees.

Piss. Off. The kids don't need anything. Anything they want doesn't fit into your stupid criteria, and it's not my job to do your fucking thinking for you. If you really need to buy them something then crack on (they'd prefer cash FYI but that's apparently unacceptable) but LEAVE ME OUT OF IT.

I'm sorry for shouting

I think it's a time for kids. I loved Christmas but the last one that really felt special was when I was 11 in my final year of primary school. After that we were in a new house and it just didn't feel the same.

What I genuinely cannot abide are all the martyrs that come out at this time of year. There are many of them on this thread.

I really love Christmas. But I will never forget the Christmas after my first marriage had ended. I planned a really nice day for myself on Christmas Eve, went to the ballet, it was fab. Then it finished and all the families got up and went home together, and I got on the bus and saw all the lit up windows with people together inside and went back to my house, where all my lovely flat mates were gone as they had travelled back to their families. I was going to a friend for Christmas dinner the next day, fortunately, but the loneliness and sadness that evening and the next morning were crushing.

While I am fortunate enough now to have wonderful Christmas times, that year - and the few that followed - are always there to remind me that not everyone is so lucky and it can be a very sad time.

I found Xmas extremely stressful when the kids were small. I enjoy it much more now they are all adults. Xmas was a stressful time growing up for me as my dad was a drinker and this always caused problems and rows. Even when I was married with kids he was still difficult around the festive season. He died 10 years ago and since then I've been able to relax and enjoy it more.

@Feedingthebirds1

My enthusiasm for Christmas declines every year, as the commercialisation gets more intrusive and demanding.

I'm not suggesting we go back to an orange, a walnut and a shiny penny in a stocking, but the pressure to have piles of tat, to eat to a standstill, to buy cards in August (I saw some in July this year - I was not happy), to me it's got totally out of hand. I'd like not to think about Christmas until December, preferably around the 15th, but you can't avoid it. By the time it gets here, I just want it to be over.

The endless Christmas music in the shops, the piles of 'stuff'. I scream quietly to myself, but sometimes it takes a lot of self control to internalise it.

I even have problems with Midnight Mass and Christmas services in general. I'm a dyed in the wool agnostic, I admit I haven't got a clue and the more I think about it the more I fry my brain. But in church they insist on saying 'on this day Christ was born'. Let's assume there was a Christ. Scientists have been able to date some of the events recorded in the bible. The census can be approximated through historical records, the Star in the East is generally held to be a supernova, we can approximate quite closely when Herod ruled. Some scholars say that puts it around September, others claim that if the shepherds were tending their flocks it was more likely to be spring. And not 2021 years ago either. More like 2025/7. Either way it's probably a day when you're cleaning the loo or pushing a trolley round Asda, not stuffing yourself with turkey. So I object to 'on this day Christ was born'. On this day we celebrate the birth of Christ, fine.

Sorry, I'll bore off. It's something that gets me every year!

I don't get this either. Why do people celebrate Jesus allegedly being born at Christmas if he was born in another month?! That's why I don't take it seriously at all.

Because with a career in hospitality and social care, it's always about someone else's Christmas and it's just lost any appeal to me personally because it adds stress and expense I don't need and there's the arguing over Christmas rota's, trying to fit everything in and you're not allowed to be tired or stressed because 'it's Christmas' and you're supposed to not ruin it for everyone else.
I usually have the first week in January off, when everyone is as miserable as sin and like to tell me how 'lucky' I am to not have to go 'back' to work when I've been there the entire time they've been off!

Not religious, adult DC so Santa is long gone. None of us can bear the amount of utter tat in the shops from October onwards. None of us eat traditional Christmas food, none of us drink alcohol. Extended family too far away to meet with. I am totally done with the mental load it used to be, would prefer it not to happen every year. Happy to donate generously to food banks and toy collections in lieu of giving to nephews and nieces who can't be bothered to send a thank you text. We are going to help friends plant trees in their new woodland on Christmas Day.

I see where you are coming from OP.
Being older than most of you, I remember wonderful Christmases, that only started about 10 days before Christmas. Of course there was an element of commercialism, but absolutely nothing like today.
By the time Christmas comes round nowadays, you’ve been hearing Christmas music for around eight weeks and the actual Christmas period is no longer a special as it used to be.
The commercialism has totally ruined it
I still enjoy celebrating it with my family, but I hate the competitiveness and the fact it’s completely present orientated nowadays

This looks like a continuation of the many threads on the theme of 'autumn is cosy, why would you not like autumn?', in which some people genuinely struggle with the shorter, damper, darker days.

Christmas ranks pretty highly amongst my least favourite times of the year. There are numerous reasons as to why that is. Foremost is the sickly sentimentality that seems to be associated with it, 'traditions' to uphold, and as for the treacly, syrupy mawkish schmaltz that passes for Christmas 'music' (don't get me started on films), hearing exactly the SAME syrupy, mawkish, schmaltz every. single. year. is enough to make me lose the will to live.

I suspect it's because of this sentimentality that loss and grief are so greatly amplified and exacerbated by the season of supposed goodwill. And I've had a lot of loss and grief. I find Christmas very difficult to get through because of it.

It's also bloody hard work. Yes I love my lights and my trees, but they take so long to put up and decorate (my own fault as I laden them down so much), it involves maximum effort on my part. And I'm always glad to put them away, usually on around the 27th/28th.

Then there's the entertaining or conventional visits from and to people you'd really rather not see. So many threads last Christmas were relieved at having been spared this thanks to pandemic restrictions. Now the angst about MiL/Great Auntie Ethel who's a piss artist or racist Uncle Toby is starting for real for a lot of people, commencing in about September/October. And it's women doing a lot of this emotional labour.

So sorry, OP, but it's a big, fat BAH HUMBUG from this particular non-liker of Christmas. (On a lighter note I do quietly celebrate Yule/winter solstice and the slow return of life and light. Plus it doesn't involve reams of shopping, parcel wrapping, decorating, cooking, or humouring DH's family who I know don't like me).

I much, much prefer Easter/Ostara, which is my favourite holiday of them all. Lighter days, spring flowers and none of the conventional obligations that come with Christmas. Win-Win, for me!

For me Christmas is about the kids. I put effort in for them but if I didn't have kids I wouldn't be fussed. I hate the cheesy music, expense, elaborate food which isn't even that nice (looking at you turkey), hassle of trying to see everyone.

I love Christmas as I'm a Christian and it's about the birth of jesus, we dont start Christmas celebrations until advent and our tree goes up 2 weeks prior and down 2 weeks after. What I detest is the utter consumerism that has overtaken this period and it's about who can buy/do the biggest Christmas, being bombarded with adverts and songs trying to encourage us to spend. We get presents for our children, they believe in santa, that be brings children toys to help celebrate this joyfully day, but they also know the true meaning of Christmas. We have a normal roast with a couple of extra trimmings and that's all.

but they also know the true meaning of Christmas

What does this mean? We know that the existing pagan festival was hijacked by the christian version. We know that even if your jesus existed he wasn't born in December. So why is your made up religious version the "real" meaning?

I don't understand these people who get upset if they don't see people at Christmas time especially those people I know who see their families nearly every day anyway !
With some of my own family it becomes almost a race to see everybody and puts pressure of people with young kids who just want to stay in and play with their new toys !
My late in laws were a shocker at Christmas.
It caused so many arguments sometimes

It's rare I comment on these and for the record, I go above and beyond for my children and nobody will ever know my struggles with Xmas.

TW domestic abuse and rape.

My childhood experiences of extreme domestic violence were so much worse at Christmas, I used to dread seeing advent calendars because the more Xmas approached the more likely my drunken dad would possibly kill my mother. I remember her in neck braces from being strangled over the Xmas period.
Also, when I was in my early 20s a colleague raped me on our Xmas night out and because I was so drunk, I couldn't tell anyone because I would have been blamed.
But i keep the trauma to myself, I want to try to replace my trauma with amazing memories of my family and my children now, but inside its hell, almost 18 years of Christmases that should have had me removed from my parents.
I almost feel now stubborn, like those people don't get to ruin Xmas for me forever.

Lost a parent as a teen at Christmas, so I don’t think that helps. Otherwise I think it’s the pressure, how commercial and fake a lot of it is, people spending £100’s they can’t afford, normally on plastic tat that no one needs. How it seems to start in November!
I do have small children so I’ve found things we like about it and make it special for them, but like most things these days I do think it’s got out of hand ott!