‘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?! 🤷🏻‍♀️

A history teacher told me about the pagan festival.

Also I feel a bit annoyed by the christian element - not by Christians celebrating it, which they’re free to do of course, but by school or anyone else trying to make out that baby Jesus is the true meaning of Christmas. No he isn’t. What I like about Christmas is all the stuff that goes way back before Christianity - light, feasting, tree and cosinesss in the darkness of midwinter. That’s why it exists and is when it is. I would never raise this unprovoked but i do point out out if anyone tries to get preachy on me.

@Glugglejug

This is going to sound terrible but I like Christmas but that’s only because we have plenty of money and no children and I have two weeks off so I can basically do what I want in that time.

I think Christmas adverts and songs and decorations in November are ridiculous though and purposefully go out of my way to avoid them. I think a small build up from December 1st (an advent calendar and some twinkly lights) are quite exciting, and then a tree up from about 17th December, and then take it all down after the 12th night is how it should be done. I cannot abide people who put decorations up in November and tear them down on Boxing Day. Joyless fuckers.

I totally agree with all this (apart from having tons of money and no children bit).

It drives me every year when you see the endless Mumsnet threads about putting the tree up in November and taking it down on Boxing Day because everyone's "sick of it".

Just stick to the fairly simple traditions of Christmas!, it's not hard to do.

Apart from DC I’ve spent every Xmas for the past 15 yrs alone.

Ditto my birthday that is just before and of course new year too.

I have a big family and the don’t ever make the effort to remember my birthday unless FB reminded them.

So no I’m not a Xmas person because it’s hard to care about a festive period that’s all about families and friends and celebrating together when you’ve been pushed to the outside and repeatedly reminded you’re not welcome.

I can’t wait until I’m able to go away every Xmas and spend a couple of weeks solo with my book, writing and art.

Aside from that I hate the consumerism. The expectation to spend hundreds. I do Xmas for DC and keep expectations low but it’s a kick in the teeth constantly to be told I’m not spending enough etc.

Then add into all this a childhood with an alcoholic step father who would frequently get so rat arsed he’d fall over the Xmas tree ruining it an the presents and I was often the one who had to help fix it all.

No childhood magic for me. Just piss heads, gluttons and entitled arseholes and it’s not much different now I’m an adult Tbf

I love Christmas, but I used to love it much more when I was little and had a lot more relatives around the dinner table. We would have huge family get togethers, would celebrate from Christmas Eve and travel back the day after Boxing Day. We would play games all evening until 2am and chat until 4am, eat, have a little drink.

There are now only five of us and it makes me sad, or maybe not sad as such but things are different and not for the better. I worry what will happen when our remaining relatives pass and there will only be DD,DH and I.
I’d love to go away every Christmas when that happens.
DH hates Christmas, the commercialism, the greed, crowds, queues etc. It’s pretty much the only thing we ever disagree on, I love it and he detests it.

@Dillydollydingdong

The older you get, the more Christmases you've had to live through, the more bored you get with it all..

This

I do like Christmas, but mostly within the confines of my house. I do get very bored of the same old rituals and traditions being performed over and over again. A year seems so short to me these days, it seems like barely any time since we last did it all.

Im a lone parent of 3...it all falls to me...the decorating....tree...food....presents etc etc...by the end of it i am exhausted and skint....

I hate it. It's lots of work for me & this year manipulation (again) by H's toxic family to abandon mine & leave my DP on own because they've deigned to invite us this year. (We refused, but I had to fight as they know how to guilt H).

The cost is ridiculous & my minimalist house, which I've spent all year decluttering, is cluttered again with piles of tat & toys from family - it's so hard getting the kids to part with that stuff again.

I do everything. Except food, because even if I am having a say DM or SIL run over the top of me. I also get no gifts except stuff I buy myself or useless tat because no one's bothered to know my likes.

It's just work, stress, being ignored or .arguing for me.

The worst part is we often end up doing Xmas dinner 2-3 times. Once on the day, then once with the other family & if my DB comes to visit on his year with SIL's parents we do it again.

Roll on Jan 1.

I saw some crackers today in a store that were ten pounds ! Just for most of it to end up in landfill..
It is madness.

Because I'm the fucker that Has to run round and organise everything, buy everything, cook everything, clean everything and be fucking happy about it.

@fruitpastille

It's a lot of work and v expensive. And it can be hard work pleasing everyone with arrangements. I'd prefer it with less consumerism. It also takes over a good 2 months of the year in shops and other places. If it was just December it would feel more special. I like the food and the fairy lights and a tree (from mid Dec). Actually my theory is that we'd enjoy it more if it was every 2 years

All of this. Plus having a dysfunctional family.

And not having tons of amazing parties and gatherings to go to, while hearing about everyone else's. Everybody asks you what you're doing for Christmas, what parties are you going to, what presents have you bought. It's relentless. It makes me feel inadequate and weird even though I don't want to do half the things people are doing.

I'm a bit of an introvert anyway, so I don't want to hang out with a load of strangers wearing a novelty tinsel accessory.

Plus it gets in the way of the things I actually enjoy doing that all come to a halt.

And it's a reminder of childhood Christmases which were miserable and ones when my kids were little and I had to do all the work while everyone else sat there watching or having a good time, then went home while I did all the clearing up.

@Suzi888

I love Christmas, but I used to love it much more when I was little and had a lot more relatives around the dinner table. We would have huge family get togethers, would celebrate from Christmas Eve and travel back the day after Boxing Day. We would play games all evening until 2am and chat until 4am, eat, have a little drink.

There are now only five of us and it makes me sad, or maybe not sad as such but things are different and not for the better. I worry what will happen when our remaining relatives pass and there will only be DD,DH and I.
I’d love to go away every Christmas when that happens.
DH hates Christmas, the commercialism, the greed, crowds, queues etc. It’s pretty much the only thing we ever disagree on, I love it and he detests it.

I had these wonderful lovely big Christmases but my mother often had meltdowns as the work for her was massive. We rarely had fewer than 12 and often had 20+ people at my mum's house house every year for 40 years . I loved it as a child and even as a teenager but as I got older I saw the stain it put on mother. Of course I helped out but she still carried most of the work for years. Although she found it hard she also couldn't let go of control of it as she liked Christmas done a certain way and to be fair she was an excellent cook

. I wouldn't put myself through all that work for anything nowadays I have actually enjoyed the last couple of Christmases even the one in lockdown because they have been small with very little fuss made..

I like the season rather than the day. I like the winter, the glow of all the soft twinkling lights, the scent of Christmas candles, mulled wine and just the general cosy feeling all these things bring, things that only really happen around Christmas.

Christmas Day is a boring pain in the arse and by Boxing Day that lovely cosy feeling is whipped away.

@PinkPiranha11

I just can’t be arsed with it. It just feels like a lot of work, usually for women to take on board - on top of their already horrific mental load. It’s always the same every year and it just feels more and more consumerist every year. Plus there’s now the additional pressure of people #makingmemories on Facebook etc. It’s just very tiresome.

I like the Christmas lights, good stuff on TV, etc but I hate the enforced fun.

This.

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 hate xmas,particularly as it seems now to start end of september.the whole thing is total consumer craziness.cheap plastic tat on a plastic tree, family rows before and on xmas,depression after xmas and tons of food wasted,huge debts in january.FOR WHAT? Celebrating jesus birthday...wtf

Why I don't do Christmas...

• forced fun (work/school/sports clubs)
• relentless bombardment from media, shops, crazy Christmas loving people
• decorations
• societal pressure to "gift"
• being forced to have a gift I don't want anything
• pressure to socialise
• roads and shops become unbearable, payday is on the 20th of the month...normal food shopping in December is fucking atrocious at the best of times - in Brexit land I'm dreading it

I fake Christmas every single year for the sake of my children. They think the whole season is magical and wondrous. My pleasure is vicariously lived through them only.

This year we also have the added stress of not knowing if two much loved family members will still be alive...and if they are the entire holiday is going to be spent juggling their care needs because the nursing staff who normally help rightfully get time off so less staff equals more me chasing around looking after seriously ill family whilst also still trying to make it special for my children.

I'd cancel the whole fucking thing if I could do it without upsetting those I love.

I'm not a Christmas person, OP.

It's expensive and stressful, especially if you are not a happy nuclear family. I loathe the idea that you're supposed to be having a fantastic time (why? It's bloody December, and it's cold and miserable). I have no desire to stuff myself on special food. I get through it and am very glad when it is all over.

I get depressed about rampant consumerism, landfill tat, excessive food purchases, cloying adverts, the general pressure to spend.

I do it. Have a couple of nice meals with friends and family and buy nice gifts. But if I could avoid dressing the house and preferably have the opportunity to fuck off somewhere un-Christmassy I'd be there at the drop of a hat.

I'm not a Christmas person because I lost my eldest son three days before Christmas twenty seven years ago...Of all the ironies Stay Another Day was No 1 that year.... 😔
I make an effort now for ds2 but Christmas lost its sparkle in 1994.

Well not really. That’s a myth, The pagan festival was celebrating solstice and was before Christ was born, it just changed due to the timing of Christs birth. It is not a solstice celebration and really isn’t the same thing as the pagan solstice celebration

bluntness what’s a myth? People in the northern hemisphere have been marking and celebrating the passing of the winter solstice since well before Christianity, in many cultures, and a lot of Christmas traditions are from pagan Yule and Roman saturnalia. Christmas is at the same time as a lot of those celebrations and essentially allowed them to carry on. Whether the date was “moved” to 25 dec for that reason, or was genuinely thought to be the right date, it just continued the post-solstice winter celebration with a new name.

Of course the word Christmas is Christian so it is about Christ in that sense. But having lights and a party in the middle of winter is age-old.

@thepeopleversuswork But it does feel like a real "fuck you" to people who are on their own or whose lives don't fit the template. I'm not surprised at all that it upsets or depresses people

Exactly this. I'm one of those people - I have no family in the UK, my LDR partner works most of them so out of the 12 Christmases we've had together I've spent 8 of them on my own.

Even when I was a child it wasn't great - my mother stopped making any fuss when I was 9 - I was the one buying Christmas decorations out of my pocket money, and basically forcing her to buy a Christmas tree. I had two brothers but I was the only one who ever bought our parents Christmas presents - they just didn't bother. I'm 53 and I've never had a Christmas (or birthday) present out of my older brother...

I also agree with the poster that the more you have, the more boring it becomes!

@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!

Totally agree with you. having to endure xmas music in shops makes me feel sick.

My siblings would say they hate Christmas because after I moved out my mum had an annual meltdown about putting up the Christmas tree and her many many Christmas decorations. She's a bit of a hoarder but that day the entire living room had to be clear and my siblings would have to drag endless boxes out of the loft. Needless to say this never goes well.