‘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?! 🤷🏻‍♀️

I do like Christmas but...

It's our busiest time at work (HCP), so I'm always knackered. Ten times more so this year. December always seems to last at least 3 months.

My mother is basically a dementor but, for various reasons, I get stuck with looking after her at Christmas.

Both the above sap a lot of joy from the reality of Christmas, however much I might like the concept.

I hate the consumerism, the forced jollility, the extra work, the clutter with trees and decorations, so probably all of it. I hate that the build up starts once Halloween is over. I would prefer to ignore all of it but the dc would be upset so I grit my teeth and hope it's over quickly Ironic really that I was born on Christmas Day and named after a reindeer

Too much pressure. Financial pressure, emotional pressure, thinking about what to get for people, all the organising and sorting and cooking and cleaning, all the having to travel around and see various relatives, all the forced jollity, the trashy decorations, the bloominh flashing lights everywhere that always give me a fucking migraine, the shops are crowded and noisy, the yearly battle over who gets to take annual leave etc. It's just too much shit man.

I generally low ball christmas. I don't do xmas cards, I stay home as much as possible, don't do any of that elf on the shelf malarkey etc but it's still a pain in the arse.

I grew up in a house where my mother always went overboard for xmas. She always spent too much money and got into debt and mentally and physically exhausted herself every year. There wod always be some big, violent melt down from her around christmas day and she would spend mosr of the aftermath in a black mood. It was awful.

I like that we get to have time off work/school etc and get to eat nice food and that's about it!

If I didn't have children I would likely just opt out of Christmas entirely.

The older I get the more I detest it
Feeling obliged to have family round (Dh working this year so they’ll only be coming round for a few hours early evening and there’ll be no Christmas dinner just nibbles)
Thinking what to buy people (I’ve cut down on who I’m buying for this year)
Shopping (find it so tedious)
The general expense
Every year it seems to start earlier
I could quite happily go away to a cottage on the coast over Christmas by myself and do what I like when I like then come home when it’s over

I'm muslim so it's just another day. Like a bank holiday.

Totally agree about how the pressure makes it so hard for people who are lonely, skint, in a bad relationship, lost a loved one etc. Awful.

I went to buy gym gear in a sports shop yesterday and they playing Christmas music.. ffs. A sports shop, which doesn't even sell anything related to Christmas and the poor staff have to endure Christmas songs mid November.

@Dillydollydingdong

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

This

@Jobseeker19

I'm muslim so it's just another day. Like a bank holiday.

I'm curious, do you find Christmas stuff in the shops, Christmas music everywhere, Christmas ads etc. as tedious as the rest of us on this thread? Or are you able to ignore it all!

So true about it getting more tiresome as you get older too. It starts to feel like the last one was only last week. Maybe it should be changed to every 5 years.

I’m actually the opposite where I hated Christmas growing up but I love it now I have my own family. I think it really highlights the privilege you have if you are someone who has a close family or not. People just assume everyone has close family or friends to spend Christmas with and if you don’t it’s really embarrassing and isolating.

There’s expectations that aren’t met and people are left disappointed. There’s jealousy that other people seem to have so much and bitterness that you miss out. There’s grief that you are missing loved ones. You feel confused and embarrassed that you don’t feel the joyful connection to Christmas that other people automatically expect you should and it makes you feel upset and empty.

There’s money that you don’t have and are expected to spend. There’s children missing out and having it reinforced that they have less than others. You can make yourself feel good by donating presents and time, volunteering etc, but it can be confronting and embarrassing for the person accepting the donation, it’s a heavy reminder that your life is limited by lack of money and close connections.

Christmas the fantasy: Wafting around in soft focus, sipping Baileys, exchanging thoughtful gifts with your dearest loved ones dressed in subtle coordinates. You are relaxed and perfect. Bliss. #blessed.

Christmas the reality: December is an exhausting shit tonne of lists, stress and slog in the quest for some kind of Christmas nirvana.

You find out from Insta you should be doing* a North Pole breakfast, amusingly moving a frickin elf every day and creating special Christmas Eve boxes before a person even opens a present on the big day. Apparently you also need to make memories by Doing Special Things. You also need to Buy All the Things, Write to All The People and Cook All The Things.
The rubbishness is everywhere. Bailey's is overrated - it's just sweet room temp milk like nail varnish - and you need to drink 6 litres to get even a little fuzzy, by which time you'll be a stone heavier.
Christmas Eve finishes at 2am and Christmas Day starts at 4.30am when you'll hiss "Go. Back. To. Sleep"

*Disclaimer, I do none of these things, but having the world around me doing them is tedious and exhausting by proxy.

The best time of Christmas Day is 9pm when everyone has passed out in their respective rooms, over tired from over hype and too much food. You can put an ancient Christmas special on, commander ownership of the chocolates, inhale wine in peace and thank fuck it's all over. Good Tidings We Bring. Nope.

I enjoy Christmas probably because we've always spent it just us and then us and kids. No fuss no drama, no dragging kids round relatives.
I don't understand the stress people put themselves under, if dinners not perfect and Aunty Mary doesn't like her gift so what?
I am really sorry for people who have lost one's especially at Christmas.

@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.

Absolutely this.
And noone caring what l want to do - just so long as they enjoy themselves and get to relax.
Always glad when Boxing Day is over and life returns to normal.

I'm not a Christmas person anymore although don't admit this irl and still make it fun for the kids. It adds massively to my overstretched mental load and it's so much effort.

The Christmas sections in shops just fill me with despair, all the stuff, the packaging, the waste going to landfill, the utter needless tat. The angst about stocking fillers and what to get and is it enough, it's all just crazy. Makes me want to shout stop it everyone! I've toned it right down the last year or 2 but it's still too much.

I love the elf, I resisted for a long time but actually really enjoy doing funny things with it for the kids to find, now the eldest helps out that's nice.

I can't be doing with cards, hate the rigmarole of writing them out, buying stamps, posting etc. Don't display them at.home they make the place feel cluttered. Have cut right down on who we send to and thankfully this has meant we receive fewer too.

I'm turning my back on as much as I can this year and hoping I'll enjoy it more by ignoring a lot of it.

I'd actually really like to watch a Christmas movie or 2 but never have the time before xmas and then it feels too late, that's pees me off too

Oh that felt good to get all that out!

I want to love it again.
I haven't had one in years though.

I do lover certain aspects of Christmas - carols, fairy lights, Christmas trees. But I have a horrible anxiety about something bad happening at Christmas which will ruin it forever. It’s bound to happen at some point!
I also find it stressful trying to make it feel special for my children who are in their teens/early 20s. They are too old to feel the ‘magic’ but young enough to still want it. They also have enough money to buy whatever they want so it’s hard for me to find nice presents for them.
There is a hell of a lot of mental effort and expense and on the day I often feel a bit teary. I don’t know why - I think it’s pressure because I do have a lovely family and little to complain about, really.
I’ve tried really hard to avoid the constant Christmas music etc that starts in October, in an attempt to feel festive when it’s actually December. I don’t know, I just struggle to feel the joy.

It's the only day of the year when you're dictated to what you should be doing - seeing your wonderful close knit family, having fun and a nice and loving time. All those ads where people have multi generational loving families in spacious and beautiful homes with plenty of money and plenty of food. This is bullshit for many many people as this thread demonstrates.

to those who have suffered losses

As pp have said, gobsmacked why OP can't imagine why some might not like it.

@MrsMadderRose

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.

Indeed.

Also need to add into it politics as to why the pagan festival and Christmas are so close together and why a lot of pagan traditions passed into Christmas traditions.

It was often politically and socially easier to amalgamate festivities than try to ban any one of them when introducing a new religion.

Eventually it became a homogeneous mass of traditions we call ‘Christmas’ that fits many religions.

Yule logs, mistletoe, Holly and ivy aren’t at all related to Christianity.
Even the virgin birth or miraculous birth isn’t exclusive to Christianity it was dotted around pre Christian myths.

Every tradition we have has been borrowed, stolen or migrated in to our festivities from all sorts of places so it’s the very definition of pagan aka non-Christian.

I hate it. Seems to go on for 2 months which is ridiculous, rampant consumerism, massive waste, expectations of "happiness", dreadful songs, crap films and telly, people drinking even more to excess than they normally do, increase in domestic violence and child abuse, have I missed anything?

@BlueLines81
Can Completely relate

@EveningOverRooftops and @MrsMadderRose I think the pagans/other northern hemisphere solstice celebrants had the right idea.

Pagan Mavis: It's bloody rubbish all this dark and cold, I'm blinkin' fed up of it. Endless winter and where's that bloomin' sun when you need her ey?!

Pagan Sally: Oohh I know the feeling - I tell you what, shall we have a right good fire Pagan Mavis - crack open that dried boar I've been saving and get stuck into the mead? You know make a day of it? That'll see us right. I've got this really funny elf too...

I hate Christmas. My parents split up on Christmas Eve when I was a teenager. (Someone thought I'd be a really great time to tell my Dad that my mum was having an affair.)

Fast forward and I'm a single parent, my dad is dead and no surprise that I'm low contact with mum.

The loneliness I feel at Christmas almost takes my breath away. It's always just me and DD. I get no presents. Haven't had a Christmas present for years. I know it's not about getting presents but I dread being asked what I got for Christmas from work colleagues. I usually lie.

I've never had a big family Christmas - my Christmas couldn't be further from what Christmas should be according to the TV adverts (and the Christmas thread on here). It is the worst time of the year and I really struggle not to fall down a black hole. I love January as it means it's all over!

I grew up in an incredibly dysfunctional family and every year I am letting somebody down, hurting somebody's feelings and left hating myself. For me it's not that I'm not a 'Christmas person' because I have unhealthy coping strategies and the run up to the actual day is great for me because its the one time I have loads of energy and do everything and have motivation to clean, tidy, buy presents etc. - it's like a whole 2 months of mania and then I crash and feel awful again so to the outside world I look like I love Christmas. I don't I just like having an excuse to make plans and stick to them rigidly - it feels safe knowing what I'm doing every single day. But crowds, noise, people drinking excessively, flashing lights and ridiculous new traditions like elf on the shelf, Xmas eve boxes and December 1st presents (completley ridiculous!) drive me insane. I hate those parts. Christmas day is always a let down too because I want everything to be set to a perfect schedule and nothing to go wrong but life is never perfect.

Grief/loss, not getting on with the rest of my family, money worries, hate crowded places and parties, feel overwhelmed with it all and insanely stressed with the extra workload at home, and then (cherry on top) get told I’m being miserable because “everyone loves Christmas.”

Well I don’t, Susan, so butt out.