Early Christmas decorations = working class

[FaLaLaLaLaaaar]

I know Mumsnet loves a class debate, so thought I’d share an argument I had with a friend last night.

She insists that only working class people put their Christmas decorations up in November, I insisted she’s a snob and class is more redundant these days so it’s a ridiculous argument.

So Vipers, I’ll ask the question as if it is coming from me to make it easier:

AIBU to think only working class people put their Christmas decorations up in November?

Yabu - No, don’t be such a snob, middle class people do too.

YANBU - Yes, it’s a working class thing.

I will be showing her the results of this.

My experience of living in the UK for over a decade is that ‘middle class’ if far too broad a brush.

There’s lower-middle, middle-middle and upper middle and the variation within is immense.

Lower middle isn’t all that far from working class, and I can’t imagine upper-middle would have anything more than a wreath on their door in December.

I agree with ThirdElephant

[quote myfaceismyown]@Rosehip10 if you start off WC and you get a degree you become MC whether you like it or not. Its not relevant into which class I was born. Similarly you cannot be a company director and working class. No subtlety here.[/quote]
DD is from a WC background (single parent upbringing in a council house), she got a degree and now works in a zoo. Who'd have thought that shovelling okapi shit and getting dry humped by a meerkat is seen as being MC.

I like the fairy lights at Christmas. I believe they first made an appearance at the first staging of Peter Pan, requested by JM Barrie and usefully invented for him by Mr Edison. Imagine Christmas without twinkly lights. Impossible.

Shall we see if we can really tank the tone of the thread in the last 200 comments by stirring up the 'white lights v coloured lights' debate?

Maybe there's an even more nuanced scale:

Blue lights - strictly felons only
Coloured lights - working class
White lights - middle class
Real candles on a real tree - upper class (because they can afford to risk burning one of their houses down, unlike us plebs)

Real candles on a real tree is most definitely the most authentic, of course, and is how my grandparents always did it. I am determined that I’m going to have real candles on the real tree this year, for the first time in many years...If I can persuade DH that yes, it’s fine, plenty of people still do it that way back home in Denmark, and it’s not horrendously dangerous because we’re all adults and we can be suitably mindful and careful! 🕯 🕯 🕯

I'd like to know what would happen if one of the people living in the next street to RaRaReba (in the semis with the coloured lights that cost half the price of her detached) got a masters? 🤯

@User5252727

Shall we see if we can really tank the tone of the thread in the last 200 comments by stirring up the 'white lights v coloured lights' debate?

Maybe there's an even more nuanced scale:

Blue lights - strictly felons only
Coloured lights - working class
White lights - middle class
Real candles on a real tree - upper class (because they can afford to risk burning one of their houses down, unlike us plebs)

Yes but where do you stand on the ice white or warm white debate?

YABU. Our decorations went up on Sunday because it was DC’s last exeat weekend from boarding school. Christmas holidays start too late in December for the rest of the children in the family to wait, and we can’t bear to put the decorations with DC away at school. DH and I are both professionals. Tell your awful friend to stop being so invested in other people’s choices.

@User5252727

Shall we see if we can really tank the tone of the thread in the last 200 comments by stirring up the 'white lights v coloured lights' debate?

Maybe there's an even more nuanced scale:

Blue lights - strictly felons only
Coloured lights - working class
White lights - middle class.

But, but, but, DH and I have ALL of the above ^ over our house/around the garden. So what class am I? Oh no, I shall not sleep tonight now pondering this. Woe is me. 😭

Cam22

A decorated evergreen branch is often all you need. I live in a historical house with deep sills. I put it on one of them. Alternatively, I might put it on an old Irish kist. I prefer raffia decorations to baubles.

@kanaola

A decorated tree branch is tacky and gaudy. A single leaf is all you really need. I hang mine behind the pantry door so nobody sees it and knows we’re decorating.

🤣

@longwayoff

A whole leaf? Tsk. We have one mistletoe berry which a hired Druid cuts from our tree with a golden sickle. We throw it straight onto the compost heap as ostentation is something which cannot be borne. Then we go to Benidorm for the holidays.

Bendidorm??? How working class !!!

@User5252727

An entire branch is gaudy in the extreme.

We have one sprig of mistletoe, and then whichever of us is the first to succumb to puritan despair at the riotous filth of capitalism can use the berries to commit suicide.

PMSL! 🤣

This whole thread could be summed up with @longwayoff remark ‘ostentation is something which cannot be borne.’ As if the worst thing you can be is visibly happy and cheerful.

I failed with mealtimes but expect more success with lights Vive le Class War!

@MurielSpriggs @Silverswirl isn't the only one to be confused about the Immaculate Conception. Probably because it's a RC doctrine so most British children won't have learnt about it in school or known it as a holiday.

In the spirit of the thread, such confusion is a widespread phenomenon of low education

Middle class street here, we all put outside lights up on 1st December. All colours, massive Santas, lit up life size reign deer, basically the entire contents of a garden centre Christmas display.

Most illuminating. I'm recycling the warm white lights we have used for years and will invest the DCs savings in a giant illuminated garden snow globe and a coloured lights projector for the front of the house. I refuse to keep my happiness to myself - I want to shout it out for whole street to see!

Yes but where do you stand on the ice white or warm white debate?

Warm white only. Ice white is for dentist surgeries and footballers' wives.

[quote merryhouse]**@MurielSpriggs* @Silverswirl* isn't the only one to be confused about the Immaculate Conception. Probably because it's a RC doctrine so most British children won't have learnt about it in school or known it as a holiday.

In the spirit of the thread, such confusion is a widespread phenomenon of low education [/quote]
Middle class people are much more likely to understand the significance of the immaculate conception.

What I really want to know, is whether cla-r-ss determines if or when a username is changed to something Christmassy, and whether having a Christmassy username is cla-r-ssy or tacky.

Hard to say if it's class. It is certainly a knowledge thing. Decorations should be put up in the first day of advent, to mark the start. This year that is 28th November.

@EmeraldShamrock

Sorry poppet, you are MC. No I agree pp is educated wc or wc class roots. They may have money. Dbro is a millionaire and considers him wc he has plenty of money but loves a pint, chippy, rag newspaper, has a mouth like a foghorn and wouldn't never put on air and grace for anyone. Wears a football shirt regularly too. Dsis chartered accountant with investment properties wouldn't change her mind, accent or wc values for anyone. Similarly privately educated from mc parents who lost money through health or hardship would always be mc. Money doesn't change class.

Absolutely. The class system is not a measurement defined by a single element. It is determined by breeding and is far harder to move between than gaining a degree or the accumulation of wealth.

For those who believe class us defined via wealth or career status what class is Mike Ashley? Or Alan Sugar? Both wealthy both powerful and yet both defined by themselves and others as working class.

@Marchitectmummy

Hard to say if it's class. It is certainly a knowledge thing. Decorations should be put up in the first day of advent, to mark the start. This year that is 28th November.

Or they can be put up whenever you like, to mark the start of quality street season.

Realistically while many people who celebrate Christmas are practising Christian’s, it has moved a long way from simply a religious festival now. Most people I know love Christmas, and many of them don’t step foot in a church unless there’s a wedding or a funeral.

Christians. Not a bunch of guys named Christian. Although they also probably celebrate, because most people do in some way in this country.

I agree about there being lots of different MC types. In somewhere like Oxford/Cambridge/Bath you get the highly educated MC tribes who have been solidly MC for generations.Theyaare not necessarily monied MC though so look a bit scruffy around the edges (and very unlikely to decorate their houses with Christmas lights outdoors at all). Somewhere like Kingston and wealthy suburbs of big cities, you got much more monied (in business/City) MCs who walk the walk but don't necessarily talk the talk.

Once we were standing behind a mother and daughter in H&M queue. Clearly extremely well-off (from haircuts and expensive jewellery to the mother's really super expensive and distinctively noticeable Gucci trainers). She said something to her DD and out came quite an ordinary (certainly no cut-glass accent there) voice. DD had made an assumption that they were super pukka but they weren't! Just wealthy. There's a massive difference!

Christmas tree up in my road already. The horror - this is a naice road!