A thread for all the Scrooges out there

[WheelieBinPrincess]

I’m not feeling my must Christmassy because we were supposed to be moving out of our rented flat and into our first proper home with our new baby, but the solicitor has cocked it and now it won’t happen.

So I’m going to have a rant about Christmas instead.

I don’t get hot chocolate stations. Our kitchen is not big enough for any kind of ‘station’ but even if it was, feasibly how many hot chocolates would you drink in a day to make it worth having a station? Are you at the station all day? Are there soggy marshmallows and drippy bits of squishy cream seeping across your surfaces?

I think it sounds a right ball ache and the chat about ‘hot chocolate stations’ is making me cringe 😂

So just add your Christmas rants. They can be as petty as you like.

No mention of elf on the shelf yet?! Or did I miss it?

I love Christmas but the elf thing is just unbelievable.

And the times I hear about it it’s always people getting stressed about it. It’s so much work it’s hard to think of things to do etc etc. Why are people bothering with this crap?!

Christmas should be a time for spending with family, exchanging a few thoughtful gifts and eating lovely food. Simple. Don’t get why people make it so complicated.

I have to break the news that a hot chocolate station is really a thing for some people. Who has room for the pile of tooth rotting dust gathering tat I am not sure. Maybe they just set them up for social media posts and then put it all in a cupboard like normal people.

I'm just up into the attic to find the sodding elf. He only plays hide and seek in our house though, nothing elaborate. Only got him last year as honestly we needed something else to concentrate on for a bit.

I hate it. It's my birthday on the 25th Dec. No-where is open, all the restaurants only serve overpriced Christmas lunches so can't go anywhere to celebrate, having to give presents to other people when the selfish fuckers don't ever give me presents on theirs and having to smile politely when (after being asked "and what's your date of birth?), "ooooh that's Christmas Day", as if, after 50+ years on the planet I hadn't worked that out for myself.

Not interested in Christmas. Used to actually loath it. DH made redundant, several times,yet felt obligated to buy presents for his big family. Got into huge debt every year with a credit card,spent the following 6 months paying it off,AND they only bought for our DC not mine from previous marriage, youngest was only 6. I was night nursing, working Christmas Eve,and just wanted to go home to bed. Everything was arranged for us. I got to the stage I would be crying come October wondering how we could afford everything

I have always found Christmas rather depressing. I think this was due to my mother ramming home the message that for many it is a very lonely time and also extremely stressful for those who don't have much money (like our family).

I also cringe during November/December when I see people buying tat (mugs/bath sets/light up bottles of Gin) and wonder how the receiver truly feels upon opening these gifts. Once our family started having grandchildren and great grandchildren we all made the decision to stop buying presents for each other and just buy for our own families (our children and partners) otherwise we'd be paying off the debt until summer.

Roll on spring!

I don't see the point of Christmas Eve boxes. Seriously - a box of presents in preparation for a load more presents? It's so needless. If you have that much spare cash, buy a present for a hospital or food bank or DV shelter list instead. Surely that's more in the original spirit of Christmas.

@Evenstar

A hot chocolate station? What a crock of shite.

I don't know if I'm a Scrooge exactly but I do think people go over the top at Christmas.

I don't bother with a tree (no kids) and just buy a couple of gifts for my immediate family and other half.

I read the threads on here with a kind of fascination. People are obsessed! All this spending and Christmas events and lists and running around. It's insane.

[quote AlternativePerspective]Some years back I wrote this about Christmas on my blog.

My proudest moment when it was retweeted by Martin Lewis….

attheheartoftheopinion.blogspot.com/2011/12/consumers-night-before-christmas.html[/quote]
Fab!!!!

I love christmas - as others have said, if its kept low key, with nice walks, seeing the lights and eating comforting food.
But I just wanted to slag off those incredibly expensive advent calendars for adults. You're an adult FGS, what are you counting down to?!
ALL of my workmates have bought them. One girl bought two for herself. One was a beauty calendar, the other was 'eco themed', so you open a little gift everyday and also read a tip on how to be more 'green'.
THE GREENEST THING YOU CAN DO IS NOT BUY TGE BLOODY THING IN THE FIRST PLACE! 😖

Love everyone in here for not making me feel like a miserable old woman!
I just can't bear trying to keep everyone else happy and giving them the Christmas they want and literally nobody ever asking me how l would like to spend it.
Last year was perfect for me - just had mum round and dh, dd and l so absolutely no pressure at all.
Bliss

plonks onto the Scrooge sofa JOINING!

I hate it all

• Christmas trees, for the last 3 years I wouldn’t have had one at all except my mother came to my house to put it up and take it down. Why bother, I can’t be arsed

• family politics, I hate my step mother and she hates me, so WHY every year does my dad ask “are you coming up Boxing Day? X and I would love to see you” NO YOU WOULDN'T, you don’t give a shit about me or anything going on in my life on the other 364 days a year, why pretend now?

• Christmas songs, don’t think I need to explain this one, just fuck off

• Christmas movies, see above

• ANYTHING to do with Christmas before December 1st, please get a life

• the fact that everything to do with news, tv, radio and socialising in the 6 weeks before December 25 is to do with Christmas? Every single advert mentions it, along with background jingly bells 🤬🤬

• oh, Christmas jumpers can slide right into the section above about the music and movies 🤮🤮

Am I the scroogiest Scrooge of them all?? 😂😂

I am appalled at the cost of those advent calendars as well @Minceandonions and when you think of the plastic waste from all those little bottles and tubes in the beauty ones as well

No.

I once did my tax return on Christmas day.

Actually 2 as I had a company one and a personal one.

Thoroughly enjoyed it.

@FizzyOrange

Can anyone enlighten me please, what are Christmas Eve and 1st December boxes?

Just be thankful that you have never encountered either of these only on MN abominations

Bound to be plenty of threads about them on the Christmas board.

They are basically just another way to spend loads of money on "fluffy" "snuggly" totally unnecessay shite.

I really like Christmas but all the social media fuelled crap that seems to proliferate every year makes me feel like a Scrooge. It’s not even about the commercialism or whatever. It’s more the exponential growth of brand new ‘traditions’ accumulated from social media.

I don’t like how Christmas has started to take over November now, not even just the whole of bloody December. It’s not magical or special if it’s a significant portion of the bloody year.

And then all those same people who’ve started putting trees up in November, pissing about with elves, setting up hot chocolate stations, buying matching sets of bloody pyjamas for the entire family, making Christmas Eve boxes, etc, etc, etc all start going on about how they’re ‘done’ with it all and want their house back on Boxing Day.

I also hate the annual virtue signalling/guilting everyone else that goes on. In particular all those shared posts on bloody Facebook insisting that you must think of all those poor little waifs whose self esteem hinges upon whether or not your Jamie is told that his PS5 came from you or Santa/Father Christmas. It’s just annoying frankly.

I don't hate Christmas as such, I just think it's one day a year and it isn't really worth all the hype and panic that people put into it.

Same. I will add the “fake niceness” on top of it where some of these people who love Christmas try to push onto others to being nice because it’s Christmas when you know the rest of the year they aren’t bothered about being nice and also add the pearl-clutching when I say we’re not buying toys for our children (7 yo with autism and 4 yo) nor want anyone else to who asks because they have more than enough (still playing with last Christmas toys) and telling people I don’t ant anything but being given something anyway. I tell them something otherwise I get something I never would have asked for or like despite having said in the past —repeatedly— I don’t like it.

@Sparklingbrook

Yes the hot chocolate station was news to me. 😂 I don’t mind the occasional hot chocolate but don’t need it on tap. Or in a box on Christmas Eve. Just get down to Costa already.

Sorry to hear about your move. No Christmas chocolates for your solicitor. 🤬

Someone told me the other day that there are now December 1st boxes to attract those idiotsd susceptible to consumerism.

I love Christmas but I hate my life right now so to me and many others it's all just a punch in the face. Many of us would love to enjoy it, we just can't.

I love Christmas

I hate elf on the shelf. The households where I know they do it have indifferent children and smug adults.

Xmas is a time too relax with family and good food, not piles of plastic shite that ends up broken by January!!
Hot chocolate station??? I'd prefer a gin station!

@MLMshouldbeillegal

I hate Christmas. I just can't be arsed with the fuss and the noise and hte nonsense around it, and the fact it's the same EVERY FUCKING YEAR. I have heard Noddy fucking Holder screeching "it's christmas" every single December since 1973. That's FORTY EIGHT YEARS. I have never drunk hot chocolate in my life and do not intend starting now. Foul stuff.

Christmas jumper days should be banned.

With you on the jumpers! Last year I was invited to a Christmas jumper get-together, I declined, explaining that I don't do Christmas jumpers.
Oh, don't worry, we have spares!
No, I don't do Chrismas jumpers, if I did, I would have one. Oh you're so miserable, it's Christmas, lighten up! If I wanted to display myself in a tacky looking garment then I would, but I don't.

She wasn't a happy chappy and I was Ebeneezer in a skirt!

@TellySavalashairbrush

I have always found Christmas rather depressing. I think this was due to my mother ramming home the message that for many it is a very lonely time and also extremely stressful for those who don't have much money (like our family).

I also cringe during November/December when I see people buying tat (mugs/bath sets/light up bottles of Gin) and wonder how the receiver truly feels upon opening these gifts. Once our family started having grandchildren and great grandchildren we all made the decision to stop buying presents for each other and just buy for our own families (our children and partners) otherwise we'd be paying off the debt until summer.

Roll on spring!

Not with you on the light up bottles of gin, I love them. You can get them with gold flakes and everything ⭐️

@ponkydonkey

I quite like Christmas... but it's just me and the kids and good food. No parents or in laws etc i refuse to travel anywhere! I'm a bit of a Scrooge as I refuse to buy endless presents for people I barely know. Or any one really 😂

The boys go to their dads on Boxing Day and I relax watching tv eating leftovers in my pjs

Leftovers are the best part of Christmas, a plate of guzzinter is brilliant.