To ask what Christmas traditions you HAVEN’T carried on from childhood?

[LlamaParma]

I don’t cook from scratch. I buy everything M&S ready made in foil tins and whack it in the oven on the day.

Simply because I have HORRIBLE memories of Christmas as a child and my mum absolutely stressing to high heaven in the kitchen from about 7am until 3pm, banging pots and at some point having a tantrum because “NOBODY IS HELPING”. Me and my siblings and stepdad would be and when offered to help would get told “No it’s FINE I’m FINE”. All because we’d usually have guests and she was adamant everyone would have a lovely ‘everything homemade’ meal every year. And TBF it tasted amazing and whilst we take the piss out of her now about it (when we all buggered off to Uni she had a Christmas Day Amnesty and declared it’s pizza and chips if we spend it at hers - good for her!) at the time I always wish she’d have chilled out and spent time with us, watched films, help us set up toys etc. Nobody needed homemade horseradish sauce and chicken liver pâté. The atmosphere would be awful, it was a running joke that the kitchen was a no-go area on Christmas Day, but as a result I don’t stress at all about food with my own family. If it’s crap then tough luck, there’s always Pudding to fall back on

What Christmas traditions or things have you not passed on to your kids from your childhood?

Opening presents from wider family and friends on Boxing Day. We loved doing this but as my son has a Boxing Day birthday had to stop it.

We had a pillow case of presents from Father Christmas at the end of our beds to open when we woke up but special presents from family were put under the hideous 70s Christmas tree in the dining room to be opened after breakfast. We had a little pile each and went around the table one at a time opening one present at a time.Whilst you were opening the chosen gift everyone else in the family sat and stared at you .There was no other conversation. You had to do the performance delight thing whether it was a good present or a terrible one. Gives me anxiety just thinking about it. Has given me a total complex about opening any present in front of the giver

Turkey

Stressing about making everything Absolutely Perfect and doing Absolutely Everything. Tried it on DDs first Christmas, and realised why my mum was so busy and stressed out on Christmas - never again! We have mega low key Christmases and it works for us.

My childhood Christmases were wonderful. The only thing I hated was the rule that we could not wake our father up before 9am. Then we had to wait for him to get up, get dressed and make his coffee before we could open presents. We were allowed to open our stockings when we got up, but the tree was off limits until our father was up. 9am takes for ever to come to a kid who has been up since "ridiculous o'clock" overly excited to open gifts. My kids never had to wait. whoever woke up first woke everyone else (now that my boys are much older its usually ME that wakes up first lol) and we go down stairs. The boys do their stockings and then we immediately start on the tree when the stockings are done.

No vegetarian Christmas, we have turkey (or chicken) and ham.
No timed Boxing Day run for my children. We go for a walk but leave stopwatches at home.
No Christmas cards displayed on string loops along the walls.

Forcing my children to drink a strong irish coffee before allowing them to open any gifts.

Getting my children to make a list then deliberately buying the exact opposite thing of what they wanted.

Allowing my young children to drink several snowballs or cherry b across the day.

Making excited kids wait until at least 10am to open presents while I faff about getting dressed and having breakfast. We all run downstairs im our PJs and open presents THEN get dressed and eat breakfast/chocolate.

@MrBigTiger

I can remember having to be up, washed and dressed, and having to have breakfast before opening presents, and having to dress "nicely" for the forced family photos.

Fucked that off, we get straight on the presents, and stay in PJs all day.

Us too! I always felt sorry for kids who couldn’t open presents until after lunch. I actually would go as far to say it’s mean!

My brood are like feral beasts ripping paper off left right and centre

No Turkey.
No satsuma in a pillowcase.
No stocking/pillowcase upstairs full of tat.
No selection boxes.

So sorry to all those who had shit Christmases as children

@Fidgetty

Mass too. Though in a weird way I kind of miss it. I'm a hardcore atheist so it's a no-no for my DC but it was quite nice getting dressed in nice clothes and breaking the day up. The community feel chatting to neighbours and friends after. Seeing the crib/singing in the children's choir etc. I wish there was something similar but without the religious aspect!

I was raised Catholic, and we did mass too. I don’t do church on Christmas Day but we go to the local catherdral choir service on Christmas Eve is I LOVE a good Carol sing song. Can’t sing for toffee, my kids now ask me politely if I could maybe just mouth the words as I’m so bad, but I still love it

@LockdownCheeseToastie

The abuse, the massive arguments, the fear.

Ditto!

I don’t make a soup out of a whole chicken to have before the turkey! Madness.

Like many of the above - people don’t get drunk and have arguments (with each other or the non drunken members of the crew)

@FissionMailed

When I was a kid, I hated the endless trawling around to relatives for get togethers etc.

It was always supposedly "Fun" with nice food...
It was never fun and the food was always cold left over shite that the adults ate first.

No mum, I don't want to spend my Xmas afternoon driving an hour to see some fucker I don't know and haven't seen since the last time you dragged me there for 4 hours of boredom.

I have about a million in laws and I draw the line at more than 1 quick visit - feel sorry for the kids who just wanna be at home with their toys!

I really don’t understand the having to wait to open presents. It seems quite mean to me too!

@Laiste

to everyone who have or have had fearful, abusive Christmases.

I was going to say:
Being made to dress nicely and 'be all grown up' and make small talk with half the street coming in for drinks
and
being made to write loads of thank you letters on boxing day.

But they are obviously pathetic in comparison with what some posters experience/d.

I honestly think it’s all relative and I hated making small talk as a child. I was painfully shy and it would ruin my day having to be polite with adults who are half cut and say things like “Why are you so shy?” 🙄

Probably like many on here, I never made our children wait to open presents. They opened them as soon as we were all downstairs and we never faffed about getting downstairs either. My dad used to make us wait until after lunch - that was torture and we never really had the excitement of getting up to see what Santa had brought. No church in the morning either, we were too busy having fun when the children were small. No visiting relatives, if they wanted to see us they came to us - I wasn’t dragging overly excited kids around numerous houses when they could be at home with their new toys.

The house stinking of overboiled sprouts. Sprouts had to be boiled until they were almost disintegrated.
Presents wrapped with huge amounts of sellotape.
Excessive amounts of Quality Street and Roses chocolates eaten all day long.

Horrible drunken behaviour
Making ridiculous amounts of food
Never leaving our home

• I don’t drink at all
• I make whatever me and DC feel like
• Every third year or so, we go to someone

Going to church
Sprouts
The Queens Speech

Boiling brussels sprouts until they are yellow and the water has more nutritional value than the vegetable itself. Dishing up Christmas pudding swimming in hot Birds Eye custard that glow in the dark

Eating meat or poultry.
Watching the Queen.
Going to the start of the local foxhunt on Boxing Day.

Not opening presents until after church. DC opened stockings first then tree presents after breakfast. Stops them being giddy with frustration and shouted at for half the day!

No queens speech 👸🏼
No church service ⛪️
No-one gets drunk 😵

I have lovely Christmas memories from my childhood- but my dad was an alcoholic so although I’m not tee total I’m promised my child would never see me drunk