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?

@Dacquoise

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

I feel like if I concentrate for long enough I can actually smell the whiff of overcooked sprouts

Christmas was pretty miserable when I was a child. Both parents were abusive. My sister once spent ages making a Christmas cake and carefully iced and decorated it. Father threw it in the bin, saying if he’d wanted a cake he’d have bought one.
There was no joint family present opening - we just went downstairs alone, opened our own presents under the tree and took them back upstairs to play with alone. Mother didn’t even pretend any affection, and was visibly glad when the day was over.
There was no joyful Christian element, no church service, no welcoming the Christ child.
I was widowed when my own DC were babies, but I made damn sure to give them loving and happy Christmases despite grieving my DH. I still love the Watchnight service at the village church, all the home cooking to make the day special, and the opening presents together round the tree with lots of hugs, even though my DDs are in their thirties now!

So much we’ve kept.

But.

Presents are now opened after church and before lunch. We don’t tear into massive piles of them but neither do we all sit around opening them one at a time in age order.

No men heading off to the pub for a quick pint whilst women head back to the house to baste the turkey. Everyone comes home after church, we have coffee and do what needs doing then sit down and open presents.

No driving anywhere on Christmas Day. And we don’t spend the week between Christmas and new year doing duty visits to all our relatives in turn.

No rushing through lunch to get to the queen’s speech. No one has to eat anything they don’t want to eat, although everyone does have to come and sit at the table for a little while at least.

But most of our traditions are the same and I hope they always will be. Tweaks, not total destruction.

Five year diaries with locks on the front

Don't get me started about the 'homemade' trifle. Swiss roll, tinned fruit entombed in day glow jelly. More Bird Eye nuclear custard. Topped with fake cream and multi coloured hundreds and thousands. Barf, just barf.

I've loved reading all these. Eye opening how other people used to spend their Xmas day. Some of it very sad 😢 Hugs.
I don't understand making children wait until later to open their presents. Just sounds so controlling for no reason at all. Whats the reason behind that? A month of build up and excitement to make them wait until after lunch. Open first thing, they can be busy playing while you prepare Xmas lunch!

Waiting for the adults to roll back from the pub so we could eat at some point. That was when I lived with my mother. Totally different at my dad's when I went to live with him, Christmas was wonderful, small village, lots of family and friend activities, a wonderful step-up, they taught me life could be magical x

Stepmum not step up!

Some of these stories are very sad. Well done to the people, like Babdoc, who have managed to turn it around and make Christmas lovely for your own families

No church
No conversations about weight/babies/earnings with people we don't like
DD doesn't have to be seen and not heard, and can wear and do whatever she likes.

@Beachbabe1

I've loved reading all these. Eye opening how other people used to spend their Xmas day. Some of it very sad 😢 Hugs. I don't understand making children wait until later to open their presents. Just sounds so controlling for no reason at all. Whats the reason behind that? A month of build up and excitement to make them wait until after lunch. Open first thing, they can be busy playing while you prepare Xmas lunch!

Our family children can have stockings as soon as they wake up. That holds them for the first part of the morning.

It’s not cruel to insist they wait - you do that too by insisting they have to sleep first on Christmas Eve and then they can open them when they wake up. The delay just means waiting a little longer.

Going to church on Christmas Day is really really important to us as a family of Christians. Christmas Day for us is about recognising the hugeness of what God has done for us, what Jesus did by living life as a fully human, fully divine man, and dying to bridge the gap between us and God the father. We’d say we give gifts to each other to celebrate that sacrificial love, and because we can’t give Jesus presents on his birthday (and yes, I do know he was very unlikely to have been born on Dec 25th and that we nicked the idea for celebrating in midwinter from the many other religions who already celebrated them. Don’t care! That’s why we celebrate even if it’s not why anyone else is). Kind of seems important to pause for a bit and say thank you for the biggest gift of all before tearing into the piles under the tree.

I've imported absolutely everything from brilliant childhood Christmases, only (sadly) with far fewer people as my DC have no cousins.

With my dc we have stopped waiting until after lunch to open presents. We did this when I was young as my parents were nhs workers and one of them would usually have to work Xmas eve night. So that way they could sleep in the morning and see the presents opened after lunch. We would visit our nan, see aunts/uncles Xmas morning who would always ask if we like our (insert gift).. oh well we haven’t actually opened it yet! We had Xmas day on Boxing Day one year due to shifts.. Christmas was declared when everyone was there. But still I feel very grateful that I’m allowed to be home with my kids and DH on Xmas day in my job. Big hugs to anyone working over Xmas.

I don’t feel obliged to have EVERYTHING Christmassy for dinner. I don’t really bother with stuffing or mash or bread sauce or cranberries or ham or cauliflower cheese or lots of the other stuff you’re supposed to load on a plate. I just do fewer things but do them as well as I can.

Not dragging my kids round to family that don't give two shits about them the rest of the year but come christmas they pretend to be interested, not force my kids to eat sprouts because it's fucking christmas. They are rank.

Christmas this year we’ll eat when we like, no drunks.

Mass

@Moomarre

Writing thank you letters on Christmas afternoon. I was desperate to play with some of my new toys and wasn’t allowed until thank you letters had been written. Thankfully we had very few Christmasses at home just us and it was only then that it happened

So glad the dreaded thank you letters came up. Our Christmasses were coming down to open presents but we had to have a piece of paper and a pencil and a book to lean on so we could write down what people had got us. Totally took the fun out of the day-felt like we were taking minutes! then you had to write the same letter 10 times. My kids dont write thank you letters. They're not ungrateful wretches, they call family members to thank them personally for their gifts. much easier! SiL does make pointed comments about her lack of letter but she can jog on!

I don't cook a big elaborate meal, we have takeaway or something easy to cook.
We don't have long drawn out present opening like I did. DH found it weird, at his house it was head first into opening everything right away.

Hauling around to see every member of the extended family, I didn't do it my daughters 1st Christmas as she was 4mo and I was suffering with a really nasty bout of postnatal depression - my husband took the hit and told my mum for me, told her people could come and see us if they wished but we weren't going to be driving from house to house all day Xmas eve as we were having a rough time....my name was mud, I got such a hard time! Then covid came along which made things easier but I won't be doing it again.

No sprouts, vile things
No Christmas pudding no-one eats it

Something my mother did, never heard of it since. Putting your slippers outside the bedroom door and waking up to find a present in them. Where did that tradition come from?

On New year's Eve I should add

Mass. Some new movies have been added to the collection :)

DH’s family used to wait until after Christmas lunch to open presents - it used to drive me crazy when we first got together and took turns going to each other’s houses each year!

My parents used to put every single present from them to us in a pillowcase at the bottom of our beds, and pretend it was from Father Christmas, satsuma and all. They carried on doing it until we were in our late teens . Only stopped when we started rolling in well past midnight!

So weird to think that for several years I genuinely believed my own parents didn't give me any Christmas presents

Tinsel was too common as well as coloured lights on the tree so obviously I adorn my tree with them both.
No stress in my kitchen & a happy home thanks to m & s.