People who pretend to hate Christmas

[MoaningMyrtle202]

Anyone else know one of these?

I know a couple of them. Say they hate Christmas for whatever reason, yet still kick off if they’re asked to work it, go all out with decorations and involve themselves in Christmas family dramas when they could just ignore the whole thing.

One Christmas hater I know, says they can’t stand it and doesn’t care a jot. Yet her house it lit up like Blackpool illuminations and has kicked up holy hell being asked to work Xmas eve. She has no kids or anything either so not for that.

Another Christmas hater I know says to him it’s just another day and it’s all capitalist bullshit, yet he’s just given his DP his Christmas list of what he wants.

Lastly a good friend of mine also claims she can’t stand Christmas yet today is the third time I’ve visited and she has Christmas films on. Not ones that just happened to be on the telly, but ones she’s purposely selected on Netflix.

Im starting to think it’s just people thinking it’s ‘cool’ to say they hate Christmas. I don’t get it. Why not just say you like it?

Anyone else know one of these? It’s bizarre!

Not sure if I count, but I hate Christmas at my parents house. I always hated Christmas there, even as a child. But I like Christmas preparations, fairy lights, Christmas tree, watching "The Holiday". Since I moved out, I never visited them for Christmas, it's been 8 years. I do it my own way and starting to like it each year more and more, but still not the biggest fan. I enjoy Christmas breaks from work, mince pies though!

I certainly don’t love Christmas, I think mostly due to a December bereavement - the month just feels me with dread. Also I find it all very stressful and often OTT. Lots of pressure on people to spend money they don’t have. I never tell anyone this though and pretend I like it 😅. I also have small children so do all the decorating etc but nothing too OTT. But yeah I dread it every year.

Yes, I've a 9 year old daughter and I like to make sure that she enjoys it. I help with the decorations and tree etc, which she likes to join in with. I basically do the whole lot, cards, presents and dinner, as my wife is Xmas mad and wants it perfect - which includes being waited on....

What do you want for Christmas? - Nothing, honestly - no need to buy. Well, I've got to buy you something because... you guessed it... IT'S CHRISTMAS.

Yes.This annoys me the most! People saying but “It’s Christmas”.

I recall a person from HR decided to have the company Christmas Party during a workday in the middle of the week when the company was at its busiest. Many of us came with the thought that we would stay for a little bit and then head back to work. We were talking amongst ourselves wondering if we could leave early so I asked politely if people were allowed to leave so we could head back to work and you would have thought I asked her the most offensive question in the world and she said.. “but it’s Christmas”. I took her tone and face as that we couldn’t and so we didn’t. Yet she complained to my department manager (my bosses boss who told me what she said) about how rude I was for asking who thankfully stood up for me and explained that we were extremely busy and needed to get a lot done before Christmas (she should have known this since she had worked there for years) and that many of us are having shorter lunches to get things done and that I usually take a short lunch anyway due to public transport. I apologised to her to smooth feathers but I was upset that she complained for such a trivial reason and it only furthered my dislike of people using Christmas as an excuse and expecting people to bend to their love for the season.

I’m a Christian, so it is an important and joyous festival for me.

All the stuff that hangs around it, the gorging on rich food, the endless extension of more and more commercial opportunities ( what is the elf on the shelf) thé expenditure on presents which people don’t want or need, that’s nothing to do with me. I just think of all those things as ‘Winterval’ , a secular festival with secular values. That’s what people are liking or disliking, I think; it’s a completely different set of emotions to those of faith.

I do decorate the house ( for the twelve days of Christmas, not months before) and we have a nice Christmas dinner , we give thanks to God for his goodness to us. We also have a solstice dinner ( ha ha) because I like to mark the changing of the seasons and that happens to be the feast of S Beornwald who answered a very important prayer for me some years ago.

I am impervious to mockery and hatred for this , BTW

I made an effort when the DC were smallish but have long embraced the idea that it is not compulsory. We just do one or two of the pagan elements such as a wreath. We will have a nice meal on the Solstice but I have no idea what we will eat over the bank holiday. There will be enough food in to put together a meal for anyone who is here. I'm hoping for good weather and a bit of paddleboarding. I might finish my tax return too.

Adult DS and his partner are equally unbothered and will just be grateful for a couple of days off work. Adult DD and partner will be with his family.

I'm not a Christian and can ignore that side of it. It's no more relevant to me than any other religious festival such as Diwali or Chanukah. I don't hate Christmas but dislike what it has become and the huge damage it does to the planet in so many ways.

I stopped being actively involved in Christmas more than 25 years ago owing to a particularly unpleasant incident one Christmas Eve. I've lived alone for most of that 25 year period and have finally found my Christmas attitude: I don't hate it but I don't have a traditional celebration by any means. I look forward to the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols on Christmas Eve afternoon and going out for a few drinks straight afterwards. No exchange of presents, no Christmas dinner, no office parties and so on. That more or less sums up my Christmas now, all contained in a few hours on Christmas Eve. I like the carols. My attitude towards Christmas records has softened; many of them I'd happily never hear again (Pogues, Waitresses, Slade) but I confess I'd miss the likes of Wizzard and Jona Lewie if they were to vanish forever. I also confess to finding Christmas Day tough but that's usually because I'm bored sideways and faced with going to work very early on Boxing Day. Not this year thankfully.

I don't know where I'm going with all this waffle other than to say we don't have to adopt such a black and white, love and hate approach to Christmas. Can't we take what we want from the season and leave the rest? Easy for me to say as a single man but it's what I now do. An indifferent approach, if I had to use just one word!

I think a lot of people have really missed the brief of this thread.

It isn’t just about disliking Christmas.

No pretend hate here.

I really don't like it or what it stands for.

For some posters I’m still not getting it..

’i like the food, the mulled wine and drinks and meal. I like the decorations and all the lights and the time off’ …so basically you like Christmas?

I mean put it in a different context here. Imagine announcing to everyone you hate holidays to Spanish resorts. Could do without it. But then go on to say but I like the beaches, tapas, cocktails, swimming pools, hotels and I’ve booked to go again next year’.
If you just hated one element of it (flying) then you’d say, I don’t like flying.

So putting that back to Christmas, you’d surely say ‘I don’t like how expensive it is but I like Christmas’

Im personally not bothered about Easter. So I don’t have an Easter lunch or Easter eggs or anything. Literally is just another day and if it wasn’t for the TV adverts and bank holiday I honestly wouldn’t be able to tell it apart from any other Sunday. Routine doesn’t change a jot. I don’t mark it and I don’t even hate Easter, I’m neutral.

So if I actively didn’t like something and even told everyone about not liking it, then no way would I go out of my way to then celebrate it.

I do get the annoyance of the expense and how long it lasts. I agree it’s very commercial. But that doesn’t then translate to pretending to actively ‘dislike Christmas’?

I love it, but I find it stressful because of how little time I have to enjoy it, so a lot of it becomes a chore. My partner and I don't have any time off together until Christmas Day. We're lucky to not be working, but it feels stressful fitting in getting a tree, shopping, decorating etc. I probably whinge, but not so much about not enjoying it, more about not being able to enjoy it the way I'd like to.

Most people saying they don’t like it probably mean they don’t like the stress or pressure of it etc which is understandable. I don’t think it’s trying to be ‘cool’, and they can still celebrate it even though they find it stressful or don’t enjoy the commercialism of it.

Personally I love Easter but that’s because most people see it as just another day and it hasn’t yet been ruin by over commercialization! And there is none of this pressure like you get at Christmas, yet you get loads of chocolate, 2 bank holidays and it’s the start of spring!

I genuinely hate it. I haven't had the TV or radio on for days because I can't cope with it. Too much trauma.

I have to nip out to the supermarket and I'm dreading it.

You had a lot of comments where people tried to make it clear that having contradictory feelings about something doesn't make the feelings invalid or their behaviour a pretence.

You clearly dislike your colleague - that's ok. You can't like everybody.

I'm ambivalent I guess. I'm Pagan so Yule is a time of year I enjoy but I observe all the solstices and equinoxes equally. Commercial Christmas is a thing of horror and seems to just expand and expand year on year with more and more things deemed 'necessary'.

I spend time with my family many times during the year eating and drinking and playing games, so the idea that there is this one make-or-break period where everyone has to "get on" that has to be note perfect just seems odd to me.

I don't like receiving and giving gifts for the sake of it - this year people are getting edible or usable gifts/ experiences from me to try and minimise waste. But my mother in particular won't be swayed on this point, so I have to provide her with a list of 'things' for her to get me -all of which I can afford to buy myself as and when I need them.

She whips herself up to a state of near breakdown every single year despite offers to help/ host/go out for lunch/ not get gifts and phones me almost daily asking for 'updates' about my 'plans.' I love her dearly but she loses her fucking mind at this time of year.

I realise this sounds very po faced. I like fairy lights and candles, but they aren't particularly Christmassy in and of themselves and I use them all year round.
I like carols, but then I enjoy hymns generally.
We decorate a tree because my husband insists.
I like the few days I get off work, because my industry is completely nuts right up till end of play on Christmas eve, so being able to close the door and not have to deal with the public for a few days is complete bliss. But I'm not sure any of that means I actively enjoy Christmas.

Well, Xmas trees are co-opted from pagan tradition, aren't they?

You sound really really stupid!

I am quite glad I am not the only one who thinks so. I thought my comprehension went down few levels!

No it's not just about disliking Christmas.

But lots of us who DO dislike Christmas have explained to the OP why we go ahead and have the meals and presents and trees anyway. Because none of us exist in a vacuum, and our preference to ignore the whole thing does not fly with children/partners. I am one person out of 5 in this house, if it were up to me there wouldn't be a tree and we'd be going on holiday to miss the whole thing, but there are 4 other people in this house who have an opinion on things too.

And we all have to do things we don't particularly want to do, and don't enjoy, to make other people happy.

I don't hate it, but I also don't particularly enjoy it. I'm American. I prefer Thanksgiving which is just about getting together with friends and family and eating good food.

We try to have a quiet, simple Christmas, especially now that our children are grown.

CharityShopChic · Yesterday 23:28

No it's not just about disliking Christmas.

But lots of us who DO dislike Christmas have explained to the OP why we go ahead and have the meals and presents and trees anyway.

You said that much better than I managed.

Exactly this

And it grows every year
Elf on the shelf, 1000 secret santas etc

Keep it simple and it's more enjoyable

I'd have a look at the 12 days of Christmas.

Very few people do the 12 days of Christmas thing any more though. Doing nothing until the 24th and then 12 days of celebration. If you're not in Scotland, most people are back to work/school on 2nd January. And I totally get that if you have gone early and put your tree up just after bonfire night, you want the house tidy, clean and renewed for the New Year.

Willful misunderstanding is tedious, OP.

People have given perfectly clear, comprehensive explanations, and in any event they don't need to justify their positions.

'But I don't understaaaaaand' is the perennial, wide-eyed innocent, PA form of nitpicking on this site, and it doesn't fool anyone.