To ditch these bits of Christmas

[PupInAPram]

This year, with the agreement of my adult children whom I'll spend Christmas with, we are ditching: presents, tree, decorations, home cooked Christmas dinner (we have booked dinner out), Christmas cake.

We are keeping, special food treats, booze, board games and party games, many many fairy lights.

YABU Christmas should not be meddled with
YANBU Grown up households should pick the bits they like.

Yes, I'm not a Christian so it's Yuletide for for me but there is definitely a core of things we associate with Christmas in the UK over the last 50 years

People have celebrated a midwinter festival for many thousands of years. Christians imposed their own celebration over the top (Jesus was not born in December anyway according to historians) but that doesn't give them the right to tell other people that they cannot continue to celebrate a tradition that goes back far beyond their religion. The holly, ivy, lights etc are all part of the original festival that Christmas was superimposed over.

So please, stop this boring santimoniousness and leave people be to celebrate how it suits them. For many non-religious people it bears more resemblance to the original mid-winter festival and is about celebrating with family, feasting and decorations and lights to make the darkest part of winter more bearable, as it always was.

@PupInAPram I love some of the traditions, like decorating the tree, as it is part of my family tradition, and they are all gone now so it's a link with them I guess. If I had kids I'd want them to have the excitement I did as a child of presents on Christmas morning and so on. That's important, I feel.

In fact, at one point Christians in the UK outlawed much of Christmas celebration. People used to have to sing carols etc in secret!

It is almost as though people can do what they like in their own house and don't need to do what the media tell them to.

Keeping the tree, fairy lights, Baileys, Orogin Christmas cocktails, Christmas candle, turkey and all the nice food stuff. Staying at home just the 4 of us not planning on visiting anyone or having any visitors after Christmas Eve until the 27th.

Ditching cards, lights outside the house, advent calendars, only giving minimal presents as older teens mainly just want money, Christmas pudding and Christmas cake as no one else in the house likes or eats it.

We've ditched seeing the in-laws 😏

I'm not religious at all but actually love a little nativity set up (don't have one but I like the look of them).

Love: the tree, the flaming Christmas pudding (the most magical bit of the day for me), playing games, everyone being on best behaviour.

Would personally love to go to a candle lit Carol concert and/or midnight mass ( because that's what I did growing up - Christmas was a religious festival in our house) but not a cat in hell's chance anyone else would go with me.

Hate all the elf on a shelf, Christmas Eve boxes, and most crappy tubs of chocolate. We eat nice food all year round so it's the different nice food that makes it Christmas, for me.

Sounds miserable to me. But if that’s what you all want to do, go for it. As long as one person has decided they want a Christmas like that, and everyone else is going along with it, but feeling a bit disappointed

Not all Christians are sanctimonious, the vast majority get on with their faith without ramming it down other peoples throats.

See, I've already made my decisions. I'm just using a standard mumsnet template to start a lighthearted chat about what other people like or don't like about Christmas because I'm interested. I think you may be under the impression that AIBU is legally enforced 😂

The chaplain at work gave me a copy of the ( I think new) testament on Friday

Made me a bit reminiscent but as you say @SwedishEdith nobody here would come to church with me

Things wax and wane in families I find, as children grow into adults. Some traditions become pointless, some become more treasured. Some fall away altogether. You're just doing it in one brave step!

There's nothing wrong with stripping 'Christmas' back to the bone to see how it feels. Next year, you might think actually it didn't feel like Christmas without a tree - or you might feel it was great, and the next step is ditching presents to really take the pressure off.

It also means you'll never be the subject of a post here where a dil complains her husband insists on going back to his mother's as he's done every year since he was born, but now with a family in tow, where they have to sit through the same horrible meal with lumpy gravy and soggy potatoes otherwisemother will have a meltdown 🤣

kids are 22 and 16, and asked to give up stockings a couple of years back. Tree will go up this week, and if they can be bothered to do extra decorating they can. My mum brings them an advent calender which they mainly forget about.

we havent done a 'traditional' christmas dinner for years, but we do have a lovely rib of beef from a local farm, and I will cook a ham and glaze it for Xmas eve.

we dont drink, so nice fruit juice with lunch, and I need to get some crackers.

Presents, not lots, one or two each. and one for the cat. we are quite low key. But we are all autistic so it can be quite overwhelming.

we get the full christmas when we go to my mum in the afternoon, she has a spectacular tree and roaring log fire. I might have a bailies at that point

Indeed. As it should be. People can believe whatever they like, but there's no need for the sort of comments PP made. Especially given the audacity of telling people that they can't observe a celebration many thousands of years old just because their religion attempted to supplant it. The comment about how "none of these things are relevant to the birth of Christ" was particularly obtuse: of course they aren't! They're old traditions from the midwinter festival that superceded Christianity for thousands of years, and was always about time with large family groups, lights, decorations, feasting. To try to supplant/ appropriate an existing festival then tell people they can't celebrate it because the way they do it doesn't correspond to the new meaning you've tried to ascribe to it is a bit 🤯🤯. Christians are of course free to do whatever they like but as you say, shouldn't be trying to pretend some higher morality than others who don't subscribe to their religion and tell them what to do. Not really in the spirit of it all!

One of the people who posted those comments has been popping up on multiple threads about Christmas copy and pasting the same comment about how we're all doing it wrong, word for word. It's tiresome, and not relevant to what the OP was asking, that's all.

I am. 👮🎄

@TofuonToast 😬😬🤣

@TofuonToast brilliant!🤣👏

I'm in the Middle East, so sprouts, parsnips, mince pies, xmas pud & custard all ditched me 😆.

Also dumped the tree as I've always hated our artificial bog brush monstrosity - it went to charidee, mate - & have strung all the baubles off the wrought iron banisters, which does look pretty cool, actually.

We had 'Christmas dinner' yesterday as all travelling on the 25th - dds will be with xh in the UK, ds & I will be having fun bumming around Europe. It was still a fab turkey roast despite having to sub broccoli, sweet potatoes & apple pie for sprouts, 'snips & pud.

Sadly, ds's suitcase containing roughly half a smuggled pig's worth of bacon & sausage, & a bottle of Baileys, which he was bringing here from his gap year location, went AWOL somewhere between Bangkok & Cairo...that'll be 🤢 when it finally turns up...

We have ditched elf on the shelf - the freedom! Once my DC have left home, I will expunge any decorations that require me to stand on a ladder or insert batteries. Could never get rid of Christmas cake though!

Sadly, ds's suitcase containing roughly half a smuggled pig's worth of bacon & sausage, & a bottle of Baileys, which he was bringing here from his gap year location, went AWOL somewhere between Bangkok & Cairo...that'll be 🤢 when it finally turns up...
Won't it just walk home.

Yanbu. We keep stuff like tree etc because we like it, not because we feel we must.

Sounds great, OP. Definitely bin the bits you don't like.

For me:

Keep- the religious celebration, ALL the food, booze, presents but only a few, games, tree, holly and ivy, candles, carols, Muppets.

Bin- Noddy fucking Holder, flashing lights, Winter Wonderland (sorry, kids), Stasi on the Shelf, any mention of Father Christmas rewarding "good" children, pictures of huge piles of presents on social media, family PJs, the film Elf, sending cards except for to older people who appreciate them, pissed up people on the tube, Michael Buble trying to Santa Buddy as if it doesn't sound like he wants to shag Santa just embrace it Michael.

*trying to SING