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.

Advent calendars - kids left them about for the dog to snaffle.
Ditching Panto this year in favour of ice skating.
Stockings are a must for individual chocolates socks and books.
keeping the games and cards
teens also want to bake Christmas Eve for sausage rolls cakes etc
Looking forward to a good Christmas feast!

I enjoy a good Carol service, but otherwise find the smugly Christian appropriation of a far older and native celebration of midwinter rather cringeworthy.

I do hate this reductive take- makes it sound as if everyone was happily celebrating Yule and suddenly the Christians turned up and told them to stop it 😂

Christmas spread as Christianity spread- people converted and adopted Christian celebrations and kept lots of their old traditions as well. The timing comes not from Yule etc but from Sol Invictus/Saturnalia/weird early church calculations about Jesus’s lifespan. It’s a much more complex and interesting story than ahistorical moaning about “appropriation” suggests, especially as the people doing the “appropriating” were the same people who’d been celebrating the older festivals.

I couldn't ditch the tree.

I love the idea of just keeping the bits you enjoy. We decided several years ago that we love most of the food but there is too much to manage on Christmas day so when we cook at home we have the trimmings on Christmas eve instead so we light the fire, play games and easy things like pigs in blankets and the Christmas pudding lovers eat the pudding. Then on Christmas day we still have a lovely roast but don't feel stupidly stuffed.

God I love Christmas pud but a) don't own a microwave or slow cooker, b) can't be arsed boiling one on stove for hours and c) am only one in house who likes it.

Seriously considering going somewhere on my own next week to eat it off a restaurant pudding menu with a glass of red.

I can't stand the commercialism of Christmas. We don't bother with a tree, decorations, cards etc. We give the young adult dcs a few gifts and have a roast dinner, some treats and a drink. It's very relaxing and non pressurised.

as the years and decades went by so did some of the "trappings" first to go was the wrapping paper. after a particularly stressful christmas and usual fight with dh about wrapping gifts I MADE BAGS! boxing day sales and 5 meters of fabric led to 20 medium sized bags. it was a game changer for sure.
slowly the baking went by the wayside along with multiple veggie side dishes.
for the past 8-9 years rather than a tree dh and i do up the mantle. lovely green boughs, some lights, bits and bobbles.
it's slowly but surely getting streamlined. but we're happier more relaxed and therefore have more time to focus on what is important.

Absolutely fine as you all agree.

The only that affect other people are the cards and eating out. Lots of people ditching cards, depends who you are sending to and whether it brightens the day, makes feel less alone or they are not bothered think it a waste of paper or bad for the environment.

I’ve heard a mixture about staff at restaurants. Some resent working at Christmas in what is not an emergency service and people could eat at home. Other love it being festive, maybe don’t have their own celebrations or happy with extra pay and tips.

Pare it down to the things you REALLY like... be honest with yourself! I'm amazed at how much unnecessary crap is bought. Everybody looks a bit stunned after Christmas, as if the scales have dropped from their eyes..... then they forget 😂

I only send cards to older relatives and people living abroad.
We do not do presents for extended family members as there are too many of us and it's just ridiculously expensive and stressful buying things for people that can afford to get what they want themselves anyway.
We do have a tree and decorations because it makes the house look cozy and nice in a gloomy dark time of year.
We will have Christmas dinner (not turkey) which is not stressful as it's just a nice roast.

Yule and the winter solstice are very important to me. The Christmas story, whilst lovely, is less meaningful. Yuletide was a Pagan festival long before it was a Christian one.

I like the dinner, my trees mean a lot to me, and the DC still little so presents are going nowhere for the time being. Oh, and the Baileys.

I can happily live without: heavy, fruity food: mince pies, stollen, leaden, brandy-soaked pudding, fruit cake, terrible Christmas music from about the 80s onward that we suffer year after year after year, that synthetic smell of cinnamon that pervades departments stores and garden centres from about October onward, maudlin songs like 'Have yourself a merry little Christmas' which make me want to jump in the river.

I'd happily get on a flight to somewhere warmer, but DH is having none of it!

I'm in my 50s and might venture into gransnet? Have you had a peek yet?

Can't one of your friends or family do one in their microwave?

How old are your adult children?

they’re not bringing partners? Presumably no GC?

I really can’t imagine not giving my children, whatever their ages, a prezzie on Christmas Day (and a stocking!)

We don’t do cards. That’s about it (except for stuff that’s not really traditional, like elves, various boxes etc, I don’t do those)

Treat yourself to a microwave or a slow cooker

both much more energy efficient than oven or hob

*I do hate this reductive take- makes it sound as if everyone was happily celebrating Yule and suddenly the Christians turned up and told them to stop it 😂i

Errr.... that's pretty much exactly it, at a high level summary.

And as I said earlier in the thread, Christians even outlawed people celebrating Christmas for a while!!

Just let people do their own thing. No need to force your views/ religion on others.

You don't find non-Christians telling Christians they can't celebrate their stuff at this time of year if they wish. So why do Christians moan about non-Christians celebrating their (long pre-existing) traditional winter festivities? So unnecessary.

You don't have to do any of it. If you want to go out for a curry, go wild swimming, stay in bed all day...... all of those are fine!
We never have a tree, decorations or traditional Xmas dinner.

No presents here either, seriously culled the card list down to 12, very simple dinner for the two of us, no guests arriving and not going anywhere. Have put the tree up though ..... I like a few fairy lights on these darks evenings. Enjoy it your way.

We are doing a family secret Santa - of the crap variety!

Saves a fortune and should be fun.

Buy shop bought, slice it, dry fry it, 2 min tops.... makes the house smell Christmassy too.

Ah well you do you!
Even if I was spending Christmas alone I'd still get the tree and decorate. But in the latter years as she got in to her 80s my mum only had a very small table top tree and a wreath. The actual dinner was at my sisters with tree, lights etc etc.
My mum is gone and I live in a separate country to my siblings, but if I told my kids no tree this year they'd be seriously worried!
However, one thing I dropped as soon as possible was stockings. I never had them growing up and my mil got humungous ones for my kids which I could never fill. Now we just have pretty cross-stitched ones on the mantle for the dogs and cats.

I do hate this reductive take- makes it sound as if everyone was happily celebrating Yule and suddenly the Christians turned up and told them to stop it

Well yeah, sort of! Romans invaded most of Europe, let people worship their own gods and sort of tied them in a bit (loosely) with the Roman ones across all the provinces. A good example of this is the city of Bath, aka Aquae Sulis (waters of Sulis) named after a Celtic water goddess. They sort of associated Sulis with Minerva, so both were "official" deities there.

Then along came Emperor Constantine, who converted to Christianity and pushed the religion onto the entire Empire. Laws were slowly changed to discriminate against Pagans, and later emperors followed in his footsteps getting more and more anti-Pagan.

After the fall of the Roman Empire, in the UK there was a lot of see-sawing between Christianity & Paganism, but basically whoever ruled the country dictated what the religion should be. This wasn't just Pagan vs Christian, but from the 16th century for quite a while this included what FLAVOUR of Christianity you had to believe e.g. the Puritans banning Christmas and Easter celebrations.