To not understand Christmas burnout?

[EmptyYoghurtPot]

Lots of discussion online re:the M & S Christmas advert. Many referencing ‘Christmas burnout’ and how hard it is for women etc As a self confessed crazy Christmas lady I can not get my head round why it’s so stressful? I can understand if people are struggling finance wise but the discussion I saw was on The Guardian page so the concerns were all about buying and wrapping presents, decorating the house and cooking the dinner. I just don’t see why any of that is so stressful. Surely Christmas dinner is just a scaled up version of Sunday lunch? And shopping is fun - can do it online if you don’t like going out. Wrapping presents can be a bit boring but stick a film on, grab a wine and it doesn’t take that long. Am I just blinded by the twinkly lights or does everyone else just long for Boxing Day?

I get it completely but it is largely expectations you place on yourself so I think the M&S ad is about relaxing a bit and dropping those self inflicted expectations.

For me it stems from having parents who separated when I was a baby so I had to split my Christmas Day in half and neither of them were any good at making Christmas fun. My Dad moved away so he stayed with my Gran when he came to visit me, she is Jewish so no Xmas tree, dinner etc obviously. Dad is Atheist so he would buy me presents but that was as far as the Christmas celebrations at his went. My Mum bought us a lot of presents and made a Christmas dinner before I went to see my Dad but the Christmas dinner was always over cooked because she was pissed from 10am onwards and that was all Christmas was. No build up beforehand, no ‘magical’ Christmas Eve etc.

I always wanted a magical Christmas like the ones in movies so since having my own children, this is what I strive for. This means a lot of self-inflicted pressure to cook/bake lots of delicious food, do a Christmas inspired activity every weekend in December, elf on the shelf every day (which we started 11 years ago so way before it was mainstream!), make Christmas Eve magical each year etc. I work FT in a high pressure job too and all of the Christmas planning is on me because DH is fucking useless with things like this, if it were up to him he’d buy everything on Christmas Eve and leave everyone disappointed.

@mindutopia I feel like you need a backbone for Christmas

"Self confessed crazy Christmas lady".

Ugh.

@mindutopia quit that shit. Heavily reduce what you do and set a much shorter time limit, a week is far too long. If you can’t change things next year I’d start the groundwork for being very busy/being away next year.
Dont buy all the food, they won’t starve.

Im fairly chill about Christmas now I have to admit as my in laws have died and I don’t have to deal with them and the horror that was Christmas at theirs.

There’s a very simple solution to this, tell them if they want to come they have to bring food and booze and help with the cooking

For some people even the absolute basics can be the straw that breaks the camel’s back, whether financially, time commitments, work pressure etc. Saying it’s all about choices is only true to a certain extent - we don’t make decisions in a vacuum, nor are they consequence free. Making a choice that alienates family or disappoints children badly can end up taking more time to deal with than just falling into line.

For us the big pinch point is the endless amount of school and extra-curricular activities that we have to work into full time work that involves lots of travelling. Once all the children are suitably older this will be far less. But at the moment I am always on my knees at the end of term and very ready for some down time. If my actual Christmas was also stressful, that would be awful.

And I totally agree with those saying making Christmas feel special for your kids can feel really important if you had difficult Christmases yourself. I personally don’t go down the route of North Pole breakfasts, Elf on the Shelf etc but I can imagine if everyone you talk to is thinking of it (and this will come down to individual circumstance) and/or your kids are asking for it, you will feel pressure on yourself to add it in for your children to really have that ‘perfect’ experience.