Why are Christmas events in the UK so lame?

[SaturdayGiraffe]

Location after location I read the reviews, some happy, most upset and cross about having spent so much money for variations on:

• mud
• disinterested staff
• cold hot chocolate
• overpriced food
• low quality food
• cheap decorations
• short light trails
• bad parking
• expensive
• sad reindeer
• grotty grottos

etc etc

It's all so depressing! Families are spending so much money on a couple of hours entertainment, and being fleeced. Do other countries do it better?

But as me and @LegendsBeyond and @JudgeJ say, we don’t have snow and often the Christmas experiences abroad aren’t much better.

Where parents have a holiday home in SW France I think we only went there once at Christmas and it was grim… but then their tourism is spring/summer based anyway.

Why slag off all the English (and Welsh, Scottish etc) Christmas offerings and comparing it to your own country?

I’m not saying I love Bath/York etc Christmas markets but if I do go I see it for what it is. Places like York minster, Bath abbey etc Christmas services are magical. We do ice skating in historic places (Greenwich maritime museum) well. The Christmas lights in the west end are magical if you like that. I was in London pre covid and saw Lumiere there, that was a great free Christmas time light show. I saw a similar one at Canary Wharf which was great. Yes it could have been cold and raining but no point whinging about it.

I think part of the problem is that Christmas was only meant to be for twelve days - not a massive orgy of consumption that starts in mid November and ends on New Year's Day. No wonder people say they feel fat after Christmas - they've been boozing and eating out for about five weeks.

A Christmas market right before Christmas itself may be pretty nice (provided it does sell some things you might be interested in). One in November is likely to be fairly disappointing.

Good point.

There are hot cross buns for sale next to the Christmas puds in my local Sains. Diluted celebrations.

People not wanting to invest\engage in commercialised shit, during a cost of living crisis.

I wouldn’t go to those types of Christmas events because I don’t think I’d find Christmas at them. Where I have found that festive, Christmassy feeling in the past: a snowy walk in the local deer park on Christmas Day, at Midnight Mass, playing board games with my family. I do like visiting the local Christmas Market, though. I live near to a city that has a really good one. And a local historic house light up their garden which is very inexpensive but lovely to visit.

Many people in the U.K. do the getting out and about in the fresh air thing on Boxing Day - it’s not ‘better’ to have your Christmas on the 24th - just different.

I think it’s in large part just a reflection of the high cost of living in the U.K. generally. Very easy to be disappointed if you feel you’ve paid through the nose for something and/or don’t have a lot to spare in the first place for “frivolities”.

You enjoy it and that’s great. I am sure many single people who are stuck at home enjoy it a lot less. So are many people who do need to work and struggle to get there because there is no public transport. I don’t mind closed shops but there is no public transport on Christmas Day and Boxing Day in my city but NHS and emergency service still need to make it to their shift somehow.

Yes the same. It took us two hours and one year it took three. It's not just looking at lights.

Seconding what a PP said. Go to a Church. Isn’t that where you’ll find ‘Christmas events’?

It is completely irrelevant how long it took you to get round!! The point I made is that my friend said it was overrated. It looks a bit rubbish to me, I have never been tempted to book.

Xmas Eve is a normal working day ,unless it falls on a Sunday ,but shops etc will still.be open ,
So you are complaining that things shut down for one day ,do you not think people who work in retail etc should be allowed to have ONE day in the entire year ,to spend with their families?
And actually many restaurants and pubs will still.be open
Boxing day things Will be open again although its a bank holiday so has restrictions on opening hours

Chill love. The OP asked for our opinion and I am giving mine. If it is at odds with yours, that's OK and doesn't make mine invalid. The very same people who are offended over shops being open at Christmas complain they have reduced service in the NHS but I am not going off at anyone who thinks emergency staff don't deserve to spend time with their family one day a year. I am sure most people spend more than "ONE day in the entire year" with their family.

Ultimately, people don't necessarily want to work over the Christmas period to provide you with a service. This is true even for things that might actually be needs not wants, like public transport. We presumably all know there are often issues with staffing emergency services at this time.

And it's more difficult to make people work over this period than it used to be. It's all very well saying its better for things to be open, but the people whose labour you expect to access may disagree.

I.used to.be s nurse ,unfortunately when you work in inpatient care you accept ,you will.be working at least part of the Xmas period ,in my town there was public transport on boxing day although it was limited to.Sunday hours ,but obviously I was also used to.working on Sundays too
Regarding getting to work on xmas day ime,.at least other staff would help.each out giving lifts etc because but was xmas.

When I worked for the council one of our venues started doing a Christmas event. Paid to enter.
Almost all of the staff were working for TOIL so there was minimal set up costs.
However they then charged a fortune for stalls, which put off 90% of people who enquired. So just ended up selling cheap plastic tat at inflated prices and incredibly overpriced repacked sweets etc. Every single thing was shit and cheap but it sold out. Spent all night dealing with furious parents. It was all just a cash making exercise.
The next year they had to give tickets away as they wouldn’t sell. They were so shocked. No concern about giving a quality experience at all.

Oh I agree! I'll be joining in the Carol singing in our high street and going to carol services. I love the Range's Christmas grotto - most of the second floor has been turned into a lovely, twinkling experience and of course it's free. Like others, we enjoy looking around the neighbourhood's light "shows" and we have booked to see Christmas Carol.

We barely go out from Christmas Eve for 3 days and love it. Games, Christmas films (or favourites), just spending time together - definitely no shopping!

Waddesden Manor - absolutely brilliant. I used to go every year, sometimes twice as it was free for NT members at one point.

Sadly I moved away and I really miss it.

On another note, I'd be quite happy for shops to be closed on Boxing Day as well as Christmas Day, I seem to remember as a child this was how it was and that the sales used to actually start in January - rose tinted glasses maybe

Because everything in this country is half arsed

The "Better done than perfect" crowd have taken over, quality control is non-existent, everyone wants a cut of the profits, no one wants to dress up as elves for the meagre, minimum wage these shysters offer and we do rain, gloom and mud better than crisp frost and snow

I remember going carol singing, I remember a particular "banjo" cul-de-sac with the snow on the ground, someone was even managing to play a guitar - there was that glow you used to get around street lights - it was magical

I honestly don't get the hype with these mega expensive Christmas events. We go to church Christmas fayres and Santa's grottos in shopping centres and they are great! We once went on a Santa train years ago and that was really good too but it was before The Polar Express took them over and it was very affordable

Oh and we also go to the Christingle service at the church on Christmas Eve. Totally free and absolutely lovely.

I think the things you are describing are relatively new and profit orientated, and are trying to recreate something that relies on tradition and community. It’s never going to work.

Aside from pantos, if you are paying for it, it probably didn’t exist 25 years ago.

and was shocked at local Christmas traditions (which seem to revolve largely around sitting at home and eating for three days)

Yes. It’s brilliant.

It's the crap weather and mud. Agree with pp, once you start having to sludge your way through mud it's just shit. Then the mud starts getting on everything and making it look grotty. The more people that walk on it, the boggier it gets. And it's all marketed as a icy, sparkly winter land - when actually it's just muddy and damp.

We went on a light trail last year that was lovely, really well done. And it was a proper PAVED trail, with rope fencing to keep people off the muddy areas. We've been to a place where the grotto was at the end of a trail, all indoors so that was nice. But once you got to the outside bits, meh.

We're doing the trail again this year, plus another different Santa thing, that's all indoors this time.