Xmas Day - Lunch at 4pm - AIBU

[Moonshine5]

Following heated debate and reading a variety of threads. What say you Mumsnet community?
🎅
AIBU - that's a ridiculous time for Christmas lunch
YANBU - perfectly normal you heathens (note this is a light-hearted thread)

It's a bit late for me - I'd have no room for Christmas tea.

I love Christmas tea!

We have young kids though so they need normal meal times.

One of the advantages of never paying too much attention to 'routines' meant that our children could go with the flow from a young age!

Lunch at 1pm, dinner at 6pm. But then, we don’t go overboard with the size of the meals so it’s more of a roast with some extra bits and then buffet dinner that people can help themselves to.
The children will be eating at 7am, 8am, 9am, 10am, 11am…
After years of enormous meals with the in laws and masses of wasted food, I will admit that I am finding this simplicity a refreshing change!

Bloody hell, I'd be chewing my hands off by 4pm. We have lunch at 1 O'clock, then spend the rest of the day scoffing chocolates

Excellent excuse, as if one needs one, for plenty of sundowners!

isn't that normal?
Scrambled egg & salmon 11ish/midday, lunch at around 4?

@pickledandpuzzled

You don't open your presents until the afternoon?? That's madness!!

I HATE mid afternoon Christmas dinners. If you have lunch you spoil the Christmas dinner. If you don’t then everyone ends up hangry.
As someone who’s mood is especially dependent on their blood sugar levels I hate it when meals are at weird times of day 😂.

I’ve never eaten Christmas dinner as late as 4pm, we usually do it about 2pm. Think the very latest start we’ve ever had was 3pm.

Eating it when it’s dark, that’s a big no, I like to be slobbed out on the sofa with the telly eating chocolate and/or pissed as a fart as early as possible, but that’s just me.

I should also add that if Christmas Eve mass is attended then it's a glass of sparkling, a bit of pasta and a cinnamon bun when we get home.

Exactly! People seem to be very rigid in their eating habits, it must be very boring!

Yanbu
We have breakfast at about 10am, then do presents, get dressed & dh & I walk the dog. When we get back we start cooking dinner. Last year dinner was a bit later than planned so this year I will be putting the meat in when we go for the walk, but we aim to eat around 4/5pm.

We have it around 4.30. Brunch in the morning after opening gifts then it's prepping, my sister will go to mass, and we eat then if we have guests then chat etc if not afterwards play a board game or similar then Christmas movie.

At Sandringham lunch finishes before the King's Speech so that puts them in their place by your reckoning!

Agree and what is even worse are those that impose their habits on to others, especially if others are hosting. That is just rude in my opinion (unless it was a medical reason of course)

“Oh we can’t possibly eat at x time because of insert rigid reason here “

They wouldn’t be invited back to mine if they started that nonsense

We have Christmas dinner at dinner time. Which, as I’m from the North East, means around 1pm rather than the evening meal.

Our family is large on DM’s side & for every Christmas I can remember, and still continuing now, we’ve all descended on DM’s house around 5pm for a picky buffet tea so a 4pm dinner wouldn’t have worked!

To be fair I now also have young DCs who get up around 5:30 every day of the year so by 1pm I’m starving!

We have ours around 3pm.

No breakfast - just usually chocolate or whatever the kids get sweet wise. Then usually more chocolate after that until dinner is ready.

Then the kids don't eat it as they are full off the chocolate but it's 3pm and I'm starving so I stuff my face 😊

I love it. The one day of the year where I just don't care who eats what at what time of day.

We go to my mums every year so I just follow whatever she goes with.

It’s perfectly normal and we did it as kids but in my family now it turns everyone into an overtired grouch, so we eat about 2.30

We don’t do ours till after lunch either

It’s quite normal 😁

We eat around 1-2pm but when I was growing up it was always 7pm which I hated as I was always starving 😂

it should be at dinner time really, about 7pm

Breakfast around 10, lunch around 3 is my ideal on Christmas Day.

3.30/ 4pm is fairly normal for my parents and immediate family.

That said I’ve realised i don’t really like the dead time after a meal at that time.

I think my preference would be for a lighter meal at normal lunchtime with the main meal at about 6.

This year our Christmas Dinner is for 8:45pm, tragic. Both me and my partner are on long days (NHS) Christmas Day and Boxing Day so his lovely family are insisting on waiting for us coming home. I keep trying to tell them to eat at dinner time and we will reheat but they are having none of it! I keep wondering if I will see a Mumsnet about it hahaha

We’re busy all morning!
Stockings, breakfast, church, prep lunch/table lunch and clear up.
by the time we’ve done presents there’s time for a game, pudding and a film then bed!

We’re all adults now. When the kids were small they might choose a gift to take to church to open.
You keep the fun and anticipation going all day, never have that pause where you think, now what?