What on earth is a Christmas Eve box??

[Xmasevewhat]

I've suddenly seen 'Christmas Eve boxes' popping up everywhere. In shops, on Etsy, social feeds. Never even heard of the concept and now all of a sudden it's everywhere.

Can someone explain the point? Seems like they are filled with same kind of things you'd put in a stocking. Be honest, is it just another Instagram fad/ excuse to spend money?

We’ve started doing it BUT it’s not with anything extra, just our usual Christmas Eve activities in a box. We were given a lovely box and DD likes opening it to see what’s inside.

Even since I was a child (of the 80’s) we have had a pair of new PJ’s on Xmas eve, a nice bath, a hot chocolate and a Christmas story or film. These are traditions I wanted to carry on with DD so now we just put the items in the box for her to open in the afternoon. Maybe with some colouring or a quiz - that I’ve printed off myself.

I imagine Instagram people go overboard but you don’t need to do this.

If I give my kids their new, winter PJs on 23rd Dec is that okay?

I remember one box hater a couple of years or so ago actually saying it was fine to give pyjamas as gifts on Christmas Day but wasteful/excessive/morally wrong to give them the night before in a box. Even though that means they get an extra night's wear out of them!

It's obvious that the objection isn't really because they're so wasteful and consumerist and blah blah blah. They are reusable boxes with consumables and textiles; hardly the thing to go after if you want to combat Christmas excess.

The objection is because they're new to a lot of people so they're easy for them to go without and they can therefore make a performance of how they don't do this thing and are therefore not being indulgent. Pretty obvious that many people also think they're not very middle class and they therefore need to be excoriated as morally wrong to validate the objection.

I'd love to give my young adults/teens 'cosy pyjamas' still and produce them on Christmas Eve.

But now they're at the pub with their mates and don't wear pyjamas. Don't even think about Hot Choc.

It all passes. I wouldn't get steamed up about it.

As for instagrammers they'll kick the arse out of anything. Hardly real life.

We do a Christmas eve box (full of activity things and books etc) but we don't do a stocking, no need for both.

I do it because it keeps the kids busy while I'm busy doing prep and last minute baking.

The Christmas Elf brought new pj’s, a new Christmas book, Marshmallows for hot chocolate, and a dvd.
The elf would knock on the door and the kids would find the bags on the doorstep. It also let them know it was time to light the candles in jam jars outside so Santa could land safely.

It wasn’t done for Instagram because instagram didn’t exist. It was done so the children would be excited to go the fuck to sleep and would get settled down without too much fuss. I could then drink my wine and relax.

In my experience, it doesn't matter how many time you say your box is wooden and has done/will do many years of service, people of a certain mindset will still wail about "plastic tat for landfill".

It's been a thing for years. If you like it, great, if not, you don't have to.

Personally, I do one for my toddler, just a new Christmassy book to read, maybe a festive bath bomb for his bath, a little chocolate reindeer, and then each year the same jingle bell to ring before going to bed (so Rudolph knows where to go!), some 'reindeer food' to scatter on the lawn (just a few oats), and the key we leave out for Santa.

The older I get the more pointless I realise it is to rage against little things some people like and others don't. I don't see the point of 'boo boxes' which appeared to surface this year, others do. I can't get worked up over a sweet little tradition some loving parents do for their kids. Doesn't affect anyone else either way (other than the convo around overconsumption which is very valid).

the xmas eve gifts are just a nice gesture, get the kids out the bath/shower, into new clean Pjs, have a mug of hot chocolate and watch a christmas film together before sending them to bed.

Stockings are designed to give the kids something to do when they wake up so they leave the parents alone for a bit more of a lie-in.

There is nothing new, weird, or consumerist about it.. i'm 42 and my parents did it with me in the 80s ffs.

This thread has really highlighted who the scrooges are 🤣

Lots of seemingly ‘baffled’ posters absolutely baffled.

@Bleakmidwinter1977

No, christmas is a pagan festival stolen by Christians trying to seduce more followers. The only reference of jesus' birthday in the bible is that he was born in the summertime.

Christmas Eve Box - an opportunity for an annual, salty thread pretending never to have heard of them, in order to mock people who like to give their kids something on XE.

There are many, many threads each year exactly the same.

As you are a new parent OP, prepare for things you do for your oh so PFB to be derided and mocked by other, 'cooler' parents.

Yeah we don't do it. We are both late 40s and wasn't around growing up. Don't think our kids are missing out.

Ahh.. I've been waiting for the annual, wide-eyed 'what on earth is a Xmas Eve box??????' Thread.

It really isn't Christmas on MN until one springs up.

The clue is in the name OP.. aee if you can work it out..

Don't think our kids are missing out.

No one's 'missing out'. You do what you do.

My OH had new pyjamas and I didn't. 🤷‍♀️It's just different.

In all these threads, for years and years, I've never seen any people who do boxes sneer at people who don't or suggest their Christmases are lesser for it.

They just explain why they like it, which is a reasonable response to the ridiculous performative outrage.

Why would anyone go around pretending that having hot chocolate is somehow odd?

I don't think anyone on this thread has suggested that hot chocolate, per se, is "odd".

What they have queried is why hot chocolate has become something you'd give as a gift, or considered something special. And the "hot chocolate station" thing and the Velvetisers - a whole industry devoted to making hot chocolate a thing.

It reminds me of cup cake mania. A few years ago, blogs and Twitter were awash with cup cakes and with the selling and buying of what are basically expensive "fairy cakes" that our mums used to make for children's parties.

Hot chocolate seems to have become the new cup cake. It also channels the "hygge" vibe that the UK has imported.

I am old enough to remember when hot chocolate or "drinking chocolate" was something you had on cold nights as an alternative to cocoa or Ovaltine.

There was no big thing about the family snuggling up together on the sofa drinking hot chocolate.

Marketing; marketing; marketing.

If you want to buy and give hot chocolate sachets and make "hot chocolate stations" that's your choice.

It is because it is an AIBU, if the thread had been in Christmas board then it would have attracted different posters, I would not have posted detrimentally had it not been AIBU as then it is not a jolly thread about Christmas gifting just another AIBU

Bloody hell. <<shakes head>>

I suppose I had to expect one of these alongside the "of course it's not actually odd, it's just odd when people don't have top end crap all the time like moi" one.

They're always in AIBU. What does that tell you?

If you want to buy and give hot chocolate sachets and make "hot chocolate stations" that's your choice.

You got it 👍🏻 @paradoxicalfrog

That they should be in the correct board, the Christmas one.

*I am old enough to remember when hot chocolate or "drinking chocolate" was something you had on cold nights as an alternative to cocoa or Ovaltine.

There was no big thing about the family snuggling up together on the sofa drinking hot chocolate.*

omg you should be old enough to have noticed that SM is now a massive feature.

There's always been fashions and trends and fads it's just in your face now.

And fancy grinching about hot choc on the sofa. No one said YOU had to do it.

Or that people who start them couldn't care less about finding out about them, they just want to make a performance about how much they don't do them. And they know where to find an appreciative audience!

That they should be in the correct board, the Christmas one.

Nope, that it's a WTF ?! rather than a What is?

drinking chocolate was never an alternative in our house, it was a treat because it was a bloody palaver to make.

The modern advent of instant hot chocolate has made it much more accessible to give as a gift.