To think 8pm is too late to eat our turkey on Christmas Day

[Pinkevie]

My in-laws are hosting xmas day this year and two days ago my husband announced that they are not expecting us to turn up until 6pm and will be serving the turkey at 8pm. (We live nearby so will be walking over). For me this feels ludicrously late in the day to enjoy the festive roast, especially as our 11 and 14 year old will be up at the crack of dawn and so we'll have been up for hours at this point. I think I'm going to be nodding off in the gravy. My mum is also joining us and suffers with terrible heartburn, she thinks she's going to have to forego a decent portion or face being up in agony all night. I could accept eating the meal at 6pm but 8pm feels so late. My husband says as his parents are providing the meal this year we have to go with a timetable that suits them and it will stress out his 80 year old mum if he mentions I want it to a bit earlier. A late meal has always been her preference. I get on well with her and don't want to upset her but think she would see reason if he broached the issue tactfully but he is refusing to do so and has forbidden me from asking her. I feel to bring it forward by a couple of hours would be a reasonable compromise. They'd still have plenty of time to prepare the meal at a leisurely pace but we wouldn't be hanging around all day before we can properly enjoy the festivities. I also think it's nice to enjoy a family game of charades or similar after christmas dinner but don't think we'll have time if we're starting so late. Curious to see what others think.

For a normal meal 8pm is fine in my house, we generally eat around 8/9pm as the teens have various clubs and activities after school. We are all night owls and go to bed around midnight. We get up around 7am-ish, I start WFH 730. I don't think it's particularly out of the ordinary, we would literally have no life if we went to bed at 10pm.

However for Christmas Dinner I always would ensure that anyone I am hosting is fine with times to eat etc, eg my mum cannot eat late due to a health condition so I would always ensure we eat early. Aside from that I quite like getting the main cooking/clearing up out of the way so I can chill, play games and eat picky bits for tea.

We work from home and start at 9ish, most people we know are in similar 9-5 work from home roles, so that probably skews my view of a normal routine.
Even when I commuted to an office every day, I only had to be up at about 7.45 so still went to bed around 11.30/midnight. It doesn't take me 45 minutes to get ready for work though.

I think your circle is probably not representative…
I can ‘get ready’ for pretty much any event in 15 mins. I don’t like leaping out of bed and rushing about though, so I choose to get up earlier. 11.30/midnight is my normal bed time too. Didn’t this bit of the discussion start with someone responding to someone who regularly ate at around that time though?