Christmas - I just don’t get it?

[BasinHaircut]

I am 40 years old and I still don’t get why people go mad for Christmas.

Im not talking about religious aspects, and of course kids love the idea of Santa etc, but for everyone else I just don’t get it.

I try really hard every year to get into the spirit but I haven’t yet found something that ignites a spark.

I go through the motions for my son and we have our ‘traditions’ like going to the panto, seeing the lights etc, but I just cannot get excited about any of it.

Is it just me?

The endless christmas music is making me hate it even more. I cant turn on the radio or go in a single shop anymore, driving me crazy.
Also sick of being ridiculed in work for not liking it, endless pressure. God Its awful.

So much pressure to follow the trends, we're a nation of sheep and excess. Lockdown and loo roll panic made everyone follow suit and we're the same with Christmas, people flapping about
Christmas In November sends a ripple effect. So much waste and buying landfill tat no one wants, I struggle to get my head around it.

It’s not the pressure as much as either the sympathetic head tilts from the Christmas obsessives who can’t get their heads around not everyone liking it as much as them. If you’re not giddy with excitement by 10 nov then you have clearly had a traumatic childhood or other awful thing happen to you, and are to be pitied. Either that, or if you muderous feelings towards that Mariah Carey monstrosity song you are a grinch, bah humbug or a Scrooge.

@GRex@margotrose I have plenty of books and films/TV shows to watch etc ... but I can do that every other day of the year, so that doesn't make Christmas special in any way. I spend Christmas with my parents, who don't live near anyone I know, so there's no chance of seeing friends, and there isn't much to do where they live.

I love the period before Christmas, and in between Christmas and New Year: it's packed with friends, dinners, drinks, lovely parties, theatre, ballet, visits to museums and galleries, and all the other things I usually do, just turned up to the max ... which makes Christmas itself (as in Christmas Eve to Boxing Day) very dull by comparison. I can't wait for it to be over so I can get back to normality.

Right, so actually you do like lots about Christmas, you just don't enjoy hanging out with your parents at their house. That's got nothing to do with Christmas. Just have them come to you, or visit them another time.

I can take or leave christmas. Growing up there was immense pressure to have the perfect family Christmas mainly driven by my mother's expectations which were always disappointed. Christmas prep usually involved her stress and frenzy and meltdowns and she would spend alot of time crying on Christmas day itself. It's a complicated story to do with her toxic family and dreadful family dynamics.

When I left home I refused to celebrate Christmas (much helped by the fact I worked abroad) and went LC with that side of the family. I started getting excited again when I met DH and had the DCs. But we dont see my side for Christmas (parents again live a long way away and also stopped celebrating it completely about 10 years ago) and my ILs are dead and SIL and BIL say flat out they are not celebrating with anyone but their own kids- which suits us all fine. Sometimes we meet up in January for a meal and that works well.

I dislike the round of Christmas parties though- the forced jolliness- the office Christmas party which is as close to being compulsory attendance in my workplace. But we just celebrate it at home with our Dcs. This year we did not put up a tree, just decorated a pot plant. No wreaths. But we opened the champagne at 8 am and basically pleased ourselves.

Not just you. I don't get it either so I just sort of ignore it as best I can.

I feel very sorry for your mother, it sounds like she was just doing her best to give you all a lovely Christmas.

No sadly that was not it. It involved being in competition with her sisters and an overbearing mother of her own who thrived on manipulation and playing her children off each other in very underhand ways.

Like I said- a complicated dynamic.

So not really your mother’s fault, as such, as she has grown up in a toxic environment. It’s probably all she knew. It’s sad she has given up on Christmas altogether, I wonder how she feels each year. It says alot that she doesn’t mark it at all.

Poor woman. That’s incredibly sad.

It’s fine to not like anything in life. I personally do like Christmas.

As a child everything centred around church and I was in a Choir we used to decorate the church with greenery and go carol singing, it was a very good choir. I am not a regular church goer now but do go at Christmas and Easter. Until covid I helped do the flowers at the local church. It would take a team of six of us almost all day to do the decorations. It’s far more low key now and they use silk arrangements.

This year I went to a carol service, visited a Christmas tree festival and a stately home for their lights, made Christmas wreaths for friends, donated toys to the local appeal and did the Christmas window displays in a charity shop for them. I took the display down yesterday, it took four hours. I have watched a couple of Christmas films, played a lot of board games and done a lot of cheese board and port along with the games. DS GF revealed she had never had a Christmas stocking as a child at some point over the year so I did one for her along with her main gift. I do love Christmas but though I would class myself as agnostic these days it does have the love rooted in my Christian upbringing.

I love it, and always have. But plenty of people don't, so no you're not alone.

So much pressure to follow the trends, we're a nation of sheep and excess.

What trends? I don't feel any pressure at all. I'm in my early 50s and we do Christmas pretty much exactly how we did when I was a child.

There are individual things I love - carol service in the cathedral, going to the cinema to watch Muppets, buying gifts for people I care about - but most of it is just a massive slog of shopping, planning, endlessly thinking about food. The actual day is just like a normal Sunday-ish day here. I would love to go away - my friend is in Vietnam and having a blast with her three grown up children.

Things are definitely less special now. As a child in the early eighties, a film on tv was a treat because it was a rarity. Now my children can watch whatever they want, when they want so that specialness has gone. A tin of quality street was a rare treat, now it could just go in the weekly shop. The Christmas number one was an exciting race to the top but now literally anything could be up there. But it’s the same with everything - I had a Chinese takeaway once a year on my birthday, DH and I could have one every week if we chose. So I think people are doing more and more to try and recreate that sense of excitement, and it’s too much. I’m not complaining, I just think
times change. I’d like to go away next year, last few years have been thwarted by covid and family issues etc.

I suppose we should be grateful that living standards are - for most people in this country - higher than they were even a couple of generations ago. But everything comes at some wider cost.

The simplicity of Christmas excitements, especially for children, has largely disappeared now. The ‘mood’ of Christmas has given way to a festival of ever more massive consumer spending.

I’m not hair-shirted about it. I just think it’s a shame that the sense of anticipation is so difficult to recreate now.

@WhatsTheUseOfWorrying thats exactly what I was trying to say but you have articulated much better. Our children are lucky to have so much, but it makes it harder to treat them. Mine are not grabby and we are not rich but I still think they are very privileged.

I thought you put your finger right on it! You inspired me to agree with you.

I absolutely love it as I get to have a lengthy time off work (closed between Christmas and NY) and spend time with adult DC and other family members I love.

I do however remember the stress of dealing with ILS when I was married, and that often took the shine off Christmas for me. Also, my own NPD mother who I have been NC with for over a decade.

So for me, the moral of the story is cut out the toxic folk and Christmas is very enjoyable!!

I don't like it. I don't like that more and more nonsense is added each year. There were December 1st family breakfasts, complete with gifts, plastered all over social media this year. Just why?!

I don't have family to spend it with. I can't stand board games or any silly games. I just see it all as a massive unnecessary expense. I hate the forced joviality. There are plenty of threads on here about how miserable the whole charade is. I just see it as a list of things I have to do... and guess what... I don't want to do them!

The best Christmas I ever had was when I was single and childfree and I just buggered off on holiday and ignored it.

Once DD leaves home I won't do anything. I can't wait.

@WhatsTheUseOfWorrying someone agreeing with me on AIBU makes me think the Christmas magic is in fact still alive 😂😂