To get resentful at Christmas- how much do other husbands do?

[ChristmasGrump5]

My husband does nothing towards Christmas. He doesn’t buy a single present,card, food or drink, wraps nothing,doesn’t do any meal planning or make anything either. He likes buying a Christmas tree. Puts the lights on and that’s it. He doesn’t like the stress Christmas causes and says he can do without it. Does nothing towards birthdays either for the same reason. Doesn’t get that actually his kids like Christmas and birthdays and somebody needs to sort both. We both work full time and have older teen kids. Every Christmas he gets angry at me for getting stressed because I do everything. If I ask him to take things to the post office that I have bought and wrapped he moans. I try not to show my stress and manage most of the time however if I show an iota of stress in any way he gets shouty saying we shouldn’t have Christmas , I choose to do it,he doesn’t like it and can do without it.

I have pared it down to the bare minimum . We don’t go anywhere, or do loads of things and I try to keep the budget down so we don’t spend a lot. I just send presents, small but thoughtful ( pared right down), make a Christmas cake, stockings for the now adult kids and us,get in nice food.However sorting it when working full time is a lot when you do it single handed.

I’m starting to feel resentful and pretty much hate it myself now. I don’t do anything nice and Christmassy because it adds to the stress of fitting everything in. So can I ask what do other husbands do towards Christmas? What is the norm? Do they support you if you do it all, are you able to voice stress about it?

He puts the outdoor lights up, does the Christmas food shop and cooks the Christmas dinner. I do the rest. Which suits me fine.

My husband is the same. I just do Christmas my way now. He enjoys it but it is a lot of effort.

I do all the organising and DH does all the heavy lifting. So, for example, I plan the meals and make the shopping list, DH does the shopping, and we both do the cooking with me acting as head chef.

Roughly equal

DH does all online shopping and 20 cards. He could does all the gifts for his side of the family.

DH wraps with me Xmas eve and cooks with me Xmas day

I buy items in shops, gifts, stocking fillers and food. Coordinate relaxed catch ups with family and friends. Buy my side of the family gifts in shops.

Your kids are older teens- can’t you involve them more - eg decorating, deciding on food and helping with that?
my DH is responsible for any gifts for his side of the family and together we decide re gifts for our DC; sometimes I wrap sometime he does (he’s better at it and enjoys it).
re food - we take it easy. I don’t like spending the day cooking and stressing neither does he so we pre- order stuff from our store or a restaurant- they do full Christmas dinners if that’s what we fancy; or we just do a take out we want. If we host, he fully participates in any prep/ cooking involved.

My husband likes Christmas more than I do so he does a lot. He decorates the house, buys and wraps presents for his side of the family, and cooks most of Christmas dinner. I only help a little with decorating, clean and tidy the house after, buy presents for my side of the family, and cook the turkey as he doesn’t like it much. We both get gifts for our daughter and do the food shop together.

Mine is useless but doesn’t shout.

how lovely! Sounds like you guys are really in it together. I’d love something similar but my DHbis like a lot of those on here. He does literally nothing towards Christmas but like many it’s because he doesn’t care. So I do it for myself and the children and don’t do more than I can happily manage. I also work waaaaaaaay fewer hours than he does so all the household stuff reflects that. I don’t buy presents to post to extended family, which is one job off the list

Ex (note EX…) did sweet FA towards Christmas but expected the equivalent of a moon on a stick. One year, I sent nearly 200 Christmas cards on his request.

Its a much simpler affair these days…

He loves buying tree and putting lights on. I like putting the decorations on but he’d help if I asked, I did it with DD this year.

He also put up lights and garlands and the artificial tree and the lights for that.

Christmas wise he’ll buy me what I ask for and usually a nice surprise. I do most of buying for DD because I want to but he is keen to get her one or two things. Difference is he fairly regularly buys her toys through the year whereas I tend to wait for bday or Christmas.

He bought some chocolate for fillable advent but this is mostly filled by me.

Food wise my parents and in laws do most cooking but he does buy some of the stuff for dinner and will generally cook one thing, I do the roast potatoes and maybe a nut roast. He and I make a desert each.

Im pretty happy with that but wish he’d get his finger out and order his family’s presents. In Black Friday I got gifts and he got stuff for himself!

DH decorates the tree, buys gifts for his side of the family, buys food for the Christmas sideboard, I buy for my side of the family, prepare the Xmas Eve boxes and stockings, and buy/prepare Christmas dinner, we sort out presents for the children together. I think we are pretty even

Mine will cook Christmas dinner and buy me a present, but that’s literally his only contribution these days. He says “there’s nothing else to do”.

He won’t get the decorations out of the loft
He won’t come with me to buy a tree.
He won’t help decorate the house.
He won’t do food planning or shopping.
He doesn’t wrap any presents.
He gets me to buy the presents for his work team.
He doesn’t post anything, including his own Godchildren’s presents - which I bought of course.

He loves to tell me I’m “making too much fuss about Christmas”.

So our situation is a little different to yours as I'm a sahm and we have three kids from 3 - 13. But dh buys and organises and cooks the meals and drinks including egg nog home made on christmas day. We equally share responsibility for buying main presents and stockings are mostly my duty throughout the year but he will offer ideas and buy bits if he sees them. He does outside and ceiling decorations, he puts the tree up but I decorate it. He sends no cards, I send to my family and any neighbours, he sorts a card and christmas goodies for the school he's a governor at and I sort teacher presents for our kids schools. I do the elf but he helps and finds ideas online and if I forget, he moves them to a generic hidey place idea. I sort out family visits and carol services and santa visits, and we both try to remember every little school Xmas thing! In your position- I'd go away for christmas and do it how you like... by yourself!

@S@Spaceid

Have you considered hiring him out to exhausted mumsnetters for a huge fee?????

My DH pulls his weight.

He buys and wraps presents for all of his side of the family, I sort out my side and DDs. He'll buy DDs a present if he sees something he thinks they'd like but it's mainly me that sorts the kids. But I like doing it.

I do all of the cooking but he does all the washing up. That's our standard all the rest of the year too.

I sort Christmas cards for my side of the family. He usually sorts his but I'm not sure whether he's done any this year. But it's his responsibility and I don't get involved, if his family don't get any then that's on him. I don't pick up "his" jobs if you see what I mean.

Decorating wise he got everything down from the loft and he hung the outside lights, I did the tree so that's pretty even.

I do most of the food shopping but he'll definitely pick some bits up too. He contributes a lot. He works full time and I work part time and on balance I probably do a bit more but that's fair enough with our working hours. If I was incapacitated he'd handle it all perfectly.

we do the tree together. I buy all gifts. He wraps all gifts. I’ve stopped doing cards completely. I buy all food and drink. He cooks Christmas dinner. Boxing Day is PJ and party Food day. No one is allowed out and no visitors allowed in. This year we have people staying over so it will be a later version that afternoon and on 27th we will do this.

My immediate reaction is YABU, but it's because you've enabled this and done it all, protected him, and made the bed you're now moaning about. So stop enabling him.

Make all the effort with presents but put your name on them, write the cards, put your name on them, do the tree how you want it, plan the meal to your effort level (plan to go out??), don't give him any credit. Stop enabling him to be useless.

Watch the explosion; then ask him what he contributed, you're not lying.

My husband does all his side of the presents, he doesnt do any decorations (was my house and was able thing me and DS do).

I'm an author of my own demise but I really like buying the kids presents so happy to do that. Also wrapping is a chore but I bought myself a tape dispenser this year as I got it all out and thought nah.
I make the figgy pudding and sometimes the cake. My mum makes it other times. We are lucky that we take christmas in turns so only every 3 years is our turn. Dh does christmas lunch though as I'm veggie and he likes turkey. He'll do it every year. He also sorts out wine and helps with the Xmas shop plus does the lights. Kids do the tree. We are a team on Xmas day.

DH has always sorted gifts/cards for his side of the family and I do my side. We discuss gifts for DC and I do most of the buying (I am a staunch researcher for best prices!) but DH does most of the gift wrapping.

I do all food planning, shopping and most of the cooking over Christmas but that’s because I love cooking. I’m not a keen baker whereas DH is so he makes biscotti, cookies, etc.

I book all Christmas activities, I am more organised and I like to get it booked early.

As a family we buy and decorate the tree and the house.

I would say DH does a bit more of a thorough clean and tidy than I do, but again we do it together.

I would say it has been equally split over the years as we both worked FT but I have recently gone PT so maybe I need to step it up a bit!

@SeaWitchly

"Christmas for him was just food with family..."

So, who prepared the food, decorated the table, chose the Christmas playlist and provided him with a wrapped present?

Apologies, I don't know how to quote an already quoted posted so have pasted the question above.

In terms of preparing the food, his friend owns a restaurant specialising in cuisine native to their home country. He hosts on Christmas Day by cooking up huge pots of food. There's no table as such. He has around 50 people to his house on Christmas Day, and it's a case of everybody gets fed and sits wherever they can find a seat. He'd take a gift or financial contribution for the host, but DP wouldn't open a gift on the day.

I think Christmas for him is completely different to Christmas for me and my family.

My husband probably would not bother with Christmas if we were not together. I'm mostly retired now so dynamics are different - but when I worked full time I always did buying, wrapping of presents, sending cards, making cakes/puddings, arranging get togethers. He does put up the tree (I decorate it) and put up outside lights and we do food shopping together and he cooks the dinner. I love Christmas and doing all the planning, arranging and decorating so have never minded.

We put the tree up together.

DH sorts the presents for children his side of the family (they don't do presents for the adults). He wouldn't expect me to.

DH and I have decided presents for our DS and he ordered most of them. We will share wrapping.

We are out this year with family but have my family round at some point and we will share the cooking and tidying up for that.

I do the food shopping as I like buying all the treats. DH put the tree up yesterday and DD helped him decorate it. He sorts the majority of the kids presents. We don't buy for his family apart from his parents and he gives them cash. He cooks the Christmas Dinner every year.

Mine helps with the decorations, he took them down last year and has somehow lost them in the loft. He will wrap presents for his family, but I tend to buy them as he's not the best at picking out gifts (he once bought me a desk for some unknown reason). Even then he'll ask 'who's this for?' when it's clearly a kid's book and the options for the recipient are his brother, SIL or young nephew!

My husband isn't useless op. Why have you put up with this for so long? Does he even buy and wrap a present for you?