To cringe every time I see or hear "only (x) sleeps until Christmas"? What’s wrong with "nights" or "days"?

[Cannotorwillnot]

"Sleeps" sounds so deliberately infantile to me. I loathe it. It's completely unnecessary even for young children - if they are so young they can’t understand the concept of days or nights they will almost certainly be having more than one sleep/nap every 24 hours so counting "sleeps" will be meaningless anyway.

I completely agree. I never heard it until I was an adult and I can't bear it

Is it a Millenial thing? I’m Gen X, and don’t know where this horrible phrase came from.

There was a song, possibly on Heart for years and years about "sleeps till Santa"

Nothing like that bugs me though

Possibly picked up from Muppet Christmas Carol?

Alright fun police it's just a harmless saying God knows there's enough in the world to be upset about without people saying the word 'sleeps' added to the list

I'm 60 and it's something we always said as children so it's not new or a millennial thing. It doesn't make cringe & I still say it , but just to my dog 😆

Heart Radio play the jingle ‘Sleeps till Santa’ and have done for years. It’s on the radio every morning at 7am and 8am I think - it’s always on when driving into work. Apart from Amanda Holden droning on, good start to the day! Haha!

Yes, cringe!

Sleeps aren't the same as days though. If it's one sleep until Christmas it means literally just sleep and then presents. If it's one day until Christmas I've got to do an entire day and then sleep and then presents.

it's on a par with holibobs and hospickle

But I try to live and let live 😂

Because a child can understand time in the concept of sleeps before they can understand what day it is.

I feel bad for hating it as much as I do because it’s harmless, but it makes me irrationally angry. To make matters worse, I have one friend who uses it constantly along with holibobs, hubcap and a range of other twee phrases.

Days is ambiguous. Today is it 8 days till Christmas, counting today and the 25th? Or 6 or 7 depending on whether you count either today or the 25th or not?

Nights sounds odd because it implies something happening then, like working nights.

Sleeps is twee but covers the issues with both other suggestions.

It is cringe, but my DC are 4 and 6 and it does make more sense to them than 'days' or 'nights' when talking about things happening in the future.

It's weird when people use it when there are no children around though.

Yeah you're being unreasonable. There's nothing wrong with counting down to things in sleeps.

I prefer to count down to everything in workdays because I hate my job. Counting down to things in sleeps would have made bedtime more acceptable when I was a child.

I just can’t remember Sleeps ever being used in the 90s or early 00s when I was young.

There was:

No Sleep till Brooklyn
No Sleep till Bedtime
Sleep the clock around
Sleepless in Seattle

But “Sleeps till…”? I never heard it used!

I've been saying since the early 90s at least,after Muppets Christmas carol movie 🤷‍♀️Worse things to get het up about in the world 🤦‍♀️

It annoys me too and it's mostly my GenX friends who use it!

I'm 40 and my parents said it to me as a child, "5 sleeps until Christmas", "7 sleeps until we go on holiday", etc. I now say the same to my children. I don't find it cringey.

Kermit though

'I did a thing' annoys me even more

It sounds deliberately infantile because it's meant to be said to children, you wombat!

Glad they still do it!! it's catchy 😃

Well stop wondering. I´m generation X, so no millenial as some PP´s were wondering, and my daughter understood sleeps fine, but days/weeks/months/hours were meaningless. Surely people who have been around young kids know this???????????