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.

It's 'sleeps' because children who believe in Santa are told to sleep on Christmas Eve otherwise he won't visit. It's all part of the fantasy - stop being such a killjoy!

It's nice when said by adult to small child, adults who say it to other adults are an abomination. Also see 'dippy egg'.

But people use it to count days until their birthday, holiday, etc.! Anyway, what about the fact that small children often sleep during the day?

What about it!? It's just a bit of fun. You really don't need to think too deeply about it...

Don't you mean shouldn't be allowed to use the snippy snip, snip, snips ?✂️✂️ 🤐

I don't know any toddlers who have ever understood the count down to Christmas whether measured in sleeps or days. It's really 4+ that counts down.

But regardless, toddlers nap in the day. Not sleep.

Babies sleep during the day but I highly doubt they're counting down to Christmas. Albeit, this is MN so I'll await the influx of 4 month olds eloquently arguing it should be Christmas already because they've had 36 sleeps so far this December not 18.

I took an eldery, quite sane and well-educated Uncle to a pre-op talk given by a registered nurse. She told the group they only had 4 more sleeps until admission.
Most of the group tutted, a couple of them quite rightly challenged her for infantalising them.
It's shows a paucity of maturity.

Perfect, just perfect

I raise you Christmas Fayre...

I found it useful with an ND child with no comprehension of the passage of time. Anything beyond 10 days might as well have been 10 years.

We worked in sleeps until he was about 17 and something in his brain clicked into place.

Edited to say I didn't let him lose with scissors 🤣🤣

It's a reference to the Muppet Christmas Carol, which is not only one of the greatest Christmas films of all time but is the greatest Dickens screen adaptation ever made, therefore YABU

My 35 year old niece was saying it when she was 2, it's be around for a while now 😂.

Some right old miserly feckers on here aren't there?! Imagine being married to them?! 😂

Oh FFS, if that is real these people need to get a life. Tutting and judging because a NURSE said '4 more sleeps til admission.' It's just a saying FFS! Some people need to get a grip. If someone had tried to chastise me for saying this, I'd laugh at them.

You think people who do not want to be treated as infants, who have indeed, had a life, should shut up.
What a charmer you are

It makes my brain itch.

They used to say that in ds’s preschool clearly not taking his erratic nap schedule and autistic numeric precision into account.

As an insomniac, it's only two sleeps until Christmas for me

Aw, you have my fullest sympathy there. Recently my autistic son was extra upset about a hospital appointment because "but school said 'see you tomorrow', so I can't go to hospital tomorrow, school said 'see you tomorrow'."

Whereas my autistic son has no concept of the passing of time, or what a day/night is, but does understand ‘one sleep until x’.

Totally. Smacks of: 'I don't have any fun, so you're not allowed to!'

What a bunch of misery guts! Chill out, as it not long until Christmas - in fact only 7 sleeps until the big day!

Well it was used when I was a kid - and I'm 65!

My girls are 31 and 27, I remember using sleeps to explain timescales to them when they were little. It helped them understand the concept of time more meaningfully than saying days or nights.

I have an irrational dislike of "toasty" used to mean warm. You'll be toasty with a hideously drying electric fan heater on, these coats will
make you toasty warm etc. Again it seems juvenile, like leather having to be described as buttery soft or even just buttery!

Yup