9.30 and we’ve not yet had dinner

[Ticktockk]

Staying with family for Christmas and oh my, am I hungry?!
I tend to eat with the kids at home and this is now my bedtime 😅
What madness are you currently experiencing over Christmas?

I have the opposite problem. Relatives who have dinner ridiculously early. Like 5:30pm, so not even evening time. I'm starving by bedtime.

That’s ridiculous, I would be away to bed🤣
have a friend who does this. Invites you for dinner at 7.30 and won’t actually get the food on the table to 9.30.

Are your family Spanish? If not, this is madness.

Oh god this gives me flashbacks from when we were in between houses and living with the in laws. They insisted on cooking for us every night but food would be served after 9pm. I'm from a country where lunch it at 11.30am and dinner around 4pm, so I was always dizzy by 7pm. Our DC was also 4 at the time and starving by 4pm. 🫣

I learned very quickly to have tons of snacks available so DC and I would quietly stuff our faces. I also offered to cook and when I did food was served by 6pm as a compromise. It was such an awkward time!

We went to stay with my Mum's school friend when I was 7 years old and they didn't give us dinner until 10.30pm. I was sooo tired. I hope they have given you something to eat now.

Our main weirdness here is that we're still getting over a tummy bug, and my period is due and is messing me right up, as it has done every Christmas for the last 15 years. God rot it.

I’m in bed for 10.30/11 most nights. How can people have a meal and sleep on a full stomach?

That's my bedtime. I'd head to bed and tomorrow go and get a whole bunch of snacks so you can not worry about their timing.

Try having (chaotic) French in laws- dinner is never before 11…

I'd be so hangry I'd have killed someone by now. There is no way I could live in mainland Europe.

The husband's probably eaten the cheese, see another thread!

Please let us know when and if you eventually got food!

Is it a standard thing or are they late today?

We don't really eat until that time at home, by the time we are both back home after work (commuter town) and we make diner, it's easily 9 or 9:30. Kids eat earlier, they need to go to bed.

Are they from a different culture or just disorganised?! Can you offer to help?

9:30 is PAST my bedtime as a 42 year old. I'd just faint and sleep

I'd have flounced off to bed by now in a massive mood 😂

Excuse yourself. Say you are going to the bathroom. Instead sneak into the kitchen. Open a few doors. They've got to have a stash of hobnobs. Stuff face and pockets (for later) with hobnobs. Return with features organised into an innocent expression.

O god no, I keep snacks in my handbag for this reason, especially for my DCs. I had friends like this, they would invite you over early, 6-6.30pm several beers and bottles of wine later ( start with beer, then white wine then red) food would be served by 10.30pm if we were lucky.

I used to hate that when we had to stay with the inlaws. She liked to start dishing up at 5 ish. I think the earliest was 4.50pm. Then at 9.00 she'd go out in the kitchen again and start making plates of ham sandwiches. Nightly. Just really odd.

I remember going out clubbing while staying in theirs having eaten very early. By the time we got in at nearly 3am I was so hungry and DH just went to bed and fell asleep immediately. I lay awake freezing cold and starving and fuming 😆

6pm is tea time

Wtf is this madness eating so late?
Can't be good for waist lines. 🤣

That's batshit. Who has dinner at 11pm? Most people are in bed by then.

6pm to 6.30pm is a perfectly normal time. That's the time me and DH have dinner. (Then a light supper around 9.30pm.)

I would have left if I was sitting there starving hungry at almost 10 at night. SO glad it's just me and DH over Christmas. All our visiting and gift giving done by 22nd December, and the rest of the holiday to ourselves til 2nd Jan when work starts again..... Lazing around doing fuck all for anyone, watching cheezy Christmas TV, munching on Christmas food, knocking back port and Irish coffees, going for lovely walks, and days out mooching around the shops.

All this sitting around in-laws houses. Nah! I'm not saying I'm glad my in parents in law are gone, (they died 2 decades ago,) but I don't miss having to go there every fucking Boxing Day for 5-7 hours. (My parents died not long after.) DH's mother was always desperate for us to sleep over too. We only lived 10 miles away FFS.

Occasionally we will see our adult DC for an hour on Christmas day, we go to see them (they live close to each other,) but this year we've already seen them, (22nd December) and are having the whole Christmas break to ourselves! They are too, and are pleased with that too! Saw a few other extended family members over the past 3-4 days.

.

I’d skip dinner and go to bed 🤣 We do eat reasonably early (6.30ish) as I need at least 3 hours to let food go down before I can sleep. I didn’t eat till 10pm on holiday and it took me until 2am to get to sleep! I was a corpse the next day…

Have they fed you yet? Are you alive? 🧀

6pm is not possible for most people who work full time. Unless you've got a short commute and you stick something in the microwave.

I think OP's passed out due to hunger. @Ticktockk please tell us you are OK?

I used to have part French family and in the end I would just make my own (veggie) food for when I wanted to eat. After years of similar. I don't do well with big gaps between meals. Usually results in a migraine so it was self protection really. 😎You gotta put your own oxygen mask on before you can help others.

Let's just remember that over the Christmas period.

Omg we need an update please 😂

Are you still waiting?

Are your family Spanish/Southern European?

If you’ve eaten- what did you have?

(If I was waiting while 9:30 I would have just taken myself off to the nearest Maccies drive through).