To think that there was a sort of peak Christmas in the 90s and that really nobody wants the huge event?

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I keep seeing threads about how one person in a household has tried really hard to make the day special, with the right food and drink, presents and games and company, only to find their efforts under-appreciated by the others in their family.
Here, I normally try and create that perfect day- despite talking loudly about how it’s unnecessary! But this year I have felt so tired all autumn, I haven’t had the heart to put in the usual level of effort. And it’s been lovely: we have had a chilled day with a long dog walk, a present swap, and then everyone doing their own thing and cooking bits and pieces- we ate late but it was a delicious combined effort! There’s been more than enough food, although I felt guilty when I did the shopping that I did more convenience stuff than usual, but have been glad of that today. In fact there are enough leftovers to eat for about three days!

Importantly for me, I haven’t felt resentful or overloaded with jobs and work. It’s been a nice level of pleasant pottering in the kitchen, for really good results on the plate!

So my question is to ask, AIBU to think that most of us don’t really want wall to wall perfect food, with special stuffing and bread sauce and three types of potato; that we don’t all need all the presents on our lists, and that a relaxed day with just nice, easy food and company is actually perfect? Less is more at Christmas?

Now I have my own young kids, I look back at what my mother did and despair for her. She worked long tiring hours in retail right up til late Xmas eve, spent the night wrapping with no help from dad, then the entire morning slaving away to cook a meal she didn’t even want, for dads family she didn’t even like. Missed all the present opening. I remember shouting out what gifts we’d had through to her in the kitchen. Why on earth she put up with it I don’t know.

There's women that still put up with similar now. It makes me so sad.
Is it ever the blokes doing everything and missing parts to cook food etc? Maybe, but it'll be rarer than rocking horse shit.

Thanks! I’m sure it’s not a universal experience but what you said kind of resonated with me. 90s Christmases just felt different to now…. in some way less pressured but more of an event and definitely more focus on family and traditions. Maybe they were more fun too? Like people didn’t care about it looking good for social media etc.

Maybe we’re also more selfish as a nation? People feel like self care and chill out time is more important than having to do lots of family stuff. I certainly don’t go round seeing lots of people at Christmas like my parents did. It’s kind of sad but then I think the world has changed. Things are so pressured in other ways that now people just want time off to do what they want. So if we are more selfish it’s a result of being time poor. Cost of living has probably hit hard too, hosting is bloody expensive. I’m in my 30s now and I don’t know any women my age who can be arsed with the hosting. Just too busy and tired. We go to parents to keep them happy but when they are no longer here… I think most people will stay home and relax.

I wouldn't say it's just you but there definitely others going all out. This year I was invited to a formal Christmas Eve ball in a marquee in a garden, with black and gold invitations no less!

But there was no '90s Christmas' as if it were some universal Dionysiac experience - all families were different and did things differently! I certainly don't remember three types of potatoes!

Christmas #1 was a real thing as opposed to whatever manufactured pop shite comes out from Xfactor that year.

Arh yes, you mean like Take That, Mr Blobby or The Spice Girls - not manufactured shite at all, eh?

I think this is all a case of rose tinted glasses! Probably because we were children or young enough not to be the ones who put allthe work in!

I was in Morrisons yesterday, a man said to a woman he had been talkin "enjoy tomorrow" her reply was " enjoy it ? what is there for a woman to enjoy about Christmas" Other than watching the children opening presents it's weeks of bloody hard work.

Take That with 12 number 1s?

As opposed to folk like Matt Cardle who has been forgotten about by New Year. Or LadBaby who is basically a YouTube piss take.

90s Christmas number ones you didn't mention: Queen, Cliff Richard, Whitney Houston.

Nah, not having that.

I think it may well be an age thing. To me, older, "peak" Christmas would probably be the 80s. Someone older than me the 70s or even the 60s. Our ideas of "peak" would all be different too. The amount spent at Christmas has increased incredibly across the decades which is another thing. Maybe, hopefully, we're getting to a place where we spend a little less on presents and some of the stuff and nonsense because that would be good for all of us, but I don't know what others do, only what I do.

I think all of our "peaks" happen at a certain stage in our life and we look back at that as the normal when it may only have been that way for a relatively short while. I think it's something that is constantly being tinkered with. Not quite reinvented, but with each little tinkering it becomes more different. I imagine that if someone time travelled from even the 60s to now they'd think that Christmas had gone pure mental.

We do a big family Christmas every year but we divide up the jobs and prep beforehand and everyone (male and female) mucks in with the cooking from early Christmas Eve to Boxing Day. Gifts are mostly edible/consumable and inexpensive. The kids get jobs too. It's really nice and everyone likes to be part of it.

(this is my husband's family - my late mum was the classic Christmas martyr growing up before she became very disabled and passed the baton to me. I loved her Xmas meal but this is much better.)

There's a lot of pressure nowadays to conform to what everyone else is doing.

Back in the 80s/90s we had quite a lot of presents and big family dinners but I'm sure that my parents had no clue what was going on inside their peers houses. People also used to leave it a lot later to start Christmas shopping. Now I feel we are bombarded by emails from retailers late October/early November. Friends telling me they've finished all shopping by end of Nov. Black Friday. The Elf!!! Christmas Eve boxes. Booking up to see Santa because it'll get sold out otherwise. Marching pyjamas.
Not to mention endless social media posts about what everyone is up to, how decorated their house is.

I do often think that the phrase "ignorance is bliss" was coined about the pre internet days.

I imagine “peak Christmas” is whichever decade was the last one we had where we weren’t responsible for making it all happen.

I was raised in the nineties and we always had a lovely, chilled Christmas. I read threads every year about how miserable people are, about arguments and fights and tears because dinner was late or someone ate too cheese, or because their gifts weren't perfect and it all sounds insane to me.

Why do people put themselves through it every year? I honestly don't get it.

For me the 90’s/early 00’s was peak Christmas time, I guess I was a kid/teenager so now when we do Christmas we try to recreate some of the feels. I love doing Christmas with my dc, we’ve defo made some new traditions but tbh they both love the old ones that I’ve brought from my childhood. I don’t remember each specific Christmas but I remember every tradition, certain trips, some prezzies, we still have the same food now, the same way. We might have lost some loved ones along the way but we’ve pretty much kept Christmas alive..

Never had the three types of potatoes. Christmas all about roast potatoes with occasional Yorkshire puddings.

1990s was the end of the pre-, internet age. Today we all get so much dopamine from being online we can't be bothered with anything else. However all the additives and palm oil in bought alternativea have meant I've just left things on the shelf which means some things have been simpler.

Please tell me how to make vegan Yorkies!

I wouldn't say the 90s were 'peak' Christmas, but the 90s were the last pre-internet Christmases and so came without the exhausting, stifling 'standards' and 'right way of doing things, and comparisons that the internet seems to have imposed. Along with that, less consumerism.

So your Christmas was generally as it had always been: people buying a tin of sweets, a bag or two of nuts, a pack of dates, making a Christmas cake, cooking a roast dinner, buying a bottle or two of their favourite tipple and instead focusing more on actually being together.

No elf on a shelf, Christmas eve boxes, gift/beauty advent calendars, matching pjs, pet advent calendars, celebrity chefs (you either followed your mum's method or delia's), posting your tree on Instagram, buying new decorations every year etc.

I’m an 80s child too & I do remember much more socialising with family, friends, neighbours, etc than now. And we dressed up for church.

Sounds like my Christmases as a kid in the '90s. Which is why we're doing the small, chilled and relaxed Christmas every year.Tbh, today I think we've peaked as it was the best Christmas (in my opinion) ever.

"Now you never see any programmes like that on tv."

Whaaaaaat?! I rarely watch live television and even I've seen an endless stream of those sorts of programmes!

I agree OP that late 80s-early 2000s was “peak Christmas”, largely because there was a specific and quite widespread Boomer kind of Christmas that was both more elaborate and planned and fancier than the pre-Boomer Christmas, and that has kind of gone out of fashion or seems too much these days. I mean we do loads for Christmas these days, collectively, but somehow seem to fit in less stuff for some reason.

Like - a Christmas Day for my grandparents (pre-Boomer) went something like: get up late morning, put turkey on, couple of presents, menfolk nip to pub for an hour when it was open, Christmas lunch (two courses: dry turkey (frozen from the local butcher), sprouts/potatoes/stuffing and gravy, followed by Christmas pudding and cream, Queen’s speech, then a long rest of the day in front of Morecambe & Wise and Tommy Cooper drinking whisky, eating leftovers and cheap cheese on Jacob’s cream crackers and smoking like chimneys until all rolling off to bed still drunk.

Boomer Christmas of my 80s/90s childhood went something like this:

All kids up at crack of dawn, stockings, eat chocolate, full breakfast of croissants etc., showers & dressed in party clothes/Sunday best, then tree presents (loads); clear up wrapping paper, put turkey in oven, then to church at ten, complete with each child bringing one of their new toys to show at church. Mince pie and tea afterwards in church hall.

Then back to put roast potatoes on at 11:30, rearrange sofas for guests, family guests start arriving at 11:30am, champagne at 12:30, dinner with at least three courses starting at 1pm (starter, which got more elaborate over the years from melon or soup to smoked salmon mousses and so on); then full Christmas roast including three types of potatoes, fresh farm-reared free range turkey for twelve, pigs in blankets, plus carrots/sprouts/broccoli/sweetcorn/roasted butternut squash/home made bread sauce/home made cranberry sauce. Then Christmas pudding with cream, brandy butter and another dessert for those who don’t like Xmas pud, followed by Stilton and biscuits for cheese, liqueur chocolates and coffee while watching the Queen and Christmas Top of the Pops.

Then the big Christmas film on BBC1 at 5-7pm while kids play with new toys. Parents clear up. Then everyone piles into car to drive round 2-3 different relatives’ houses for full Christmas evening buffets, Christmas cake, and drinks at each house, party games, charades, Trivial Pursuit and board games until midnight or so.

This all seemed quite normal and what everyone seemed to do for Christmas in our rather traditional and homogenous town.

I mean though - it was fucking mad in retrospect. Not only was everyone kind of drink-driving around all evening, and going out to church leaving the turkey in the oven (!) but I have no idea how my parents fitted it all in. It must have been like a military operation. And who wants to go out driving around to auntie so-and-so’s and grandma’s all evening after all that? I guess people often lived closer to relatives though in those days - whereas I now live half the country away from my family.

My Christmas now - is not actually that dissimilar from my pre-boomer grandparents (only with less smoking, pub, whisky and Morecambe and Wise, and with far better food). We get up late morning, kid opens stocking on our bed, lazy brunch of pastries or eggs on sourdough, open some tree presents, then we have a roast (slimmed down to just a really good free range meat, roasties, lots of veg but no sprouts, home made gravy), then a non-Christmas pudding dessert). In the evening we put on some Christmas music and watch a bit of TV, have some leftovers, a glass of wine or two and then go to bed. We’re exhausted enough by that - no idea how we’d manage church or an evening buffet!

Long post, but I definitely agree that people don’t tend to do the full Boomer mad Christmas Day as much any more. Fewer people going to church, no-one would leave the oven on these days while they’re out, it’s not fashionable right now to dress up much, people don’t tend to want to overeat or drink as much as they did, and often don’t live that near all their relatives, or want to put on a big evening buffet (or go to one). Drink-driving is socially very unacceptable for most people these days. TV is rubbish as well now at Christmas - no big Christmas film that everyone wants to see; no Christmas Top of the Pops to watch for the Christmas number 1 with bated breath. The big Boomer Christmas seems on the way out to me.

Wall to wall perfect? Only a fool would try and do that.
I'm not really sure why people tie themselves in knots about cooking the dinner (or setting a nice table etc). It's a roast with a few extra components and my main issue is not enough oven space! But other than the sheer amount of dishes used it's really not that hard, especially now with decent frozen roasties and prepared veg (must say the Waitrose sprouts were excellent this year).
If you have small children then DH can take charge of them. I'm a widow but back then he did the cooking (and was a very tidy cook - hardly any mess afterwards) and I did the kids.
We do traditional dinner and I wouldn't want to deviate. My dishwasher is actually out of action currently but even so it's fine.

You've absolutely nailed it as far as I'm concerned!

Also, you may be a certain age which means your core memories were from an era

This is it basically. You remember all the big Christmases when it was new and exciting and worth the effort. Now you're 30 years older and tireder and ready to take it back a few notches and enjoy a low key Christmas. Same goes for me, and the thing that has changed is us tbh.

People certainly dressed more formally which made things look more fancy. However as PPs have pointed out there weren't things like light trails, elf on the shelf etc. Our advent calendar was the same paper one we reopened every year.

Also, maybe this was just my family and people we knew but the food was exactly the same every year, no need to experiment with exotic recipes or food trends.