Just stop all this crap buying?

[PassingStranger]

Woman in front of me today at shop buying a load of secret santa stuff this morning. I heard her telling the assistant. She also mentioned some of it was for a lucky dip. It was all sweets and chocolate too.

Can people not make a stand now and refuse to get sucked into all this crap.

Just because of a fairytale about a virgin birth sometime in December possibly the whole countries been brainwashed for years,into thinking people have got to have presents and secret santas and lucky díps etc?

Does anyone actually need any of this stuff anyway and more chocolate?
Will the world end if we start to push back?

Its so heavily entrenched into people's minds, they feel its Just something they must do.

I look forward to the day more people start to reject these things and think for themselves?

Is this really want I want to do or am im doing it because its something I have always done?

Do people really need what i am buying?
Martin Lewis seems to be on track with it.
Its ugly.

I think about this when I see people buying endless tat from TikTok shop.

DH and I have been watching old Christmas films and shows (50s - 80s) and in every one someone complains about how Christmas has got out of hand and is so commercialised so this isn't new.

Maybe everyone just needs to change the record? 😀

And I was going to say i think a lot of people are definitely buying less and moving away from rabid consumerism but then I realised I had read Martin Lewis as John Lewis so might have proved your point. 😂

I actually think one of the saddest things on here is people desperate to list how minimal and restrained their Christmas is, for the approval of the MN audience.

I mean, why would you want to treat someone you love ‘just because’?!, at the ‘treat giving’ point in the calendar? Joy, love, generosity?!

No, instead we will enjoy our vegetables and the two gifts we specified back in October.

No need to insult people's beliefs.

Have you never noticed how close 'Christmas' is to the winter solstice? People have been celebrating a winter festival long before Christianity. People are entitled to celebrate it how they wish, including not at all if that's what you'd prefer.

Sweets and chocolate probably feel like naff presents because we're also eating them all bloody year round. My kids still have Halloween sweets which need eating before the advent calendar and selection boxes, which in turn need eating before the Easter eggs start arriving (they got 13 each one year from extended family).

So I see your bah humbug to plastic tat and raise you excess confectionery

Believe me, I am very vocal on social media and at parents evenings about it. It’s very unnecessary, however there seems to be a social expectation these days.

The other aspect is that the younger children really enjoy the giving of gifts. It brings them pleasure. So I tell parents to help them make a little something, or if that is really not their bag, go for a small stationary item. All teachers love stationary, and we often buy for the class out of our own pocket.

I have, however, kept the overwhelming majority of cards that my students have made me, especially when they have wrote something inside, as well as thank you notes from parents.

Anyway, thank you for not buying into the consumerism that has been generated around teachers and gifts.

p.s. one of the best gifts I ever received was a jar of gherkins. The parent asked what I liked, thé child knew, and they went and bought it together. And it’s true, I love pickled gherkins! Made me laugh so much that the child had really been observing me…

NOBODY can have too much sweets and chocolate.
As for the other tat, why target Christmas. Every day millions are buying the latest bit of plastic tat for the kitchen. The latest fitness tat to languish in a cupboard. A new charger because they cant be arsed searching through the piles of tat for the one they have etc...

I agree with the not buying of mindless plastic tat that will end up in landfill, polluting the planet. But celebrating in mid winter cheers up a cold dark time of year. I like getting and receiving presents, it oils the social machine.
So ask for and give things that you will use and need, and get a bit more luxurious versions than you might otherwise have bought. Classics are soaps, socks, gin, wine, posh cheeses, olive oil, talking of crsp?books, subscriptions or vouchers.
Still possible to have a good Christmas without too much crap.

@Katypp thanks for the insight into “tat”. I wasn’t sure what really defined tat in the uk. I looked up Baylis and Harding…the packaging actually looked pretty and is it so inferior to molton brown which is sold in speciality stores in the USA? So truly tat is defined by your opinion of the product or popularity of the product or content of the product so is highly personalized? Off the top I would say tat in the USA is inexpensive plastic knockoff toys from target…most of any “dollar” type store decor or fancy personal care… fragrance and makeup sets produced just for Christmas…novelty holiday sweatshirts hoodies/ blankets. Tjmaxx seems mostly tat now too…items no one would buy normally like blinged out sports team based drink cups/ games I never heard of before and the cheapest candles/ slippers/ pajamas/ small electronics like shaving cream warmers.

And there are always several who think that it’s everyone else doing things wrong and fucking up the planet in the process, while they are the Home Counties answer to Greta Thunberg. It’s not a lack of critical thinking, it’s pointing out the absolute hypocrisy in thinking it’s perfectly acceptable to criticise those people who buy things you aren’t keen on, and deem to be plastic crap, but if anyone questions your spending habits and the things you do that are detrimental to the earth, all of a sudden, it’s a lack of critical thinking skills 😂

You don’t need to fly off to somewhere abroad for your holiday. Your children don’t need a bedroom each. You don’t need to eat meat. You don’t need to live so rurally that you can’t use public transport or cycle. You do all of those things because you enjoy them or because of convenience. So you can sit in your big house, with your 2.0L car on the drive, snaffling down steak and booking your third flight that year, feeling all superior because your kid has a wooden toy and a book you bought on Vinted for Christmas, but you’re no better than the person who buys their kid a plastic Barbie dream house. So why are some of you pretending that you’re morally and ethically better than some other people?

I’m all for reducing unnecessary spending if you don’t want to do it or you can’t afford it but feel obligated to. And if you want to do your bit for the environment, then great, good for you. But this holier than thou attitude that some people have is eye rollingly tedious.

Everyone on this thread seems to view themselves as the voice of reason amongst everyone elses' tat consumption.

I agree that it should be about a treat. But it isn't a treat if its just the same stuff we're consuming the other 364 days of the year, or it's stuff we would never want enough to buy for ourselves.

I actually agree with you!

NOBODY can have too much sweets and chocolate.

I think the huge uptake of weight loss drugs might suggest otherwise.

What a lovely Christmas spirit you have!

I haven’t shat on anyone else’s Christmas like you just did.

Nasty.

Or…it’s something you can’t afford to treat yourself to, or its something one of your loved ones saw and just knew you would love it.

I’m sick to death of the race to be Most Austere on here, as if we are all going to collectively tilt our heads and clap.

Same every year on here, always has been.

You don’t have to buy landfill tat … I don’t.

Well, that sounds like a you issue.

Maybe read the invariable threads that will pop up soon, stating how harried, and stressed some posters are having to buy presents for everybody, including hard to buy for Aunt Maude, and the neighbours cat! Half of which, may not even be really appreciated by the receiver, whether it is deemed tat, or not.

It’s not a race to the bottom by rejecting tat, rejecting the need to buy stuff in order to have fun.

its like the exact opposite - rejecting the men who say your life will be better if you give me your money. Rejecting the stress, rejecting the cost is a way to have a happier life but you are considered strange if you decide to live happy.

look at the weight threads. The money threads. The stress threads. The threads making people
feel dreadful because their gifts are considered naff. No wonder some want to reject that and focus on human contact and the better - higher - uplifting - aspects of Christmas

Agree. It's boring now. 😴

Agree. It's boring now. 😴

YABVU @PassingStranger