Women are the cause of Christmas being stressful....

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Women are to blame for making Christmas a stressful and expensive holiday.

It's women* who are doing all the planning, booking of trips to father Christmas, managing and booking expensive UK Lapland trips/visits to activity farm, booking light trails, making sure the elf delivers a North Pole Breakfast, sorting Christmas Eve boxes trips to the panto/nutcracker, sorting parties, making sure kids Nativity costumes done, doing the stupid elf in the shelf, writing letters etc

All rushing, trying to make everything perfect and everything a "memory"... And then complain it's all too much, toj stressful, too expensive

Nobody is holding a gun to their head.

We all know the kids would be perfectly happy with a few presents on the morning and able to eat chocolate for breakfast.

Nobody will stop loving you because you couldn't be fucking bothered to make bread sauce from scratch using homemade organic breadcrumbs.
If you didn't bother making a starter, who cares?

Nobody would care if the stupid Elf never arrived.

Live by this mantra "Those who matter, don't mind. those who mind, don't matter"

It's stressful because YOU make it stressful.
Just embrace your Inner Man** and stop making the effort.

*Not all women, my husband dies yada yada yada
** Not all men...blah blah blah

As a toddler DS hated beards and would get upset by bearded men in close proximity. He had one trip to Santa and never again.

I can agree to some extent, if we ate dinner with no Christmas tablecloth that was lovingly sewn by me years ago with matching napkins and crackers plus a centrepiece he really wouldn’t give a shit. He really doesn’t care about aesthetics unless he really hates something.

I suppose all the Elf on the shelf stuff didn’t exist when mine were little.

I am going on a Polar Express train this year but I love steam trains and visit them and have been to many a steam train event.

As PP, I don't subscribe to the marketing myth that you have to have ALL the stuff for a successful Christmas.
Cherry pick only the bits you particularly love, leave the rest.
There's no hard rules here. Christmas comes in various sizes. I really don't blame people for being fed up of hosting. It is very unfair to expect one person or household to do that every year.
As for the shops and the "Must have Christmas food" 🙄 Double chocolate mince pies??? Who the fuck came up with that?

But if no one else wants it or cares about it, there will be no thanks or help coming and it becomes a festival of stress and resentment! I think that's the point of 'think like a man' here.

Pick the bits you like. Pick the bits your kids won't let you miss out (sweet stuff and presents most likely, maybe the advent calendar and elf). Do those things and leave the rest. If no one else is bothered enough to help, it doesn't matter enough to do right?

I agree op. Christmas and all year round women are often their own worst enemies.

But I also wonder if all that effort women put in is in direct proportion to how shit and useless their male partner is? A lot of it looks like overcompensating to me.

Yeah I agree really. My husband and kids love Christmas and what I do, but I bet they’d still enjoy it if I dialled it down 50% I’m not one of these that whinges about it though, I sort of accept I’m the one setting the expectations and don’t find it particularly difficult tbh. DH will do what I ask him to do, but yep I’m the instigator!

I don't find Christmas stressful. There's a week where work is gets really busy, there's more to do at home and I'm taking half days for this or that school event and I'm bloody knackered, but I don't partake in the feeding of thousands or having a houseful of geusts I don't even like for a week, or anything beyond my means, either financially or timewise. It's supposed to be fun - that's where the memories are.

I get sick of the martyrdom 'i have to do it or pwople will judge.me' ok your judged and? so what? But not just Christmas lots of things we hear this about

We all do bits men and women and we just do the bits we want to do

I agree. The fact is when kids are young they do enjoy Christmas.

I’ve never done elf on the shelf nonsense, or visits to “Santa” or matching pjs. But I enjoyed my own family’s traditions as well as creating them for my kids.

The key is to keep ensure equal labour and engagement from partner and not to go overboard.

I was very clear with my husband from the start that Christmas was not going to be a solo production. And he’s always been amazing in terms of present buying, wrapping, cooking, decorating. If you have a partner on board and agreement on MO do it makes all the difference in the world.

Quite right. Am getting on a bit now and a trip to santa was.. well, just not that common.
As for reindeer food, WTF? Xmas eve boxes? Where the heck did that come from?

Not only do women do and stress about most of the work, they make their lives harder by doing a million pointless bits of stupid crap.

We've not done Xmas, no tree, no fancy stuff the last 2 years here, due to not feeling like it with FIL being very poorly, then died. This year we are in between houses and the shit is against us so no, not doing it again this year. Just a present each, one for the cat and a Sunday roast. It's a little sad but boy, it's nicer because it's easier.

Actually, it’s capitalism. You’re welcome.

The real issue is hosting. It is important to get family together sometimes and we all want that but hosting is bloody hard work however much others “help”. I hosted 14 for 3 days last Xmas and it nearly finished me off. And these are people I adore. Those that don’t host will never understand.

Coke! So much of our Xmas now is because of coca-cola. So they could sell cold drinks in cold weather 😀

NAWALT We have lovely stress free Christmases I just cherry picking the bits I love.

I have really really happy core memories of extended family Christmases as a child. Which I now realise were a bloody nightmare for my parents / aunt and uncle who hosted but were fabulous. Playing board games with both sets of gps all now long gone. Those were precious times. That’s why this is difficult.

I try to avoid the deluge of whingeing threads on here about it every December.

No one likes a martyr and talking on a load of 100% optional tasks, then whining, just makes people look foolish.

No one 'has' to do anything. Children would be fine with a few presents and sitting in the house, not driven around, socialising, full of germs and hyped for three months before the 'big day'.

I horrify my in-laws and put all gifts in gift bags and stapling them shut. Then reuse the bags the next year. Apparently I should dedicate a whole day to wrapping, curling ribbons and colour-coding.

Oh we very much understand. Hence why we choose to not host.

Yes I agree op, it does help if the other adult in the house gets involved too, but so much of it is completely unnecessary crap. I don't do any Christmas eve boxes or elf on the shelf shite. Luckily I very much enjoy the bits like buying presents, decorating, Christmas trips. DH does the cooking and we don't host anyone. We don't bother cooking everything from scratch because neither of us enjoy it and who are we trying to impress?

My mum used to tie herself in absolute knots when hosting, even for just immediate family, cooking everything from scratch, making it fancy, and she'd be so stressed and angry by the time we sat down it would be quite uncomfortable. Then she'd leap up and start fretting because she'd forgotten a garnish or something. Honestly no one cared, there was no expectation, it was just stressful and unpleasant.

None of those things are necessary to have a lovely family Christmas!

But it’s disingenuous to say Christmas is only stressful because women make it stressful. Feeding a large number of people a fancy lunch, hosting people, travelling with young children. Dealing with sugar filled children, being out of routine. Everyone having high expectations. People thinking they can just sit around and not do normal chores but everyone being in the house so making more mess than usual.

I think do as much or as little as you like but don’t make yourself a martyr. I would rather buy prepared food than kill myself in the kitchen. If others don’t like that I don’t care.

My kids are older now and like going to shows so we always buy theatre tickets for presents. It’s better than a load of landfill crap. We have cut back majorly on buying presents for wider family. We just buy for the children under 18 and spend £15 max per person.

When my kids were younger we would go and see Santa at the local church fete. Fun and low key. I hate crowds and OTT places like winter wonderland.

One year we bought a large cardboard box , painted like a fire engine and gave that to the kids. They played with all Christmas until it fell apart. They're in their late teens and early twenties now and they still talk about it.

I don't have children so Christmas isn't very stressful at all - we do whatever we like on the day. Some years I have cooked a traditional Christmas dinner (with my husband as veg-peeling and washing up dogsbody), other years we've just had a bung-in-the-oven prepared meal.

I don't believe Christmas was a huge source of stress for my mum back in my 70s/80s childhood. My dad always took charge of cooking Christmas dinner, until eventually I took over because my dad couldn't cook a roast potato to save his life, he had some weird method probably left over from his post-war rationing childhood involving flour and lard. My sister and I put up the tree and all the decorations (we used the same ones year in year out) and we were not slow to give my parents a list of what presents we wanted, usually from the Argos catalogue which would have been straightforward to buy.

What are chargers when they’re under plates? Are they heated mats? I’m obviously not keeping up with current table setting!

Sad to say, I think I agree. Proud to say I've just realised DH always booked the Santa trip (does very little else for Christmas though).

I have never done Christmas Eve boxes nor elf on a shelf.

I think I already follow some of OPs excellent do want YOU want advice. I do make Christmas cake because I like it. I do not make Christmas pud because I don't like it enough. I need to find some more changes I can make for me.

Anyone, of either sex, who has rigid expectations of how things ‘should’ be is going to be a PITA about Christmas and most other things tbh. Especially when those expectations go beyond what that person wants to have and impact on others. Both my mum and sister have pretty rigid ideas about how things should be at Christmas - from enforced family walks to at least three types of potatoes with dinner. They end up stressing and exhausting themselves - and everyone around them.

My mother exhausts herself cooking a massive meal because that’s what you ‘have’ to have, then she’s literally too tired to eat with us: last year she left the table after the main course and had to go and lie down.