We need your advice about getting through the minefield that is families and Christmas!!

[GeraldineMumsnet]

We're getting seriously ahead of ourselves this year and are starting to think about Christmas (we know, we know).

Do the festivities make mincemeat of your relationships with your other half, parents, in-laws, siblings, great-aunts et al?

We want your strategies for heading off the rows and resentment about how much you do (sending cards, buying presents, wrapping, cooking, washing up, more cooking, laundry etc etc) and whose turn it is to hold Christmas Eve/Christmas Day/Boxing Day at whose house - generally how you manage to get through the whole Yuletide hoo-ha without going crackers?

Thank you
MNHQ

I have one rile which is that I refuse to discuss it until November.

Christmas riles me.

Buy presents only for children/nephews & nieces etc until they are 18 or left Uni and your Parents/In-laws. No one else!

My brothers/Aunts etc all accept this. Saves us all a fortune on buying rubbish "tokens" for people.

Accept offers of help from people staying, and offers of cash to cover the bills. We host Christmas every yeat and it is expensive, so money towards the turkey, bringing desserts or wine etc is all gratefully received (but never expected). My mum always helps in the kitchen etc.

Christmas is a great family gathering chez Milliways, and we are not bothered about the material stuff.

One word.

Lists!

Request to work Christmas if it is your "turn" to have the ils over. (I am a nurse btw)

Keep smiling as wmmc says. Just make soothing noises to difficult/stroppy ils "oh yes I am sure you are right aah aah" type noises.

Open the wine early.

Work right up to the big day.

Invite Dad down to stay, otherwise he'd be all by himself as my 2 sisters have yet again made plans that don't include him

Invite MIL and FIL round for lunch with us all. MIL won't hear of it and invites us all round (my Dad included) to their house for lunch.

Sorted!

Present wise - we do a kind of secret santa for the adults in the family. Each adult only buys for one other. Wish lists are sent round well in advance and a price limit set (£60 last year). That way, we all have to buy much less and have some good ideas form the recipient if we're really stuck for ideas - saves buying things just for the sake of it.

And if you are invited to have christmas dinner with anyone it is vital to take one bottle of wine per adult eating even if you are driving and one course - preferably pudding.

Christmas is expensive. If you can afford to ensure drinks and pudding are taken care of, it can really help the host (just say in advance you are intending to do this).

Also vegetarians, (I was one for twenty christmases) offer to take something for yourself that will go with traditional veggies and take too much so everyone can try a bit if they want to - it's quite mean to turn up with a veggie lasagne for one. And yes the host could cook something but it'll probably be horrible. Offer to bring your own and at least you will know there is something that hasn't got just a lickle dribble of chicken in.

Convert to Islam and renounce Xmas

Only one rule:

HOTEL

With a 40-something yo back and 3 children, I am too old and broken to spend any more nights on an IL's rickety sofabed listening to my BIL fart in the bathroom before I can get a shower on Boxing Day.

And if you're lucky, your SIL will suggest all the nephews/nieces bunk in together while you and DH get a taxi back to your kingsize egyptian cotton and powershower and roomservice and your LIE-IN!

EVERYONE is happier this way, and the sanity is worth the expenditure IMHO

I'm betting puss still gets chocolate on December 25th though.

Of course

We have decided this year to spend it on our own in the morning of christmas day, just me, DH, DD and DS, then off to close friends for the afternoon/evening, including dinner and the obligatory game of monopoly or somesuch! When we are home, we usually have open house on christmas eve, with mince pies and mulled wine and at the kids bed time, A Night Before Christmas gets read, people pop in on the way back from last minute shopping (not far from city centre) and often we have most of them here at 10pm!

Boxing day - the tradition if we are not holidaying with family away from the area is to go to another friends house, with all our other friends, where we take leftover food and gather, and eat leftovers. Our friend cooks ham and some other additional bits and bobs and the kids all play. If we have family visiting us and we are not staying somewhere else in the country, they come to this too.

We tend to do this every 3 years or so, and then the next two years visit, or have visit various family members, they come here from USA or we go there. I quite like it as I have limited family myself and would not really ever seriously contemplate having christmas day with my own family, we are too different, but i do enjoy seeing them over the festive season at some point.

so in all that crap, my rule is, spend it with friends

Just keep bearing in mind that Christmas is really for the children, just do it at their pace and don't get upset if things don't go exactly the way you planned it.

Become very involved in the church. A very high church which does matins, lauds, prime..

Sorted.

pre-ds i was a restaurant manager and so worked every christmas, so now, for me, christmas is just like it was when i was a kid. we spend xmas eve doing last minute things, making biscuits for santa and the elves (after all, they do most of the work) we go for a walk at about 4 (just as its starting to get a bit darker) and while we are out our neighbour jack frost drops off new pyjama's, smellies and a new book for ds. then we get a phone call from my dad santa telling ds that he has to go straight to sleep. tis v effective.

xmas day, we get up and ds opens his stocking on our bed (just like i used to when i was small) before breakfast in the kitchen then we open pressies and we cook lunch. whoever wants to come, can. we just have one rule though... the adults come second. if my stepdad wants to throw a tantrum or my mum wants to act like a queen they can stay at home. i am making cakes, mince pies and puddings for everyone this year so i have things to take when we visit.

The last couple of years we have force a strategy through in my family which has made things immeasurably better - namely, we spend Christmas Day at our house, alone, with just out immediate family i.e out dc. Then Boxing Day and the day after we go to his and then my famillies where all sorts of chaos and confusion can go on (and does at my familly's) but we don't care as the boys have had a nice, relatively peaceful christmas at home to open their presents in peace and see what everyone got rather than a frenzy of competing relatives overwhelming them. We can go for a nice walk in the park, or they can lie around all day in their Xmas PJs playing with their new things. We have Christmas lunch, on time, and no one cares what plates are used or who gets which napkin ring, there are no semi-comatose, hungover twenty somethings stinking of booze and fags and puking in the toilets. (as at the Christmas lunches at my mum's place).

We implemented this policy a couple of years ago after one infamous Christmas lunch at my Mother's house which actually took place at 7.30 pm (she never gets up in time to put the Turkey on). We hadn't eaten since breakfast, everyone was tired and grumpy and hungover apart from us (we are the only ones with children), the kids were bombarded with yet more presents from the relatives all piled on them after they had only just had time to quickly open their FC ones at home before we had to rush off, they were completely overwhelmed and people were offended as they didn't even know who to thank for which presents and there was a huge row over who had which napkin ring.

Despite some initial resistance, this now works mush better as presents etc are spread out over 3 days and we can have the children's christmas and they can spend it hungover watching TV if they so wish!

So my tip is - don't spend it with any family apart from your own immediate children!

This is all great advice! My own is too never send cards (total waste of paper and time) except to very elderly or lonely relatives whom we don't see very often as they are too far away. Only buy/eat food that we like and visitors will have to have whatever we are eating (no Xmas pud or mince pies etc cos we don't like them). Samm and sill presents that are cheap. A really good family film to watch when everyone has goone home

Samm and Sill? Sorry small person 'helping'. No idea what I was trying to say now!

We have a tradition of Hot Chocolate and Homemade Mince Pies last thing on Xmas Eve, if its early enough we watch the muppets Christmas Carol if not we watch The Snowman.
This follows a walk round the neighbourhood in the dark to see the lights.
I take the children out to put Reindeer food on the grass and hang our Santa Key up, and while we are doing this their Xmas eve PJ's arrive under the tree.

On the day we get up what ever time we want and open pressies in a frenzy, i start the Xmas dinner with a big glass of Baileys to help me along the way, we spend the day, cooking eating, playing and singing carols whilst getting pissed merry.

Boxing day we do a pilgrimage to Lush to get the sale items ludicrously cheap then come home and have a buffet and watch crap Christmas TV.

We also have an evening just me and DP where we get a take away, put on a film and wrap pressies together.

We are inviting my widowed father to stay which will put the ILs noses out of joint again but as I have pointed out, they have each other, my father has no-one and is no trouble. I have cannily agreed this on the back of a trip to see the ILS where FIL's unreasonableness was to the fore and dh is still miffed with him.

My ILs used a lot of emotional blackmail last yr, FIL saying MIL was upset to be missing the children, MIL saying FIL had tears in his eyes... 4hr round trip and we were up and down the motorway like yo-yos for one IL family event after another - dcs and I were exhausted by the late nights. Normally am quite chilled but last Xmas had a threatened m/c and just realised how demanding they were being, it left no time for visiting other family/friends and I was preparing for Christmas Day at silly o'clock Christmas Eve. Don't know why they make such a fuss since they race through the day to sit in front of the television.

Our first 'married' Christmas was a mad rush of driving up and down motorways (in a borrowed and falling apart car; I had to lean out of passenger window to ping rogue windscreen wiper back after each swipe then we repaired the exhaust pipe with a coathanger) in an attempt to see and to please everyone. After that we promised ourselves we'd never repeat the experience and told our families we'd see anyone who wanted to see us at some point over the Christmas period i.e. not Christmas Day itself.

Since then we've enjoyed some lovely Christmas Days at home, just the two (now 4) of us with friends, away in Lapland or, last year, having my parents to stay (because they could stay nearby, not in our flat). Our families' expectations are pretty low now so they are always thrilled if we accept/extend invitations for Christmas Day/Eve/Boxing Day. So that would be my advice; avoid complicated alternate years arrangements because they can feel very limiting and not everyone will adapt according to a change in needs.

• Wrap presents as you buy them, and write the recipients name on in teeny writing. Stick on tags/ribbons etc just before they go under the tree.

• If making homemade mince-pies, freeze them (uncooked) in the tin. They pop out perfectly once frozen. Store them in a box/bag in the freezer, then cook from frozen when you need them. (Thanks Delia).

We had a buffet thing the weekend before Christmas last year. Every family member was invited.

It was nice and easy, and it made sure everyone had seen everybody else. Took the pressure off Christmas Day.

Remember it's only the 25th of December.