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

• If you need to fill stockings for dc, start buying bits for it now as lots of shops have sales on back to school stuff or summer shelf clearing stuff - ideal for cheap pens and pads, packs of cards, tennis balls, etc. Also time things like new toothbrushes and pants - stuff that they would have needed anyway - to be presents for the stocking.

• Getting hold of a christmas edition of their favourite comic and rolling it up as one of their stocking presents will not only take up plenty of space relatively cheaply but will also keep them occupied reading it if they wake up horribly early on christmas morning

• work out how big your dc's stocking is and approximately how much you will need to fill it - no point overbuying or buying simialry things several times over and don't want to have to panic buy if you don't have enough. keep little list in diary of what you want to get (approximates are fine - eg pens/crayons, comic, notepad, small car, small model animal, toothbrush, pants, ben10 sock (can you tell I have small ds!) - easy enough to add to if you see something fab, but will help keep you on track.

• keep your eyes out to see if sainsburys have another 'half price toys' week - and try to get there to get a load of stuff cheaply. If you can use their buy and collect or internet shopping to do this even better.

• Find a good hiding place for presents you buy early - that your dc can't find. Make a note of where it is in your diary or hidden in code on your calendar or somewhere so that, come 24th december at silly o'clock you are not tearing your hair out because you can't find anybody's presents and it is too late to go and buy them again.

• try to keep/hide each child's presents in one bag/area and stocking stuff in bag within that, so you can hand over wrapping up duties to somebody else and not have to keep saying what present is for what person. Also reduces the chance of you pulling out presents to wrap and a 'santa' or one of your presents being discovered early.

• get a roll of wrapping paper for each child, make sure all presents for that child are wrapped in that paper. Saves on having to label presents if you are in big hurry

• collect plastic bags from supermarkets and wrap presents in bag, either tie up top with bit of ribbon or sellotape. Persuade recipients that it is eco-friendly recycling. Remember to turn them inside out not to use the asda ones as they are seethru'

• If you have to buy 'generic' presents for people you see but are not going to see them until a few days after christmas, buy them after christmas in the sales.

• Beware of buying mince pies when they first come into the shops to be organised. These will have an eat by date of early november and be all stale and horrible when you come to open them on christmas afternoon.

oh dear. have typed way too much. you can tell I like christmas can't you!

Yes. Looks like our decision to live within at least an hour's drive away from the ILs, but no more than an hour's drive away was a good one in this context...

just remembered one more but think it is definitely worth including.

If you are going to have a real fire on christmas day (even if it is in a wood burner), don't light it and then leave it unattended.

Don't stoke it up so it will get really hot.

Don't have anything around it that is combustible and that could catch fire just because it is so hot.

If people make jokes about it smelling like the christmas dinner burning or setting off the smoke alarm when you think it is OK, don't assume that it is all the steam that is setting off the alarm

If you come into a room and discover it is alight, don't try to rescue the presents, just get out, get others out and call fire engine, only do firefighting stuff that it is safe to do.

Unfortunately this happened to someone I know - watching firemen hose down the lounge instead of eating christmas lunch is memorable for all the wrong reasons.

(oh and Remember to turn the hob/oven off before dashing out of the house before firemen turn up if it is safe to do so so you don't start a separate fire in kitchen and will have some food to eat eventually! - they did manage this luckily)

Make sure you check your smoke alarms before lighting fires and cooking christmas lunch...

I take DS to mass christmas eve (luckily there is a family mass at 7.00pm at my parish). So I can get him home and in bed at a reasonable time. Get out the presents, have my seafood feast and have a couple of glasses of sherry.

Christmas morning we have the presents. I open them a few days before to remove the nasty tags that hold them in, insert batteries and make sure that they work and then I wrap.

DS's dad comes round at around 10-11am. I get dressed. Put ham in oven. Have super brunch at 11.30-noon. Nothing that needs cooked (nice ham, rough bread etc.). DS's dad leaves and I take christmas ham to mums at 2.30-3.00pm. Eat christmas lunch/dinner at 4.30. Go home at 6.30pm with leftovers.

DS goes to bed at 7.30-8.00pm and I put my PJs on and relax. With wine, chocolate and leftovers.

Top tips: do the present tag, battery, making sure toys work and wrapping in advance. Give at least a half hour each way when making plans.

It's your christmas too. Find a way to enjoy it.

We have been away for christmas for the last few years - that makes it much easier .

I make the decisions and if the DH doesn't like it tough. He doesn't like Christmas and I do, so I saw early on that I would have to do everything.

I decided to accept that rather than get bitter about it so that I still enjoy it all myself. I think about what I would like (and my ds) and what's fair re the wider family and then organise it from there.

There are just the 3 of us so don't relish Christmas day without any rellies so we spend it with whomever we didn't spend it with the previous year; sometimes at home sometimes not.

I am lucky that my inlaws are lovely and I have a great family. Everyone is pretty laid back. :)

Choose a different coloured wrapping paper for each child. Much easier, especially when the little brat daughter decides to take the tags of every present so you have to unwrap them all to find out what belongs to who and then rewrap them again...

DS has 7 grandparents, due to divorces in the 80s, so it's a bit of an emotional blackmail minefield. However, my mum is the only one of them who is on her own (all our other parents remarried), so she gets first refusal on Xmas Day. Good job, really, as she also has DS one day a week for us, which means we owe her big time.
Coping mechanisms: have people over the weekend before and cook baked potatoes and chilli (do a veg chilli SS well), while of course having crackers, funny hats etc.
Make a list of who got what from whom.
Drink after we get home/DS is in bed.
Consider taking up smoking again.
Swear quietly and viciously in the garden.
Get CDs DS can enjoy for long car journeys.
Open adults' presents during DS's nap.

This year is complicated by it being DH's grandma's 100th birthday on Boxing Day. She has refused to come to any party that DFIL organises for her but if one us not forthcoming she will sulk for another century. And before anyone posts that they would love to get to spend time with their Nan at Christmas, well, so would I (mine died last year) but DH's gma is not like that. You can have her if you want, but I wouldn't recommend it...

"...veg chilli as well..." SS have nowt to do with it.

Puss in I thought marrying into a family of committed atheists would mean I could spend Christmas on a beach somewhere where someone else would make me cocktails and I could eat Tiger prawns for christmas dinner, but oh noooo! We have to be back from wherever we go for christmas and have to go to some sort of family thing- Bet the converting to Islam would be the same!

Sit downd with dh/dp/children if they are old enough and decide what is really important to you - then stick to that.

You don't have to do things beacause others expect it, or because it's traditional. Just because it's the way your family have always done it does not mean it has to be done

I have only one rule really - don't expect it to be fantastic because chances are something will fuck up along the way.

Apart from that -
see family on Christmas Day only, go elsewhere on Boxing Day

We do our own Christmas Dinner - others can come if they want, not if they don't.

It's all a bit different now we're in Australia and my family are in the UK but in some ways it solves a few problems; in others it adds different ones.

Before my mum died, we always went to my parents' house on Christmas Day - and I found that bunging a small(ish) sherry her way while lunch was cooking made things much less fraught (she didn't drink in general).

If you like having help in the kitchen, say so, and delegate jobs accordingly. If, however, you are like me and can't stand having people in the kitchen getting in the way offering to help then delegate one person who is firm of stance and commanding of voice to head 'helpers' off at the pass and involve them in an endless game of Snap/Entertain The Toddler/Hunt The Lost Battery in another room.

Lay the table as far as possible the night before. Make sure to keep cats out of the room. They do not understand what wine glasses are supposed to be for.

Wrap gifts as you buy them. But do label them. Pass The Parcel on your own is no fun.

If you have warring parents who refuse to be in the same room, inform them very early in the year whose turn it is to come to yours for Xmas day. You may well have to have the same argument conversation many times but it serves as a useful tool for relieving other pent-up festive frustrations.

Don't serve frozen roast potatoes. It's just not the same.

Buy tins of Xmas chocs early to take advantage of the special offers. Eat several tins, get sick of chocs before Xmas so don't eat any over the festive period. Cuts down on festive calories.

Don't poke sleeping children to see if they're awake and ready to open their stockings yet. You WILL regret it by eleven o'clock.

Make the food cooking as easy as humanly possible - buy the ready made stuffing, frozen roast potatoes, etc - so that all you really have to do is turn on the oven adn boil a few veg. This makes life much easier.

Never learn to cook a Christmas dinner. I am 47 and see no reason to change this now.

get in lots of wine.

if that fails, get disowned by half the family.....saves on xmas presents and there is no argueing over whose house to go too on the day itself

I think my Christmas avoidance technique is a little drastic - move to China! We've stayed here for two out of the last three christmases and you can choose to either ignore the fact that it's christmas like 99.99% of people do (as long as you stay out of Starbucks!) or you gather a few other people around who are missing home and have an impromptu christmas - no expectations, no stress - lots of fun! Of course that will only fly while DS is young enough not to object! We broke out rule last Christmas and went back to the UK where we lost all out luggage, got snowed in, crashed the car and had a grand total of 4 flights badly delayed or cancelled! I swear - never again!

Seriously though, the best advice on here is to remember that it's only one day of the year and while it's nice to make an effort, noone is really going to care if the napkins don't match! The important thing is that you're with your loved ones and you relax and enjoy (and enroll help as needed!!). I don't know about anyone else but I couldn't tell you any of the xmas pressies I got as a kid, or remember whether the turkey was dry or not - I remember getting to see my family and sitting around the table for hours chatting and teasing one another and just generally enjoying everyone's company - that's what I want to give my son.

I'm rather looking forward to xmas this year (we're going to new Zealand for a summer christmas after all that snow last year!) - it probably helps that I did almost all my xmas shopping last weekend (in 35degree heat!) .... I'm sooooo pleased with that! (but I'll probably still be scouring the shops for a gift for DH as the shops shut on xmas eve!)

Open all toys beforehand and get rid of excessive packaging so when kids try to open them, they can just easily take the toy out without struggling with plastic ties etc.

CHECK all toys before wrapping them. Bought an ELC Cash Register last year for dd2 and luckily I checked it a week before Christmas because it didn't work.

This also applies to
board games. Opened a well known board game (can't remember which one now) on Christmas Day to find that they hadn't printed/glued on the actual game on the board.

Check everything. Buy enough batteries.

ditto poster who said work xmas day

humbug, moi?
never

We've spent the last nine Xmas's out of the UK, this is to be our DD's first one in England. She is very excited. My top tip so far is to make sure the relatives you had planned to stay with honour their part of the 'of course you can stay here for four days' part of the bargain. At the rate we are going, it looks as if DD will be having her 10th christmas outside the UK. Fucking in laws.

oh kreecher :(.

Come and stay with us Kreecher. And that is a genuine offer - just cat me

Run away.

To another country if necessary, to really drive the point home.

Go on vacation!

a few things my family have started to do in the past couple of years, which have made a big difference:

(1) charity presents only as between the adults.

(2) don't try to force the small talk for too long. Some kind of animated film in the afternoon is most welcome.

(3) ditch any part of the preparation that nobody really cares about (eg Christmas cake, in our house)