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

The year I was 1st pregnant I used the excuse that it was the last chance DH and I would have together alone. The 1st year with DD in tow we hiked it round the rellies - final straw was standing at a station at 6 am , baby with a nose bleed knowing I had to go to my parents and invariably cook! following year we invited EVERYONE to ours ( I know - insane!) and turned into a hotel, Lunch was fine but breakfast - OMG - I made the mistake of asking if anyone wanted a cooked breakfast to be greeted with 10 yesses. Still had all the laundry to deal with after, let alone the food bill ... managed a couple more years of trying the "just on XMAS day" thing - but inevitable the PIL's could never get a train home so it was 5 days of catering, altho they did look after dd ( lots of chocs I seem to recall) . Finally decided I'd had enough and just told everyone we'd go out for Xmas lunch somewhere in the w/e b4 Xmas ( falls on my birthday but worth the sacrifice!). Now is just the 4 of us - bit weird but kinda nice too! And I don't have to deal with my 39 year old, going on 14 year old sister moaning about the crap presents she's been given!!!!( well at least not until the NY)

A few years ago we decided as a wider family that we would only buy presents for the kids - so I buy for my nephews and nieces but not my brother/sister/parents - sometimes we give small tokens or bake biscuits, but everyone agrees - no wasted unwanted presents to the brother-in-law that he doesn't want, more time and less stress in the lead up to Christmas. If I am hosting on Christmas day and have parents and in-laws and others coming, I ask one to bring a pudding, one to bring the wine, and one to bring a cheese board - spreads the cost and everyone happy to help out (and then invite themselves along again next year).

Feel the love.

I have always loved Christmas. There are 12 days of it in my book so plenty of time for everyone. My parents and DH's are dead so no fights about that but none anyway. Now we get together with family and friends - all pile in and all help etc. It's lovely.

The 'feel the love' sentiment is exactly how I feel :)

We're lucky to both have great family so whatever we decide to do is great.

I think Bailys helps too :)

Thanks very much to everyone who has posted on this thread (and thanks in advance to anyone else who posts).

What has worked for us, especially when the DCs were small, is to spread it out as much as possible, making Christmas last at least a week.

Christmas should be about children, but they are no fun if they are over-tired and over-excited.

I also try to get the children outside for a walk every day. Adults may be happy to sit in over-heated houses, stuffing their faces and falling asleep on the sofa (yes,DH, I mean you), but the sugar effect on DCs is wearing for everyone if they don't get to burn it off.

Do as much of the prep as possible on Christmas Eve, so that on the day, you aren't up to your eyebrows in potato and sprouts to peel.

Buy a christmas pudding unless most of the family actually like it. There's nothing more frustrating than making your own pudding, and spending 6 hours steaming it, only to have most of the family reject it. I speak from bitter experience.

Teach your children to tell the time, and then tell them what time they can come and wake you on Christmas morning. We have done this for years because we put stockings by the fireplace in the front room, rather than on the end of beds, so don't want to be woken at 3am, 4am, 5am and 6am by children wanting to know if they can go and open their stockings yet.

Mind you - the first christmas we did this, we told the dses they could come and wake us at 7.30am, and not a moment sooner, so ds1 didn't come and wake us when he was sick three times before 7.30!

Have a designated plan for whose house you will be at. Stick to it. This way you will not end up annoyed with the same relatives every year. You will be annoyed with different ones.

Get presents way in advance. forget you bought them. Buy other things! - This way you will double both your expense and effort, and they will probably still hate what you get them anyway.

always keep the receipt.

ROFL at motherinferior never 'learning' to cook a Christmas dinner. And your family has never politely expressed any disbelief?

Hang on a minute. I bet you tried to prove that you couldn't cook a Christmas lunch as some kind of deterrent that would keep you in other people's houses clover every year for the foreseeable. You ddid, didn't you?

My current approach is to ignore all phone calls and emails from relatives from 1 Sept - around 15 Dec. That way it's very hard for even the most thick-skinned relatives to invite themselves for Christmas.

I realise this isn't the most mature, assertive approach.

You could do what we did - move over 400 miles from most of our relatives - we have had two (relatively) peaceful Christmases in Scotland!

fennel, all you have to do now is perfect the same technique for the other 9 months of the year, and you will be all set

Moving further away didn't work for us (grump). They just come for even longer....

Moving a bit nearer again didn't work. they just come even more often....

Ohhh dear, Fennel - I think that Witness Protection may be your only answer.

Most of the worst christmas moments I can think of are caused by the demon drink, where people who aren't used to it go over the limit. I think it is a good idea to have some low alcohol alcohol if you know what I mean. Make the bucks fizz with mostly orange, make the christmas punch mostly apple juice with a bit of brandy. Daytime drinking can easily get out of hand and people seem to feel that adding booze to everything makes things more christmassy.

Mulled wine is a good lower alchohol festive drink, trice - you can boil it a bit to lower the alchohol content, plus it has orange juice in it (and MIL puts earl grey tea in too). And the smell of mulled wine is very festive, too!

Speaking from (again, rather bitter) experience, many tense Christmas moments are caused by having rather too many teetotallers on both sides of our families. Too many people staying uptight and stressy throughout.... The others hiding their wine consumption from parents who think more than one glass of wine = severe alcohol problems.

Quattro, I genuinely can't cook a Christmas dinner. I don't like that sort of food, and I am actually unsure what you're supposed to cook. I can't cook a 'roast' either. DP does all that kind of cooking in our house.

I can, on the other hand, cook a curry that'll knock your tastebuds out with salivating delight.

Only spend Christmas with people you actually like. This includes relatives.

Resist all attempts to be forced to do the same thing over and over and over again in the name of some sort of tradition (unless you really want to).

Refuse to be drawn into any nonsense about the day being ruined for the lack of some trivia like, everyone going for a Lovely Walk, or, waiting until 7pm to open the presents.

Point blank ignore all episodes of emotional blackmail. Simply pretend you haven't noticed that wobbly bottom lip because the crackers have been pulled and it has spoiled the look of the table.

We hae gone for the Church option. DS is now a Chorister and won't even be here on Xmas Eve........ however he will be having a whale of a time with his mates, playing some sinister age-old game called "Kicky-Pegs" in the boarding house. Our worries are assuaged by the fact that he has to be alive for midnight mass!

So if family want to see us this Christmas Day they will have to come here. I've booked the Travelodge already, for when they finally make up their minds.

I expect I will just cook things and pick up the pieces on the day.

Then the fun REALLY starts....what to do for the remaining 6 days of holiday? Which relatives? How???? Can i have an emotional blackmail filter fitted to the phone do you think?