What WON"T you be doing this Christmas?

[Eleusa]

I love Christmas and enjoy spending time planning the decorations, presents, what I'm going to cook etc. But after years of experience there are a few things that I definitely won't be doing-

• filling my own crackers. Did this one year- it cost an arm and a leg and no one seemed any more pleased with their carefully chosen personal gift than they would have done with the usual dead fish game and mini screwdrivers. Same goes for buying very expensive crackers.
• doing a stocking for my parents who were staying in the house. Dad came downstairs announcing it was "silly" and nearly dropped the "Santa's not real" bomb to DC on Christmas morning. Thanks, Dad!
• making some sort of elaborate Scandinavian baked pastries for Christmas breakfast. They were lush but the kids had already eaten a metric fuck-tonne of sugar after opening their stockings so not much got eaten. Elaborate Scandinavian baked pastries another day, however, are a fabulous idea.

What will you not be doing this Christmas? (Just being nosey about what other people do and don't like- definitely not suggesting that people shouldn't do things just because I don't!)

I would love to spend Christmas with my sister but we both have large young families and awkward in laws and live a long way from each other.

No more Christmas cards - save trees and money

No more trying to find the ‘perfect’ gift that will light up Christmas for others when we get given Amazon vouchers.

Not organising anything, I have vowed to leave it to everyone else this year, hard to do as a planner

I have booked a spa day two days before. I am not killing myself cleaning and tidying for no one to notice - or care.

I am not doing any wrapping in December. Everything will be wrapped and ready by end of November.

This Christmas won't be like any other so I am not quite sure what I will or won't be doing.

Last Christmas was a really hard one, it was our last Christmas together as DH was bedbound and terminally ill, he died 7 weeks later. When you are in that situation every one tells you to "make memories" and "make it special" but, truth be told, last Christmas was awful and not one I want to remember. I'd felt huge pressure to make it something it could never be, I still feel that I failed everyone. This year, DH has gone and so have the two little people we were fostering and I am hoping to have a new small person with me.

I want this Christmas to be a new beginning and I want it to be happy. DH loved Christmas and I want to be happy as a reminder of our happier times together.

Other than to DH/DC I will not be writing cards. I don't want to, so I won't. I loathe writing the things and I dread the chore every year, so I am not going to do it any more.

I won't be buying any more decorations, because we already have enough of the things to sink the Titanic.

I will not be responsible for making/buying/decorating a Christmas cake. I just can't be bothered any more. If anyone else wants one, they can sort it.

Won’t be stressing , feeling sick and anxious about being in the company of toxic narcissist family members . My goodness what a relief.

me neither. And our office is way too cheap to even pay for one drink. I have always gone in the 5 years or so i have worked there. The first year I went a colleague said she was not going to anything 'On my time, or on my dime' . I was quite impressed with the give no fucks attitude.

I'm quitting just before Christmas anyway. I'll have drinks with my team and that is it.

Staying overnight with family. We'll have a 6 week old as well as 3 and 4 year old and have a dog and cat we always spend a fortune putting into kennels and cattery just so we can stay overnight with family and it's so much faff taking baby monitors/travel cord/bedguards and staying in different places each night. I hate it. So this year we'll go for the day and then go home in the evening so we can feed the animals and all sleep in our own beds with our own things

Putting up Christmas tree, due to new puppy. Don’t think it will survive.

So sorry 💐
Pressure around Christmas must have been so hard. I hope you can reflect on happier times spent with dh this year.

Making my adult brother in law greggs sausage rolls chips and beans. If my kids can eat adult food. His 21 year old face can too. It’s a bird and a roast not tripe.

I will be scaling down the roast - can't justify having the large oven on for a long time. I'll find something that will cook quickly.

Also not bothering with any selection boxes; I never enjoy them as much as I think I will.

I will be avoiding the supermarket wine offer I took advantage of last year (if it's still running this year) because the wine was disappointing.

I won’t be going to Centre Parcs, my children are receiving a lot less and my husband and I have decided no gifts. No big Christmas days out and certainly no shopping in the Boxing day sales.

Bit trivial but I won't be buying £4 bags of caramelised nuts, having just discovered how very easy it is to caramelise your own.

No to Xmas Eve boxes
No to Santa visits
No to Santa on the train
No to new decorations
No to turkey

Yes to homemade hot choc and a film
Yes to NT light shows
Yes to pub in front of the fire with family
Yes to homemade decorations
Yes to a turkey alternative that I haven't decided on yet.
Yes to cinnamon rolls for breakfast 😋

Anything "Christmassy". It's just me and DP this year, neither of us are particularly bothered about Christmas so we shall spend the whole day celebrating my birthday instead. It's going to be very weird having a "normal" birthday with only me getting gifts. 😄

How old is he?! That’s rather pathetic of him

I dropped the stockings for my kids years ago! They are teens, they don't want any cheap things, snd I never had stockings growing up so just not in to it. However I do have a mantle now after years of a morderme flat surface and stockings look cute - so our four pets have personalised cross- stitched ones filled with treats and little toys.
We won't be (most likely anyway) cutting our own tree. It's a tradition when their Dad was alive, but he died when they were young and I've tried to keep it up but last couple years the farm we go to has had a very poor selection and we end up traipsing around for a couple hours and then make do with a poor specimen as we are tired and cold. I am looking at other tree farms but wonder if it's worth it - the kids don't seem to mind not doing it as long as they can help select the (already cut) tree.

21 and he’s always been like this. He eats chips and chicken nuggets, fish fingers, beans, turkey bloody drummers and dinosaurs. Tinned macaroni tinned meatballs tinned ravioli etc. It’s like feeding a fussy toddler. He’s the in-laws baby though so he’s been indulged

Spending hours on the M25 to see my in laws as I'll be 38 weeks pregnant. They never come to us 'because it makes so much more sense for you to come here'. I'll not be travelling with new DD until at least February half term so will be interesting to see when it 'makes sense' for them to come and meet her!

I'm normally very sensible at Christmas but I'm going to go a bit over the top this year. I'm definitely getting all the Xmas shopping done early so I can enjoy the run up properly 😊

Roasting a turkey. DS1 is veggie. It's not our turn to host family this year so it seems pointless to pay £40-60 for the three of us. We will have a chicken instead.

I will also not be baking loads of extra cakes unless expressly asked. Christmas cake, yule log, mince pies etc hang around getting stale. I'll bake them fresh on request.

@bloodywhitecat I'm sorry for your loss and that last Christmas was so hard. I'm sure you didn't fail anyone and can only imagine the pressure you must have felt. I wish you a happy and peaceful Christmas this year.

Making a roast dinner. We’ve having steak and Dolphin Nose potatoes.
Oh and trifle (shop bought).

Having a Boxing Day fry up! 🥺We are going to bils so my dh and prospective son in law can go the the match. But as he’s from Holland we are giving him the full English Christmas experience.

A fry-up on Boxing Day...

(finds note pad and pencil)