What do you do for breakfast on 1st Dec

[Myleakycauldron]

I know some people will go all out with the North Pole breakfast but wondering if there is a toned down version I can do on a Thursday before work?!

I may end up flinging their advent calendars at them in a rush to make it to school on time!

Isn't nessecary to buy it but again, everything you buy makes them money so I don't see this point? Don't you get Christmas food decorations cards or Easter eggs or anything seasonal? I would imagine that a shaped crumpet is most costly to produce and there's a mark up but that's not an outrageous cost for a one off purchase. Or as other people mentioned - you can cut your own toast should you wish.

People will have been doing it for years but the naming "North Pole breakfast" I think is relatively new and might be what's irritating people who knows

You don't need to buy a single thing to make breakfast with. I do buy the shaped crumpets for ease, but before my son started school we had more time and I made shaped pancakes using Christmas cookie cutters which were my mother's and I believe my grandmother's, they are definitely very old. We eat fruit every morning, so what difference does it make to make it look like a candy cane? So the big expense is a packet of Christmas napkins. I buy several of these. We use them for every meal in December and it is an expense I am happy to pay.

As I've started going to church this year, I'm adhering to the Nativity fast from mid November til Christmas eve, which is basically vegan-ish for the 40 days (fish is permitted some days). So breakfast at the moment is black coffee plus either porridge made with water & apple or peanut butter on toast.

Depends.

If we are running a bit late then cereal bar, fruit and carton if juice in the car. On time whatever kids can conjure up for themselves.. cereal yogurt fruit toast OR if I'm up early there might be sausage and beans.

I have enough to do without a North Pole breakfast whatever that is

Never heard of this and I can’t understand the need to fill kids up with sugar and chocolate before school. My DC will be eating plenty of junk and sweets over the Christmas break plus getting their advent calendars on Thursday. So normal breakfast here.

although I know my DD would love this North Pole breakfast thing 🤦🏻‍♀️

New "traditions" generally started popping up when it became possible to instantly upload your wonderful creations to social media.

The people who did it as a kid themselves - where in the UK are you from? If you're from the UK.

I'm more surprised that at 44 and having been around kids most of my life and in possession of my own for 12 years that I've NEVER heard of this until this thread!

I don't care that people do it. You'd have just thought I'd have known it went on! I know of elves & shelves, eve boxes etc. We have a gazillion advent calendars. But this is a brand new concept to me. How weird.

Where on earth does this come from? I've never heard of either a North Pole breakfast or doing anything different on 1st December, and I've been around, shall we say, several decades.

Surely a North Pole breakfast is reindeer steaks and seal blubber anyway?

@Janieread

I heard of this yesterday, from this thread. My kids are now adults, they have never heard of it either. My friend is a grandmother of a 3 year old, she asked her dil, never heard of it.

It's an Instagram thing basically but I'm sure a few household did make a breakfast spread when December 1st was a weekend in the past. Eg my dd reminded me I have made my kids snowman shaped pancakes, never on a school day though. It didn't have a name though apart from breakfast. We also had a special thing with German friends for st Nickolas

😂😂

"The people who did it as a kid themselves - where in the UK are you from? If you're from the UK."

Yorkshire, but my Mum is Scottish. I've asked her off the back of this thread and she says her Granny used to do them a special breakfast (by pressing a cookie cutter into bread and toasting it on the 3 bar fire 🤣)

She remembers it to have been on the first of December and that's why she carried on the tradition. My Great Gran was born in the early 1900s.

I think people are assuming that the only people that do this are the ones they have seen on social media whereas, in actual fact, many have been doing this for years on the morning they bring out the advent calendar.

Nobody would know that I do it, how would they? My kids love it though, and that's good enough for me to spend 5 minutes making their breakfast look a bit different.

It will be the usual breakfast with a North Pole twist...the kitchen will be freezing.

I think people are assuming that the only people that do this are the ones they have seen on social media whereas, in actual fact, many have been doing this for years on the morning they bring out the advent calendar.

I think it was a pretty niche thing before Elf On The Shelf though. I know that it's a long held tradition for your family and I'm sure some others but I don't think many people(comparatively) did it. It's like the pyjamas on Christmas Eve thing. My family genuinely did the pyjamas thing it for some decades before Christmas Eve boxes and I've seen the occasional other person say they did the same but I was very much in a minority, at least among my social circle, back then.

I don't think a special breakfast has ever been a big tradition in the way that Advent calendars are, at least in your average UK household before EOTS. That doesn't make it wrong but there's little doubt that it's very much driven by EOTS and popularised by social media. That said I still don't think it's something that most will do.

It's an odd one to get worked up about. I'm not sure anyone has the right to say it makes christmas less special the more effort a parent puts in. I used to think the same until the other day. I'm very much in the less is more camp and not a social media oversharer but I did get in on the elf on the shelf for my DCs. I've done it for about four years and they now know it's me that's setting up the elf every night. This year when getting the decorations out my eldest (11) mentioned how excited she was for the elf to arrive on the 1st. I just sort of sniggered and said, 'yeah not this year love'. She was bloody stunned. Looked at me like I'd just cancelled Christmas. She said oh please mum, it's our favourite part of Christmas. Then I was stunned! I really didn't think it had any lasting effect on the kids at all but turns out they have the best Christmas memories of the elf and his antics and not the 'stuff'. We've never done a North Pole breakfast but I think it's a fab idea and may do it this year as a one off. Not that I'll be putting it on socials or buying all the Christmas marketed products, all you have to do is get a little creative. All the posters that are 'chuck a custard cream at their head on the way out of the door' etc, that's great that you're all 'cool' like Liz from Motherland and all but it's different strokes for different folks and I don't think I see the benefit of judging the parents that do want to do these things. All this 'I hate being alive today' when these things are mentioned is just so negative when there's a new generation of parents trying to make new and happy traditions with their children. Alot of these parents are the first to break a long line of generational trauma. Please don't discourage this.

Must also point out that I had a very dysfunctional upbringing with alcoholism, domestic violence and poverty. My relationship with my mother is a complex one, but my one core, happy, healthy memory of her is when I came home from school one day, must have been about 7 years old. It's was Halloween and when I walked in feeling anxious about the atmosphere as always my Mother had laid out a 'Halloween' dinner. It was amazing, there was green food coloured spaghetti, toasted strips of bread (fingers) with 'bloody' ketchup on and iced buns with plastic spider rings on from the bakery. It was a sight to behold for 7yo me so these things do make lasting impressions on a child. Do it or don't do it, either is fine but if you don't do it, why hate it so much?

🙄

Who is throwing custard creams are their children's heads here? Is it the same people screaming at their kids as they go out of the door?

Be as twee as you like. That's fine. I think it's bad sport to pretend that those who don't lean in to new parenting performances though.

And yeah, your granny may have etched the Nativity Scene on your slice of toast on the first of December a hundred years ago but that was not a 'North Pole Breakfast' ™ - I bet she didn't go around asking everyone else what they did for their fancy makey-uppy event or carrying on like those mothers didn't give a crap about their kids if she did and they inevitably rolled their eyes and said no.

And what's this recent MN shit about comparing real mothers to the ones on Motherland? Holy fuck, could we not, please?

Yeah but I'm not suggesting you lean in, I'm suggesting you don't shame those who are.

Even the majority of us who haven't heard of such nonsense?

Fruit, then probably bacon and eggs as usual. I didn't know 1st December breakfasts were a thing. Where did that come from?

Same as every other school day. Me standing at the bottom of the stairs shouting 'will you HURRY UP!!!!'.

Why on earth would anyone make a thing out of the 1st Dec? It's enough that it's 24 days until Christmas.

I have seen this a lot lately about 'motherland' I had never heard of it before.

Funnily enough my dd told me the other day to watch something called 'Am I being Unreasonable' I kind of shuddered a bit imagining scenes of Middle aged woman throwing buns at each other, lots of calls to 101 to log stuff and dinner parties with pom bears and fruit shoots with a side of side splitting funnies making them spit their tea out.

"Who is throwing custard creams are their children's heads here? Is it the same people screaming at their kids as they go out of the door?"

Yeah, apparently so. Too cool to be nice 🥱

Chill the fuck out love, calling a Christmas tree shaped pancake "twee" might just be peak AIBU bitchiness 🎄

😂😂😂