Help me plan a 90s Christmas

[Iamasentientoctopus]

For the last few years, Christmas has felt like a juggernaut getting larger and more expensive. I spent so long last year putting all of my carefully selected ornaments up, two Christmas trees etc I actually felt quite flat when it was all done. My house looked like an instagram post. Then add on the Xmas eve boxes, elaborate meal for 12, mountains of presents etc. I can’t quite describe the feeling but it was like the opposite of the warm festive feeling. I know I’m an adult now so Christmas isn’t going to be the same but I want to try and recreate some old school Christmas magic. I’ve had the idea of going full 90s in both decor and attitude and I definitely want to cut down on all the waste. So far I have on my list:

• A real tree with coloured lights and TINSEL. I’m going to let everyone else help me and I’m not going to obsess over how it looks.
• Traditional stockings left on the beds with a tangerine and little gifts - not making the stockings another £100 each!

I’d love some ideas/memories to add to my list. I’d love to get some of those coloured lantern lights my nan used to have outside but I’m also conscious I don’t want this to be another theme and spend a load of money! Thanks 😊

I think you need to focus on enjoying the season, rather than having the perfect Christmas.

So home made paper chains, for the fun of sitting down with your kids to make them, you can never have too many.

Make some simple decorations with the kids, so the Christmas tree is a proper family one, not a curated hotel one.

Allow mess, eating chocolates on the sofa watching a Christmas film, have lots of no phone time, go for a walk to look at neighbours Christmas decorations.

Make food everyone likes to eat. Leave your pyjamas on far too late. Christmas carols in a local church.

Christmas in the 90s when I was in my 20s -well, we still have the same baubles, plus the dinner is similar. The biggest change needed? Don’t buy anything from Amazon.

Stockings should be cheap and cheerful - tangerine, walnut, chic coins, toothbrush, pants, a tube of smarties, a soap/mini shower gel, a small selection box, a yo-yo/4-colour biro/sparkly pencil/other party-bag tat item, a PEZ if you really want 90s

I don’t do Christmas Eve boxes. The last thing they I need the day before Christmas is more sugar or tat.

I do Christmas pjs and jumpers. But not a new set every year, not whole-family-matching, and they all get packed away for next year in January. Get them out again in November and sort out what fits who so a couple more can be bought if necessary. Swap with cousins/friends if possible. Christmas pjs are out for the whole of December, not just Christmas Eve onwards like if they came in a Christmas Eve box.

I cook for 10+ on Christmas Day, but I only cook main dinner and pudding. No starters! Someone else brings the turkey already cooked and wrapped in a thick towel, and someone else brings the potatoes par-boiled and in a roasting tin ready to throw in the oven. That leaves the veggies, trimmings, and pudding to the host-house.

Christmas day evening food is turkey sandwiches/crisps/nuts and a cheese board. Kids are generally not fussed as they’re reaching the bottom of several selection boxes by then.

Boxing Day food is leftovers plus salad plus a trifle!

Tinsel and paper chains. Homemade glitter things from the children. More is more and don’t stress about things matching! Add lots of white lights, and the tat fades into the dark once the evening comes and the twinkly lights are on!

i would start by not changing your tree decs - surely the idea in the 90s was just use what you have until they fall apart or can't be used any more. We have a lovely fake tree we get out every year, put our assortment of decs on the tree any which way. The decs include a variety of ornaments made by the kids plus ones I've adopted from grandparents and other family members. I took some when I got my first tree and grandparents were still alive, adopted more now they are no longer with us.

Blast out all the 80s and 90s Christmas favourites constantly.

stockings just have an orange / satsuma, choc coins and one small wrapped present, maybe a new toothbrush too 😆

the roast is easy and plentiful. A turkey joint rather than the faff of a whole bird, lots of homemade roasties, all the veg, frozen pigs in blankets and ready made stuffing balls. Homemade turkey gravy. Shop bought or ready made desserts. we started this when the kids were little to have max time with them and their presents and minimal faff and it makes the whole day so much more relaxing.

presents focus on what the kids really want (to avoid the disappointment of 'you wanted this, but ended up with this'), rather than quantity. Plus the something to read, something to wear, something to do.

I still do 1990’s style Christmas, no elf on the shelf or xmas eve boxes in my house.

When my kids were small ( in the 90’s/2000’s), I used to invite all the neighbours ( and their children) around for Christmas Eve drinkies. Usually about 2pm and only for an hour or two. I offered shop bought mince pies and sausage rolls from Iceland ( no 2 for £12 Waitrose party food in those days!) and home made mulled wine (in disposable plastic cups for a quick tidy up later). That was it. Nobody came for the food 😀. It was mad, great fun and certainly started the Christmas festivities. My adult children still talk about those Christmas Eve parties. Could you do something like that? An open house for a couple of hours. Doesn’t have to cost a lot and will certainly get you in the Christmas mood.

My 80s childhood stockings had- every year- a sugar mouse, a satsuma, a Brazil nut in its shell, a walnut, some hazelnuts (the only ones I liked- the other nuts went back in the bowl of nuts!); chocolate money; shiny copper coins (no idea if banks gave these out or if my parents cleaned them with brasso or something- you could try Coke); an apple; a book; some silly toys like yo-yos or whoopie cushions, a noisy toy like a kazoo, and something like a pair of socks. We used to use a pair of my dad’s (clean!) walking socks as stockings.

Under the tree would be more gifts, including the big one like a bike or the “ghetto blaster” (portable tape-to-tape radio/cassette player) I had at 10, the Walkman I had at about 8, or a pair of pixie boots at 7; but it was a bumper year the year we had chocolate tree decorations! Those were normally an exciting extra at grandparents’ house on Boxing Day.

By the 90s my parents had a bit more spare cash and as I got older, would find things in the stocking like jewellery or perfume. By contrast we all started paring back the effort and money a few years ago- I certainly have tried to do that recently, and I enjoy it much more.

Good luck, I hope you have a lovely pared-back time.

Well, it sounds as though we are still doing 90s Christmas. I was in my 20s and pre-DCs in the 90s, Christmas was at Mum and Dad's or my then BF's parents but I always had a small tree in my house and I still use some of the same decorations. We have one (real) tree, coloured fairylights, decorations that have been acquired/made over 30 years. My DCs are grown up now but still at home at Christmas, we have always done small-ish stocking gifts, stockings on the beds, no Christmas Eve boxes or Elves. Drink, mince pie and carrots left on the hearth on Christmas Eve. Christmas dinner around 2, then flop to watch a film (I do miss the days of a huge blockbuster new release being shown in the afternoon). Still send plenty of cards including to the neighbours. So many on MN say they don't do cards now, but my circle of friends / family mostly still send them, I think it is one of the nicest things about Christmas. Real life shopping rather than online (much easier nowadays as so many do online that the shopping centres are quieter).

These foil garlands and decorations are 90’s Christmas.
As soon as I see these, I am transported back to being in my grandparents house on Christmas Day with all of us sitting around playing card games, TV playing Top of the Pops, while the turkey is in the oven.
God I’d give anything to go back.

My parents had a real open fire in the sitting room - not just a 90s thing, but I always remember how special it was on Christmas Eve when my father would 'bank up' the fire with slack so that it keep alight until Christmas morning when he would stoke it up with fresh coal and logs so when we came downstairs, it was a beautiful roaring warm focal point!

I love the idea of a 90s Christmas - adding to what PP have suggested, make sure you have a box of dates, a box of orange and lemon slices and a bowl of nuts (and a nutcracker!). I have some decorations which my parents had as a young married couple so they date from the 60s - love to see them on the tree.

A lot of things described here are from the 70s - lantern lights, bright colours, tinsel. By the 90s it was a real tree, raffia decorations and those beads on a string instead of tinsel. Homemade cards. We still sent tonnes of presents though.

it depends on your dc age
stockings have always been little gifts although i admit even they are expensive
but now the dc are adults the little gifts can be cheaper, the stockings can be smaller

Stocking filler could be one of those trees that grows blossom-like crystals on it. Loved those in the 90's.

I really miss the 90's and especially 90's Christmas. I don't know if it's because I was a child then compared to now, but what really made it special was the people like my parents and going round to my nans for the celebrations.and seeing more family.
It just doesn't feel the same now and I feel bad for my kids and wonder if they do experience the same as I did when I was a child?

I remember them foil decorations that you unfolded and put dangling on the ceiling.

The colourful tree lights.
The Argos catalogue and putting circles around what I wanted.
It was just magical.

I think the key to the 90’s Christmas you’re longing for will be to get off social media. It’s too easy to get caught up in either an image or an idea. You don’t need lantern lights (they were 70s/80s), satin ribbon, or lamè. You certainly don’t need to add the hassle of tracking them down to your to do list.

Coloured lights won’t be the same now as they were in the 90s. The modern ones are brighter, contain blue, but they also are safer, don’t stop working, and kinder to your electricity bill. They’d have been a huge hit in the 90s.

And people who were still using lantern lights in the 90s were making do with what they already had.

Back in the 90s it was the beginning of working mums being the norm rather than the exception and homemaking was taking a backseat. Mother guilt was definitely a thing but it hadn’t been monetised yet and become the backbone of the economy the way it is today. Boredom was a kid problem, not a parent problem.

Looking nice was a thing, but looking young wasn’t as critical, and perfection culture hadn’t taken hold. People weren’t projecting a false image of themselves and their lives, and without sm they weren’t comparing their reality to someone else’s idealised fake. There was a bigger gap between fantasy (on Tv) and reality.

My suggestion is that you look at each thing you feel an urge to do, and figure out if you can do less. We didn’t have Christmas Eve boxes, North Pole breakfasts, expensive advent calendars, Christmas jumpers (except the occasional ugly jumper knitted by a batty old relative with no taste), and definitely no evil elf blighting the entire month of December. Maybe you still need some of that, and that’s ok, just make it less. Don’t try to make the ultimate xxxxx just make an adequate one.

If you were a child of the 1990s you may be longing for the kind of Christmas you had before you were responsible for making it happen. So be realistic. If that’s what you want you won’t find it by killing yourself recreating the look of the 90s. instead use 2020s technology like online shopping to avoid the bombardment to get a bit more 1990s peace, or buy nicer ready made dinners than were available back then to take some pressure off.

Am I alone in not having heard of a Christmas Eve box?

Paper chains, real tree, multicoloured lights and smell of baking .
NO colour scheme.

Paper chains made with old magazines
Find some pinecones and spray them gold. maybe put them on a plate with a tea light
Make a front door wreath out of stuff from the garden
buy a bottle of something nasty and creamy that you only drink when you are drunk and all it does is make you feel a bit sick
really shit crackers. None of this fancy or fill your own.
satsuma in stocking with some nuts in their shells which you can't actually crack
1 mince pie and one carrot out for Santa and Rudolph - none of this fake snow and footprints stuff.
No Christmas Eve boxes
No matching PJ ffs
1 tree. Last years decorations. boom

That is a good point. There were no bloody Christmas jumpers in the 90s, they were seen as hopelessly naff (see Bridget Jones Diary). Much better for the environment.

I also think this thread shows how traditional people's Christmases are, so everyone who was a child in the 90s are referencing thing that those of us who were adults then can remember from much earlier. So all the plastic tat was disappearing, I thought tinsel was hopelessly naff (I had gold ribbon which I still use today), I wanted white fairy lights, and my first proper Christmas tree as a young adult was colour co-ordinated (gold, silver and blue) with expensive baubles and those decorations are still used on my little 'grown up' tree in the sitting room whereas the playroom tree is the one where all the homemade decorations go (still got gold ribbon rather than tinsel though).

I think as we live in such a disposable society nowadays we just don’t appreciate things the way we did then.

I was born in early 80’s. My memories of Christmas are those lights that break your foot if you stood on them and took hours to find the bulb that had gone out.

We always watched a Christmas movie, Santa Claus the movie or home alone in the 90’s.

I loved getting the Argos catalogue and cutting out the gifts I was asking for and getting the radio times and circling everything we wanted to watch over the festive period.

We got a new pair of PJ’s and a bottle of matey bubble bath every Christmas Eve.

Wrapping paper was colourful and mismatched and our gifts always came in sacks, none of the aesthetics that seem to be inportant for Instagram.

We always had a birds triffle and a Yule log, to be fair that hasn’t changed.

I think it’s just about caring less about how things look and just living in the moment.

When we needed new ones (I know you don't want to spend but these are around 50p from Asda) I bought these and got actual visceral joy from hanging them everywhere

Cut down on the pre-xmas experiences. My parents were definitely not dropping £100s to take me to see Father Christmas and some out of work actors dresses as elves. Christmas didn't feel any less magical for it.

We had to pare back our Christmas to bare bones last year and it was surprisingly great.

I didn’t want to feel like we were going without so tried to think laterally. I found some wallpaper on marketplace for free and we all made paper chains together which was very fun. You don’t need many rolls to make for a really OTT looking end result.

Our kids now look forward to our traditional Christmas Eve buffet - frozen stuff from Aldi which doesn’t break the bank at all but kids seem to think is very exciting 🤷🏻‍♀️

Driving around the neighbourhoods that go big on decorations and night with the kids in PJs and flasks of hot chocolate has become another tradition.

We also tried making gifts like bath salts as well as getting gifts on Vinted. My husband spent a fiver on a vintage kimono which I LOVED.

I think it’s definitely a mindset shift you’re talking about. Finances aren’t as tight this year but I reckon we’ll stay frugal as we’ve realised how little stuff we actually need and that it doesn’t guarantee happiness at all.

As others have said less planning! How about you buy the food on say the 23/24th and it is what it is. If you find x great and if you find y its ok because you’ll be having fun!

Funnily enough, in 1990 we bought an artificial Christmas tree, having always had real ones previously. We also ditched our coloured lights for white ones, which was the fashion at the time.
We kept re-using the tree until it fell apart after about 12 Christmases and have had a real tree every year since.

I much prefer a real tree: I like the asymmetry and the woodsy smell. Fake trees are too perfect-looking.

All our decorations are from the '80s and `90s and we only use about half of them each year. Every Christmas I tend to put up fewer and fewer decorations. It's mostly just the tree nowadays. Back in the' 90s I used to go to town a bit more, with decorations outside, on the banisters, in the loo etc. Now I find that I can't be bothered with most of it.