What do you judge about other people’s Christmas dinners?

[Talkingtomyhouseplants]

Lighthearted - we all know every other family apart from our own does it wrong!

Mine are:

• no pigs in blankets
• BOILED veg 🤮
• treating the Christmas cracker like a competition (we are are each person gets their own cracker prize family!)

Oh I've just had flashbacks to the Extremely Fussy Partner who only liked the packet sage and onion stuffing and wouldn't eat 'real' stuffing. The packet stuff tastes like mouldy cardboard to me, but he would wolf it down making 'yum yum' noises...

Now he is a distant memory and I eat M&S stuffing with apricots (mostly because I love it cold on Boxing Day...)

When someone/some people insist on reading all the cracker jokes out and we have to politely laugh or humour all the groaning about how bad they are. It's ok if it's children reading them, they are young enough to be humoured.

No bread sauce or cranberry sauce, just vats and vats of bisto.

Underdone parsnips. Or when roast potatoes aren't very crunchy.

Lack of stuffing. No Yorkshire's.

I spent Christmas day 2003 with my then boyfriends family. Worst Christmas dinner ever. Like a Toby carvery. Bernard Matthews, peas. Mean portions. I wanted to weep. They weren't poor either, just joyless drab people.

This actually deserves its own thread. Maybe style it as a reverse.

Good grief, life must be hard for you if you take everything this seriously

Nah, mulled wine is for pudding surely? It's sweet. Cava for starters.

I judge people who call meat "carcasses" and are unaware that humans are omnivores.

Seriously though, Yorkshire puddings. It's not beef. I do allow the DCs to ask for them in a restaurant because I'm an indulgent mum, and in a restaurant you are allowed to order what you alone like.

Also people who drink prosecco. Horrible sweet stuff. We have a cava budget not a champagne budget but I will accept champagne if you're offering.

(Spent all my childhood Christmasses in Devon and the children got given cider instead of champagne from about the age of 14. So I'm not judging you if you give your children a taste of the wine. Would be preferable to cider actually because they were less likely to think it's tasty).

It does sound miserable. Perhaps they do this regularly to stock up their wine cellar!

Are you still friends?! That sounds an awful experience!

I don’t think I judge other people’s Christmas dinner as long as I am not expected to eat it, but things I would be very disappointed to be served are:

pale non-crispy roasties
gravy made from granules
cauliflower cheese
goose/duck instead of turkey (I find them greasy and unpleasant)
overcooked sprouts
pale, flaccid pigs in blankets
custard with Christmas pudding

If I were invited to a meal on Christmas Day and it wasn’t the traditional Christmas dinner, I would decline. Christmas dinner is my favourite meal of the year, and it’s not negotiable.

Yeah was going to say with that sort of exclusion!

Bisto gravy plonked on the table in a Pyrex jug.

Why???

No,none of that because I was a much wetter person then than I am now.

We gradually phased them out. That was mutual though tbh. I have to see the husband every now again as we work in a related field and we might 'catch up for drinks'. A few years after that they did something much worse (and thoroughly outing) so DH won't have a bar of them, even for the sake of superficial politeness. I do the smile and wave and 'oh how lovely to see you, we must catch up!'.

I'm sure i'm not the only one dying to know what the something worse was!!

You're definitely not the only one!!

Ah, the custard vs cream thing was the perennial divide in my household growing up. 😁It seemed to be geographical. My Mum and Aunt (Londoners) - cream. Dad and Gran (Yorks/Lancs), custard. If Gran made it, it had to be Birds', with a tot of rum. I ended up falling on the custard side but once it was left to me to make it, Birds was out and supermarket posh madagascan vanilla stuff took over.

I'm the only custard lover left now. 😪Mum and Aunt still have cream and DH hates Christmas pudding anyway.

I find the whole concept of bread sauce odd. It's never been a part of my Christmas. It's not judgement so much as not really getting what's nice about it. I go cranberry sauce and gravy.

I judge the people who just turn into gluttonous monsters about the whole event and buy far too much food that ends up wasted - it’s a roast dinner with a few extra bits if you please. Also people that plan every meal across the whole period in July - chill out and have a bit of flexibility - the ILs will survive if you chuck a ready made M&S lasagne in the oven or decided an impromptu pub lunch on the 27th.

I'm definitely being called out on this thread! I love cooking but Sunday roasts and Christmas dinner aren't my favourite thing to make. I love broccoli and cabbage so plenty of steamed veg. I like packet stuffing. And DH prefers bisto gravy. We don't have a starter or a pudding. I just want to spend time with my DC and no one else really cares about Christmas dinner here.

DH and DD have custard, I don't object as long as I don't have to have it. I have brandy butter, and then use it up on my breakfast toast for a couple of weeks! It should be rum butter but you can't buy that and for just me it's not really worth making.
I remember the year I got DN aged about 8 to help make the rum butter by creaming brown sugar into the butter. The other adults were about to faint when she told them how yummy rum butter is until I pointed out she'd tasted it before the rum went in.

No Yorkshires.

I personally think they belong on Xmas dinner BY LAW.

I don't understand people that don't have them, given they'd have them on a roast dinner...and it's essentially a fancier roast anyway 🤯

Actually, Birds’ custard with a tot of rum sounds nice.

Yorkshires go with roast beef, not turkey.

Yes ew to boiled veg! Has to be roasted

Gravy has to be ‘proper’grwvy juices from the goose / turkey / chicken. Ew to bisto!

Why?

I’d have yorkies with any meat if I fancied them. Besides, we have beef on Christmas Day.

Not very close friends, then I take it. Otherwise surely you would have known what quality food to expect.

I am very much an each to their own. But people would definitely judge ours!

We don't do leaving anyone out so there is always me, dh, my dd, her dad, his older 2 kids who are still very much my bonus kids, my best mate who has no family of his own, his son when it's his year to have him, and anyone else who we know and has no where else to go.

Dd is autistic with arfid so there is always ketchup in the table as she won't eat without it and iceberg lettuce as it is the only vegetable she will touch.

Dsd loves parsnips so there is always a huge bowl of them.

It is crazy and it is chaos but it is full of love and laughter.