YO HO NO - support for those saying 'No' at Christmas

[pigmcpigface]

Inspired by @JenBarbers thread in Chat, this is a place for anyone who is drawing a boundary this Christmas.

You might be saying 'NO' to Christmas altogether, or to one element of it. You might be refusing to see difficult relatives, or you might just not want to cook one more bloody turkey, ever again. Or you might just want to do it your way, this year or every year in future.

If you love Christmas and every single aspect of it, and you're blessed with a perfect family who all get along and sing carols around a roaring fire, then this is probably not the place for you.

And yes - we know it's only May. But for some people, this is so stressful that Christmas worry is year-round. And, for some, it takes months to build up the courage to say 'No, I'm not doing that'.

Not we would like to.
We have decided to.
No discussion.

I hate Christmas. We always have to spend it with my awful MIL, and every other year SIL hosts lunch so we have to put the dog in kennels for the day because he isn't welcome, drive 2hrs to her house, stay sober and drive 2hrs back. Even when we host, MIL is so awful that my own DM won't join us.

Last year I said No to spending ridiculous amounts on presents to satisfy MIL (greedy) and SIL (rich so wants to spend a fortune on crap and have us spend the same which we can't afford). I enforced a £50 per person limit which did not go down well (and I didn't care).This year I'm tempted to suggest we take our new DS and dog away on holiday because I can't be bothered with the inlaws.

We sorted this 10 years ago by moving 200 miles away and DH getting a job where he has to be on-call in case of major incidents for part of Christmas. Usually, coincidentally, over the same period that any unappealing family gathering is occurring no one has yet worked out that he and his colleagues agree the days they will each cover between themselves

Farcebook Jelly if you're serious about being able to go to Florida, you should go.

We are saying NO to christmas! This could be our slogan.

We need to decide if we are going to the in laws and if we do when to travel as it annoying falls to make it difficult to avoid hellish traffic and only stick to 3 nights...

pig yes 12. My family one day then DH’s on the other. I do the cooking both days. The only time anyone (other than DM and DH) offered help was when I was heavily pregnant. Have done this the last 4 years.
My CF brother actually said to his kids that they could all come and stay at mine from xmas eve! NO WAY am I having that.

I don’t know how people don’t lose interest after a few years. Xmas is so boring and repetitive. It’s mind numbingly shite. You’d think more people would opt out.

My pils are dead now and I don’t have parents or extended family. Dh’s sister has her family, but they live in a different country, so won’t be bothering us.

All I have to cope with is the service users xmas party at work, the staff night out - which I won’t be going to, I’ll just cover the shift for them. I’ll swap off the xmas party if I’m able to. I’ll be working xmas day though.

No, we are not buying gifts for ungrateful people.
No we are not hosting Christmas dinner.
No we're not going to be here!!

Okay so just sent the following message to all the in-laws :

Dear all :) I'm texting about Christmas, believe it or not... No, you haven't read the date incorrectly - it IS still May, which makes this a distinctly unseasonable topic! Nonetheless, I wanted to send this message early, before any presents had been bought so as not to cause you any inconvenience. This year I've been making a conscious effort to reduce spending/waste and clear space at home and around the flat. In the circumstances, I'd like to have a Christmas where I forego the material side of gift giving and use Christmas as an opportunity to just relax, and spend quality time with friends and family. This means for me, I won't be giving or receiving presents and I wanted to let you all know in advance, as I know some of you buy gifts throughout the year. Hope all is well, and love to all :) x

Will let you know if they actually reply haha

Thoroughly enjoying this thread, keep 'em coming.

(I shouldn't really be here on this thread though. It's just my husband and I on Christmas Day - bliss)

Other family members have either long since decided to do their own thing or they live in a foreign country or are estranged or dead. Presents get more and more tokenistic. Suits all parties.

Yes I WILL haunt Christmases past. (Even to the point of playing my Nan's old LP record of Christmas Carols on Christmas Day.)

I mean I'm working up the nerve to have apple crumble instead Christmas pudding this year. Be brave !

Alternative be buggered. New traditions be buggered. Making memories ? Jog on. Which part of Christmas did you not understand. To good for old traditions ? Well I'm that happy for you.

Ah, well done to all of you standing firm.

Last year was our year and we did what we wanted - home, calm, relaxed and food we like. This year there will be a lot of compromising and tongue biting...but I don't want to go overboard on presents and tat!

To all those that have threatened and considered going far far away for Christmas this year. Do it. We did it one year, just me and DH, before kids.

Best. Christmas. Ever.

Hello to all of the other Christmas haters.

I really struggle with Christmas not because of tricky relationships or difficult inlaws but just because I find the whole thing really crap. It's a cold and dark time of the year, and I hate the same-ness of it all. Same songs, same food, same routine, same TV, same everything, every year and it's crap. Unfortunately I have three kids, the youngest of whom still believes in Santa so opting out totally isn't possible.

I said after Christmas last year that maybe we wouldn't have turkey this time and you'd have thought I suggested plain bread and water. I've already stopped doing Christmas cards, any we do get are read then put in the recycling bin. I don't decorate the house, we have a tree and that's it. Avoid radio and telly as much as possible - podcasts and box sets so you can avoid the rubbish CHristmas specials and the special hell which is Noddy Holder shrieking "it's Christmas" as he has for FORTY FUCKING YEARS.

I would love to go away for Christmas and we looked into Florida for this year. But a combination of factors means it won't happen this year. Maybe next.

Fleur - I am a fellow light-fiend. I have SAD and I HATE THE DARK! I also hate how cheap and tawdry it makes all the plastic lights and the glow-in-the-dark stuff seem. There's just a miserably, yellow dullness in the air all month, and it is NOT ONE BIT relieved by sticking up lights in the shape of santa on a sleigh.

One thing I'm doing this year is making DH do his half. I think that we fall into a common working pattern for Mumsnet and the middle classes, which is that DH works longer hours than I do, which means that I tend to pick up more around the house. Normally, it feels equal and fair. But at Christmas it really, really doesn't - because there is a ton of extra work in addition to the normal. I think that extra needs to be shared 50/50, particularly where it involves doing organisation for in laws who aren't very nice. It's bad enough doing drudge work, but doing drudge work for horrible, ungrateful people is the worst feeling.

I’m following with interest. Feel a bit out of place as actually I love Christmas - but am swiftly losing that love since having DC and acquiring DH’s complicated family. It’s now just a minefield of juggling MIL and FIL who hate each other, and my mum who doesn’t like either of them. Spending money we don’t have on presents we never get thanked for, and buying vouchers as requested for adult gifts only to receive vouchers to the same value in return for shops we don’t like. It’s all so pointless. And yes I end up doing all the work. I just want a nice relaxing day eating delicious easy food, letting the kids enjoy their presents and not worrying about family politics.

"And yes I end up doing all the work."

I suspect that many women who also enjoy Christmas have a gripe here. And it's not unjustified. Another reason why this is a relationships issue!

I find the day the clocks go back almost as awful as Christmas itself, it's just a reminder that from that point on it gets darker and darker. I really enjoy January as you can detect it getting lighter every week.

If we get a miserable, wet day in Scotland in December it's dull all day and so dark you have lights on constantly. It's shite and I hate it. Bright sunny days when you can get out in the light help considerably but they're few and far between.

And on top of that you have people going on about how you just have to snuggle under a blanket with hot chocolate or #makememories because it's Christmas hun!

Why have we got Christmas in this country SO wrong? Why do Christmas things start appearing in the shops at the beginning of September? Why has what used to be the 12 days between 25th December and 6th January turned into a three month circus with growing mountains of tat and "traditions" each year? It's easy to blame the Americans but they don't start going daft until the end of November.

I just hate the whole thing and dread it every year. Huge sigh of relief on 27th Dec when it's all over.

buying vouchers as requested for adult gifts only to receive vouchers to the same value in return

I can top this. My inlaws decided a few years ago that Christmas shopping was too much for them even though they manage fine at all other times of year, and manage to buy gifts for other relatives. So at the beginning of December, FIL transfers money into our bank account, a set amount per person.

Then we are expected to buy and wrap gifts for the children from them, and buy our own gifts with the money they've sent. I quite honestly wish they didn't bother.

Fleur - yes, nodding along 100% to your posts about the dark. I do not find it cosy or comforting. I find it absolutely fucking terrifying, like the world is dying.

I think it's a bit like weddings. We've ruined something great by insisting on ever increasing amounts of elaborate detail - all of which can, of course, be monetized by profit-seeking companies. And because one person does something extra, everyone else rushes to do it too. The Christmas Eve boxes are a great example of this - capital basically 'enclosing' and monetizing another bit of time, with another expensive ritual. And all of it involves a proliferation of domestic work that falls disproportionately on women who are more busy than they've ever been, trying to hold down jobs and childcare and to look after a house as well.

We need an alternative - something like a mindful Christmas, or a 'slow Christmas' (like the slow food movement). Taking time over a much smaller, but more meaningful set of activities and really enjoying them, rather than just buying more and more and more shit to create an illusion of 'specialness'.

And not just taking time over stuff - making sure that the workload is SHARED and falls EQUALLY!

I also found myself nodding along to what Fleur wrote. The majority of my female friends carry the vast majority of the workload around that time of year too.

A number of things has led to me now going on holiday every year now for the entire festive season. This has come about from something as seemingly insignificant but loaded as being handed a 330ml bottle of Evian water on Christmas Day by MIL for her son to receiving a phone call to say a friend of mine in her 40s had died suddenly a couple of weeks before Christmas.

Receiving separate Christmas cards from my inlaws till I put a stop to that via DH never helped matters either.

I know it's not really feasible for a lot of people but to anyone who can do it I thoroughly recommend sodding off somewhere for Christmas. One year I went to Cuba for a fortnight over Christmas, it was blissful. Amazing weather, relaxation, no Noddy Holder on repeat, we even flew back over New Year so avoided that nonsense too.

atilla - I've seen you in the stately homes thread (and you've helped me in there more than once!) - I hear you on the 'small but insignificant stuff'. Part of the problem is that the snubs, the undermining behaviours can be so very subtle, can't they? It's ever so hard to explain how a mother handing a wife a bottle of water for her son might epitomise a relationship that is controlling and undermining. On the face of it, it seems like a lovely gesture. And yet it can be the sign of all kinds of boundaries being crossed, and all kinds of criticism.

My DH never used even to notice those little things, but in recent years, he's become more aware, because he's more attuned to my reactions. To the point that he recently said of his mother "Oh my God, she's just putting you down constantly, isn't she?' Well yes, yes she is. Last time I saw her, I was making scrambled eggs on muffins, and she criticised absolutely every single thing I did to the point I was on the verge of tears. It's like that, constantly, for three days.