Share your Christmas expectations vs reality with NOW TV - chance to win £300 NOW CLOSED

[AnnMumsnet]

We all know the biscuit tin or movie version of the ‘perfect’ Christmas is not quite what actually happens at Christmas, and the team at NOW TV would love to know how different your expectations for the most wonderful time of the year were with how it actually went down.

Has snow or bad weather at Christmas stopped visitors from coming? Was your turkey still defrosting when the Queen was making her speech or did the dog ruin your lovingly decorated tree while you were out at the panto?

NOW TV say “if your Christmas plans go a bit wrong or you need something to distract the in laws then at NOW TV we’re all about making things extra easy: sign up and start watching instantly on one of our clever apps - including on iPad, iPhone, games consoles and selected Android devices - you’ll get access to loads of great content for families, including over 1,000 movies on demand plus a new premiere every day - including Christmas classics like Love Actually and big movies like Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them.”

Share your tale where the reality didn’t quite match up to what you envisaged at Christmas time you will be entered into a prize draw where one person will win a £300 voucher for the store of choice - from a list (which might make you feel a bit better! ).

Thanks and good luck
MNHQ

Standard Insight T and Cs Apply

Expectation: Me receiving gifts as thoughtful as those I give.
Reality: buying them myself and giving them to DH and the kids to wrap.So expectations met.

Last year was the first year we didn't have anyone coming to us, or us going to them. I was really excited about a Christmas with just the four of us! As soon as the kids got their presents they went to their rooms to play. I made a full Christmas dinner, which my DH put tomato ketchup on! I got more upset about this than I should (I'd had a gin or two while cooking!) After dinner kids went rooms again and I drank more gin. DH took pity on me and sat through Love Actually with me (load of crap!) There was a bang on the window. Someone had thrown an egg at our house! On Christmas Day! I cried.

Vague hope - decorating a beautiful tree in our beautiful house, ornaments lovingly chosen and displayed, everything sorted before xmas eve so we can go to the crib service with dc.

Reality - house the usual shit tip, tree continually grabbed at and decorations broken by the toddler so only top half can be decorated, everything a sressful mad rush so up til 2am on xmas eve (and 3 and 5.30 with the baby), then dm with dementia driving me mad on xmas day. Think only gin will help me through...

Expectation- at uni age my sister and I planned a massive Christmas Eve party to catch up with all our school friends. The plan was a massive party on Christmas Eve followed by midnight mass then a leisurely luxurious Christmas Day with our family

Reality: half way through the night one friend started being violently sick, turned out their whole family had a stomach bug but it hadn’t occurred to them to avoid the party. Cue a horrible clean up job and a Christmas Day spent waiting for sickness to strike

Expectation: Christmas lunch..... Family sitting around the table enjoying lovely food, chatting and laughing.

Reality: Husband upsets my sister by telling off my nephew for playing up. Sister spends the entire meal sitting in the garden crying. Rest of family turn on husband. Husband storms off!!

Christmas is still my favourite time of year though!

Looking forward to a relaxing Christmas just do & I as I was 5 months pregnant with dc. Christmas Eve felt horrendous so went to Hospital, was put in quarantine & kept in as the docs didn’t know what the bug was that I had and spent Christmas Day in Hospital but still had a Christmas lunch 😊

Expectation: Lovely Christmas dinner followed by everyone sitting around the table playing a board game. Young and old alike, twinkling fairy lights, background music, everyone enjoying some traditional fun, a few drinks, lots of laughs and a few wistful comments about 'the olden days'.

Reality: Monopoly.

Expectations none whatsoever
Reality just another day

Things generally go according to plan, probably as my expectations are fairly low! We expect things to be chaotic, to have a relaxed lunch and for at least one child to kick off during the proceedings at some point, and that's what usually happens. A few realities that have taken us by surprise are the year I got a tummy bug which made itself apparent half way through lunch, the year we bought the kids a wooden play kitchen that turned out to be faulty when dh came to assemble it late on Christmas eve, and the year dd1 found 'the snowman' film rather too frightening to human consumption 😁

I expected a fab Christmas with friends, I actually spent the day with a drunk rowing couple on the brink of divorce!

Expectation : your children open their presents and you are able to watch them opening them and playing them whilst you enjoy a glass of cold bucks fizz.

reality : you are in tears almost trying to unscrew that 'toy they must play with first' which has 12 tiny screws to take out, cannot find a screwdriver small enough, and they you tear the house apart for that darn square battery to make the controller work. AAAAAHHHHH

First Xmas just me and DD after ex left, I was already worried about it being too quiet etc with just the two of us! DD had recently stopped eating red meat, so I tried her on a bit of chicken the week before to see if she still ate white meat. Yum, yup, no issue.

Xmas day, cooked a full roast dinner, only for her to say after her first bite "Aksherly Mummy... this is the kind of meat that I don't like".

We had a lovely day in the end and all fears were for nought, but it took me a whole week to finish off that blimmin chicken, and I've never borhered with a full roast since!

Never bothered

A few years on and she still doesn't eat 'chewy' meat! So fish for Xmas this year maybe?!

Expectation - stress free

Reality - bedlam!

expectations: a fairytale christmas
reality: children getting OTT by 10am!

Expectations: a lovely family meal and a nice relaxing afternoon.

Reality: DS making a timetable for cooking all the Christmas dinner then having a meltdown because the turkey was cooking slower than expected and messed up the timetable.

Expectation : planned a trip to London over the Christmas period. Visiting family and having a meal with the whole family.
Reality : when I was 20 mins away from my destination all traffic stopped on motorway due to an accident, 2 hours to clear up and just as we were about to drive off my car broke down and had to wait another 3 hours for the AA to turn up. Was a very long night for me

Expectation: Happy family times with no stress, small nos of presents.

Reality: At least someone gets stressed, hoards of plastic stuff (my parents do like to buy despite pleas not to) and wonder about where we will put it.

Expectation: everybody round the tree, sparkly and magical present opening, champagne in hand.
Atmospheric lunch in twinkly candlelight.

Reality: fractious overtired and fererro rocher fuelled children, cat pouncing through wrapping paper and pulling lights off tree.
Lunch in daylight, with at least one of the veg sides forgotten after reheating in the microwave after the turkey took ages to hack carve

expectation - get up early on xmas day, go to church, cook lunch about midday and eat about 2pm

reality - drink far too much on xmas eve, wake up wanting to vom everywhere, barely able to make it down before midday, don't manage to eat xmas dinner until 5pm!!

Expectation - see Santa in the grotto, get pictures done for grandparents Christmas present.
Reality-kids hate it, refuse to go in, refuse to be bribed for their picture taken , still want gift. Costs me a fortune for £1 present and no photo.

TBH, my expectations are very low.

But having sat through 11 years of MILs three line whip that everyone must be at theirs for Boxing day before we had a child, the discovery that everyone else was perfectly happy to forget all the time that it had been 'all about the kids', and now it was everyone to the not child friendly pub, long dinner and then watching the cert 15 or 18 DVDs the teens had got, was rather a let down.

My mum grew up with a large family overseas so like a lot of people at Christmas. The reality is that our family is fairly small so she often invites strays. Inevitably this leads to a lot of awkwardness instead of the lovely busy time she'd like it to be. One Christmas it even ended up with the ambulance having to come out for an elderly lady mum vaguely knew from her charity shop volunteering after she almost choked on Christmas dinner!!!

Expectation = waking on Christmas to a pile of presents from santa
Reality = my cousin had got up at 3 am and opened all the presents... And ran up stairs shouting what everyone had got

I was 6... I still remember...

When I was a child I loved Christmas and all things Christmassy. Unfortunately I never managed a picture perfect Christmas. For one it was very hot where I lived at that time of year so no chance of a white Christmas. Then of course as the only child of a dysfunctional marriage there were no picture perfect t family moments and with only three of us never any justification for a turkey. My poor old father really tried to make it special for me. We would spend hours putting up Christmas decorations and visiting Christmas festivities and attractions. We never had a Christmas the went to plan per se but I still have fond memories of Christmas.