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

I've got a couple of seriously rubbish Christmas stories. But as it's the season to be jolly, I wont tell them now.

The reality is usually, for me, tonnes of work. Washing, cleaning, cooking, thinking of, buying, storing and wrapping presents, all the food shopping and so on. Whereas you always imagine it'll be a stress free
affair awash with mulled wine, carols and beautiful snow.

Expectation/ Dream - chilled day, plenty of wine and chocolate, and watching Christmas telly.

Reality - none of the above, I have a 3yo and a 1yo. Playing with plastic noisy toys, enforcing table manners, sorting naps and toilet trips.

gingerbread decorating always looks like it's been done by a blindfold child... "Ah! the boys must have loved decorating those!"... cough "It was me" cough

Last year is probably the perfect example of this. I expected a chilled out Christmas with lots of time spent with my husband and daughter, baking, crafting and just being happy to be with one another but about a week before Christmas day i got really poorly with flu, then my daughter started to get sick and finally my husband. We all had sickness and diarrhoea which was hard in a household that only has one toilet. We had been looking forward to Christmas Day and dinner for weeks, everything was bought and stocked in the fridge but Christmas Day came and went, we were up for a few hours opening presents and then back to bed, no one ate dinner and we had over another week of sickness and you know what to go. We missed family get togethers and i genuinely have no clue what was bought or given for Christmas last year. We started to feel a bit bit once January hit but we weren't fully recovered until February.

My parents decided to get a potted Christmas tree to avoid untimely deaths of past real trees.....

Christmas morning, we lept out-of bed, ran to see if Santa had arrived to find the tree had fallen over, soil all over the carpet and shock horror....the presents....

Result - mum panicking about the ruined carpet, 2 children crying over presents covered in soil and a dad trying to lift the tree!!!!

Happy Christmas!!! 😏

Plan: working right up to Christmas AND have family over on Xmas day. Slightly disheartened I was going to be working right up to the day so decided best plan was to prepare EVERYthing in a few days off at the beginning of December which I’d been given as consolation for being stuffed later

I bought an enormous frozen turkey on approx 16 December. And only when I got home did I notice the size of the freezer drawers.

Expectation: happy children squealing with delight as they unwrap presents after a leisurely breakfast of croissants and pain au chocolat

Reality: being dragged out of bed by over excited children at 4am, opening presents while drinking coffee and trying to stay awake, children bickering by 9am

Expectation - the children will stay in bed until the sun is up to the groclock

Reality - 'Santa's been!!!!!' with 3 stars still left

These have made me laugh.
Our first Christmas with a child DH and I decided we'd have a Christmas dinner together a few days before Christmas, which we were spending with relatives. We planned a three course meal, we -are- were foodies.
We envisaged a lovely meal whilst Dbaby cooed /slept.
Dbaby was teething, although we only discovered this on Xmas day when the tooth broke through. We divided up cooking and jiggling a screaming baby. After gobbling down a starter, then taking turns to wolf down the now lukewarm main and console the baby, we abandoned dessert, to eat once Dbaby was in bed. I don't think we ever got round to eating it, and several children later we still haven't tried it again.

Meh. Smallest DC sabotaged me whilst I was adding the strikethrough.

Expectation: lovely jolly Christmas day with husband, best friend and best friends mum, with my wonderfully cooking and lots of bubbles.

Reality: we both got dogs in November - cue our bitch unable to play with friends dog as we had her speyed on the first day of Christmas leave, both dogs howling in their crates 3 metres away while we eat the genuinely brilliant lunch. Not enough bubbles to deal with the howling!

Expectation: carefully chosen gifts received with gratitude and treasured thereafter.
Reality: paper ripped off, one random present fixated on and the rest sit in the corner.

Expectations - relaxing week off of work, days filled with Christmas joy
Reality- non stop round of visiting people and cooking, days filled with complaints of boredom despite million and one new gifts

I expect no arguing, delightful lunch and quiet for the Queen...

I will get a few scraps, uneaten lunch where everyone is stuffed with chocolate and no Queen.

Expectation - my first Christmas as a host and I thought it would be really easy to essentially cook a roast dinner for a few extra people.

Reality - I didn't have enough plates, I didn't realise how decrepit by oven was until it had to cook a huge turkey and potatoes and I didn't even have a carving knife, so dinner was served in a variety of bowls and plates, cut into chunks with a bread knife at 8.30 in the evening . Still look back on it and laugh though.

Expectation: a lovely family filled week off work / school to relax, spend quality time together, making happy memories...

Reality: spend half the time in the car driving across the country visiting relatives, spend the other half bickering / eating too much

Expectation: my children would like doing all the things I loved to do as a child .. decorating the tree, loved wrapping up the presents for my mum, opening up presents with all the family together
Reality: not interested in helping decorate the tree and may put 2 or 3 decorations on if I'm lucky, hate wrapping presents and would rather open them as soon as they lay eyes on them rather than wait until everyone is there to see!

Expectation - house all done up and ready for Christmas
Reality - a month worth of colds and assorted illnesses means that Christmas decorations and tree and lying on the sofa/floor
At least we are eating out this year

Making a gingerbread house with the children.

Expectation:. A magical Christmas activity full of enjoyment and a beautiful gingerbread house at the end of it...lots of photos of gingerbread house to put on social media for friends to 'Oh and ah' over.

Reality:. Crumbs and icing everywhere! No one can get the dam thing to stand up. Everyone gives up and eats broken pieces of gingerbread whilst you scrape icing off the kitchen table.

Expectation: family round and all enjoying ourselves, unwrapping gifts, laughter and fun
Reality: daughter with vomiting bug, guests cancelled and unwrapping presents with a sick bowl next to her.

Expectation: DS1 would enjoy helping me to select a few nice ornaments to adorn our small but real tree.

Reality: it's a spiky git and he sensibly retired to the sofa while I spent 10 minutes swearing at it for repeatedly stabbing me!

Expectation... Christmas crafts and baking keeping DD entertained for hours.
Reality... 10mins entertainment at the most!

Expectation: everyone plays quietly with their new toys whilst I float around the kitchen cooking dinner.

Reality: ww3

Expectation that family don't buy my kids a million toys. Reality - driving home and promising to have a clear out. Never happens.

It’s the same every year. I expect the children to wake up early and excited - which they do - then we all go downstairs and open presents and everyone is happy and it’s all magical and brilliant.... reality is the kids are too excited , get tired and grumpy and overwhelmed after an hour and I’m ready to pull my hair out by 9am!