Bah humbug!!

Hymnbook … I think your Christmas spent with friends and family sounds perfect!

The next generation has the responsibility for festive preparations nowadays. I am the granny sitting in the corner with a glass of something and a good book.

Littleannie, only read page one and my thoughts on your post are surely you have very good reason to celebrate. If you have had serious health issues and have survived to see C then that is good reason to embrace it?

Another Christmas hater here. Enjoyed the day itself when the children were young, but never enjoyed the headache of present buying and wrapping, writing cards, buying extra food - such a huge fuss for just one day, and it's not like we're religious either, so it has no religious meaning for us. Nowadays I would quite happily cancel Christmas forever, such a waste of time, effort and resources. Saw a great saying the other day - "There are twelve days of Christmas, and none of them are in f*****g November!" Roll on January

Tooyoung? Why? embrace the Spring, embrace a birthday....embrace the joy that is an ordinary cup of coffee on an ordinary day, but why must we all go berserk on the 25th December?

Christmas will end, then wonderful Spring.

There is one part of Christmas I love, I’m not proud of it, and absolutely no one knows, it’s my guilty pleasure, but I love all those soppy American films on the Christmas channel!

GFPip - but it's not just the 25th!! The 'C' season geared up in September, and it's all go all year round in a shop near me. There's a helpful sign on the door saying so many days till C*******. Sorry, rant over

WELL! That's not the 'C' word I thought you were talking about! LOL!
I dig Christmas. I'm on my own, I decorate and I get Alexa to play Christmas sounds.
Can't help it, I just love it.
I also don't spend any money seeing I don't have any!
All my friends understand. My family are all in Canada and Japan so none of us send anything. We catch up on FB & Messenger.
However, I won't do any decorations till December is two weeks old. Boxing Day.....it all comes down.
It just makes me happy.

I have 4 birthdays of family and friends in the week before and week after Christmas, plus 2 birthdays on 25th.....AND our first great grandchild due on, guess, Christmas Day! I started saving weeks ago!

With two excited little girls and another on the way I think this year I’ll be putting my feet up a bit more than normal.
It’s the rush here rush there that I find exhausting and Un enjoyable. (I love mince pies and baby needs them - right?) Then there’s endless hours of shopping, wrapping, untangling lights, wobbling around on ladders before I’ve even thought about food let alone spending most of the day in the kitchen cooking/ washing up etc. All I really want to do is spend it watching my girls have fun, playing games and having a snooze (plus several mince pies).

I’ll stick to the something they want, something they need, something to read and something to use rule. It saves waste, money and time. Plus I’m hoping it saves my sanity this year.

I never start anything until mid November after my mother’s birthday and stick to 12th night rules. I’m not sure I can even find the energy for midnight mass this year.

Loathe C, the relentless advertising, the excess, the monumental fuss, the pressure to buy more and more food when most of us already eat too much, the fake jollity. Walked through a garden centre with my DD earlier this week and it was awash with C stuff. 99% of it tat and junk. We were hard pressed to find anything related to gardening. It was just totally depressing.

Grapefruitpip- thank you for replying to tooyoung. She has so misinterpreted my post that quite frankly I can't be bothered to reply to her.
SunnySusie- I couldn't agree more.

Oh come on Sunny ....everybody loves a cross eyed plush reindeer made by slaves surely?

Let's have a sing song..

It's the most wonderful time.. of the year!

I have a special version of that very song.

I'd like to hear that, but probably not right on a public forum.

I used to have a tape of incredibly rude Christmas songs. "Oi! Santa! Where's my f*% $#@*@! bike?" and other delights.

In the early hours of Christmas Day 1954, having woken and looked outside my bedroom door for the lumpy pillowcase that would prove Santa had been, I actually saw him tiptoeing down our curved staircase.

I can still see, in my mind's eye, that stealthy, portly figure.

I dashed into my parents' bedroom (usually absolutely forbidden) to tell them and Mum, woken suddenly, thought I was ill and went a bit panicky.

Dad was furious and sat up groggily to tell me to "Get back to bed!"

I'll never forget being suddenly plunged from wild joy to guilt and shame. I'd been sure they would be as excited as me.

I've often wondered since how that little hallucination (it was an hallucination, wasn't it?) came about.
Was I still asleep? If so, there was no sensation of waking when Mum and Dad were so cross.

Or was it that in my child's mind (I was 7) I so desperately wanted to see Father Christmas, that I conjured him up?

Whatever the explanation, it's given me an excuse, when asked by suspicious children, if there really is a Santa Claus, to tell that story quite truthfully.

Nowadays, having escaped the cold, winter Christmases of Yorkshire, I enjoy seeing Maori Santa Claus (Hana Koko) each summer.

Great poem BradfordLass

Littleannie….why so unnecessarily rude?

Fancy getting yourself so worked up you tell Witzend to p--s off!

Then ridiculing those who have made (or even God forbid bought) things you don't approve of?

All over a Christmas thread you could have sooooo easily avoided!

No one lured you into the Christmas thread. It was clearly marked.

Dickens really did understand human nature didn't he?

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Bradfordlass … I did something similar, as a child I looked out of the window and convinced myself (and then woke up my siblings to convince them too!) I saw Father Christmas on his sleigh like a tiny speck in the night sky.

I'd hate that facebook wind up Jenny123 lucky for me I'm not on!

MissAdventure Oooooo go on, write it down, you can put spaces in between and we'll understand what your saying!

On the other hand if it's that vulgar, there will be more spaces than letters

Somebody else telling me which threads I can and can't post on. Unless, of course, my opinion agrees with yours. I am entitled to my opinion, and if you don't like it, tough.

You brought it on yourself.

Littleannie, naughty naughty, you have broken the rule.

You don't wish to snuggle under a blanket with GC, watch a Christmas movie, shop till you drop, angst about not having napkin rings and knit your own Christmas polar bear from recycled garden stalks.

Now now Gfp your beginning to sound as bitter as the fruit

I hate C.....mas, really bad memories of C past with first husband which I won't get into and even now having been happily married to 2nd DH for 37 years the feeling will not go away. Also why is it every year the DC and DGC always come to mine ? Well not this year, we are off to Australia for 2 months in the sunshine (hate the UK winter and dark gloomy days and nights) - so double whammy and DC can sort themselves out!