The FastDay Forum

How nice to have a place where we can be honest about the Awfulness that Descends this time of year.

I was shopping today and had my ears assailed by the first Christmas carol of the season. Now back when I was in school (around the time when the dinosaurs roamed the earth) we used to gather in the school lobby and sing traditional carols one day each year. The sound was celestial, and I always looked forward to it. But 50 years have passed since then, years during which I have been subjected to so much unwanted commercial Christmas music blaring through supermarkets and stores that I have come to feel a terrible sinking, horror as I hear the first notes of White Christmas or Jolly Old St. Nicholas for the hundred thousandth time.

And the rest of the holiday hoopla has gone the same way. My family isn't Christian, so we never had a family Christmas, but I used to enjoy the lights and trees, and I married a guy who was Christian so we ended up having the tree and lights and big family Christmases that were fun when the children were little and their eyes really did light up with joy.

But the kids are grown (and that husband is gone, replaced by a significant upgrade) and Christmas with grown up kids has become pretty depressing to me. I haven't even bothered to put up our tree for years and I look forward with dread to shopping for presents.

My SO shares my feelings, and we give each other the precious gift of NOT having to shop for each other. I have very little idea what my kids really want now that they are adults and don't live near me, so mostly I end up filling the orders they submit when I ask them what they want, which does not bring a sparkle to anyone's eyes.

I am VERY hard to shop for, since I'm not oriented towards material objects, and never have any idea of what I want. So when the kids give me presents they are along the line of "Mom loved that fairy figurine we gave her 4 years ago, so lets get her four more fairy figurines." I have an awful lot of them by now, and I only switched to fairies because I really couldn't take any more frogs. But at least that saves everyone from getting annoyed at me for not being able to tell them what I want.

The truth is, what I really want for Christmas every year is for Christmas to be over!

(Thanksgiving is our big traditional family holiday. Easy food, lots of it, and both kids at home this year. That makes me feel happy just thinking about it. And no presents to make the whole thing so fraught!)

I've made a start on presents, they have to be practical, like clothes or a cookbook or bike parts to make it worth while. Though 3 year old grandson wants a Buzz Lightyear so who am I to disagree :0)
We only put up a Xmas tree with a train running round the base in the front room a week or so before the day, it's enough.

Anyone slow cooked duck legs? I'm considering trying it though OH says they're very fatty?

Got to confit your legs @azureblue slowly in oil.......

I think most has been said by others here especially Peebles and tracieknits. If it wasn't for the present buying, I would be OK. I can't stand spending every weekend for months traipsing through shops in order to find inspiration or to just fulfil orders. I am a Christian and I find the commercial side depressing.

I have tried numerous times to reduce the amount of presents. When we all celebrated together I managed a couple of times to convince everybody to do Secret Santa where everybody buys one present for the one person whose name was drawn out of a hat. That way the tradition of gift giving and receiving was enjoyed but in moderation. It's absolutely wonderful if you agree as a group of adults (my children are all grown up) and there are no grand children.

But now we don't all spend the day together and see/visit each other in stages due to in-laws etc and then it does not work anymore.

I don't like the travelling around to see each other resulting in Christmas starting the week before Christmas ending in the New Year.

One year I wanted to have all the presents done and dusted by 1st December so I could relax and enjoy Advent. Whilst I managed most presents, I still spent every weekend in December running around to find the last (difficult) ones. This year My strategy is panic buying: I am such an uncertain dithering present buyer (because I hate to spend money on things that just go in the bin after Christmas) that I need pressure to help me make up my mind.

@Azurblue: I've slow cooked duck legs- you mean 'confit'? They are cooked in fat, but then the fat drips off and they don't taste fatty at all. I marinate them in herbs and salt overnight, then wash it off and cook them in a deep pan covered in duck fat for several hours at a very low temp. Then you can keep them for months in the fridge cased in the duck fat. When you want to eat them , you scrape off the fat and cook them in a hot over for a short time to crisp them up. Yummy. I'll find a recipe and send it to you.
As for Christmas, I agree they start FAR too early! Also I agree that they commercialise it something shocking. However we can make choices. We can chose to make or recycle presents. We can chose who we give them to. We don't have to succumb to the horrible stuff. I love the feasts. I love the cooking. I like sending Chrissy cards. I like the family coming together - with all the pain and trouble. I'd rather we did get together than not, even thought it often hurts. This year will be quiet for us because we have a family wedding in January in Victoria. And my mum has died so no one has to come to Tasmania to be with mum as has been the case for the last years. It will be good to have a quiet time. But I'm about to order the ham. How exciting! We'll still need ham, even if it's just us.

I have done my first 2 day 'Christmas fayre' and they played Carols all the time! If I don't hear another for the rest of they year, I will still have heard enough for the whole of the season.
However, on the upside, I posted my cards and stuff to Canada, USA and Australia early enough for surface mail (and they arrived in Canada very early!!) and bought hub's pressie at the fayre yesterday. Started buying for grandkids too.
Must remember where I hide them, though! (the pressies, not the grandkids!)

I swear it is getting earlier every year!!!
When I was a student and worked in Starbucks in Norwich about 15 years ago now I remember that we had to play the xmas CD from the 15th November onwards, and I thought that was crazy! Then I moved to Paris and the first years I spent in France I remember I was worried that xmas wouldn't be celebrated at all as there was nothing special in the shops etc until about mid December, and then it was mostly food related!!
Last weekend I went to the garden centre with the kids and the whole place has been turned into some kind of xmas store, with automated bears with santa hats on etc, resulting in my kids whipping themselves up into a frenzy of excitement because apparantly 'father christmas is coming!'. I have since been trying to explain the concept of having to wait for a few weeks to my nearly three year old with limited success, while my 6 year old has started cointing down the days (oh well, I supose it's a good maths exercise!)
For me xmas starts the first weekend of advent, that's the weekend where I start xmas baking, and we start making decorations and presents in the evenings and at weekends, that's what I did when I was little and that's what I want to do with my kids, rather than running around a shopping centre panic buying presents. That's not to say I won't buy anything, but I try to buy a reasonable amount of presents and mostly online as I can't stand shopping centres between now and mid-Feb when the whole xmas then sale thing is over.

[Debs]

This is turning into an interesting thread, a mix of grinches like me and people who genuingly find it a nice time of year for family. I fall into the grinch category as a non religious person I find the whole thing over the top. I can't take it seriously over here in the heat, especially when all the Northern Hemisphere iconography. I
I shall be interested to see what Xmas is like in a mining camp, probably no different to usual, just more boozy than usual.

Having said i hate the commercialism of Christmas.. I do like the John Lewis Xmas ad as it holds some of the magic that's often missing these days..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iccscUFY860&sns
However,wish it was the original version of the John Lennon song,performed by the Beatles,instead of a cover version
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aT9ffGF3R6M&sns=em

I'm with Merlin! I enjoy Christmas but only buy presents for our three children, their spouses/partners, husband and grandchildren. Years ago, I agreed with my two sisters and two sister-in-laws that we wouldn't buy for each other or their families. It makes life so much easier!
Christmas lists are requested, presents are ordered online and I love it when, every other year, everyone descends on our house. The in-between years are not so great when the children are visiting their in-laws but, up until now, we have always had our son at home. However, now he is doing up his own house to move into, I expect that he won't be around for the 'in-between' years very much longer. My husband and I will then have to give serious thought to what we would like to do - cruise maybe? What do other people do when they are on their own for Christmas? Answers on a postcard, please!

I'm a bit bah-humbug too. The hype and commercialisation gets on my nerves, I'm not Christian either so that means nothing to me. I live a 5-10 minute drive away from almost all of my friends and family so it's not about making an effort to see them either and my OH is a taxi driver so he works a lot over the festive season so I actually probably see less of him! My friends and I all stopped buying for each other over the years as it was getting out of hand. Immediate family get nice, token gifts (or panic buys if nothing springs to mind!) but nothing huge. The only thing we make an effort with is trying to do some nice, festive things with the children so they can enjoy it, I still want them to have a sense of fun and excitement about it whilst they're still young (11 and 7) otherwise it's utterly pointless. We do love the food and drink though

I might like Christmas, from the family aspect, a LOT better if I lived in the Southern Hemisphere.

But instead, I live somewhere where there is almost guaranteed to be a blizzard on or around the Holiday. And since my children drive in from far away, this means I am always worrying about their safety.

My son has an 11 hour drive to get here in good weather, but he prefers to drive than fly because the last few times he flew in winter, the weather caused his flight to be cancelled and he ended up spending 8 or 9 hours in the airport. He figures he'd rather spend those hours in his car and save the $450 it costs him to fly. But then I'm terrified the whole time he's driving, because he's a young man with an older car who drives like a maniac.

We were thinking of where we could go since this year the kids are coming for TG instead of Christmas, but the idea of dealing with airports and hotels during the Christmas frenzy does not appeal. We'll have a quiet time enjoying each other's company. I'll cook a roast and yorkshire pudding (a family tradition) and something nice for dessert. Then we are thinking of going somewhere warm for a week in early February when the kids are in school and most people are working.

Yes i agree@JennyH10 ..it's all about it being magic for the children...you can't beat the excitement of Christmas Eve with children who " still believe"
I still love the anticipation in the air on Xmas Eve.
I remember years ago me and my friend worked in a hotel in Austria over Christmas..the hotel owner was a right old battleaxe..the custom there was to give presents on xmas eve and she said,Look what the ChristmasFather has for you..i received a rather yummy boxofchocs,but i' ll never forget my friend's face when she unwrapped a wooden cheeseboard and her dismayed " ohhhh.....a....Cheeseboard! " ( i shared the chox with her)
@stowgateresident sounds like you have Christmas down to a fine art..on the inbetween years,i wd be happy just putting feet up,enjoying food n drink,going for a nice walk. I know that wdnt suit everyone tho. X

Both of my parents died when they were young so we children didn't have a 'family home' to which to return or gather in adulthood. My siblings usually go on a ski-ing holiday for Christmas so they can leave all the hype and faux emotion of the season behind them.

I always used to volunteer for work or volunteer work over the holiday season so that I wouldn't get caught up in travel and invitations that I didn't want. Fortunately, my DH was always OK with this as he knows how much I dislike the season and its associations. That said, I've always enjoyed cooking and baking the seasonal items so it was my idea of a good time to bake for Christmas hampers and cook Christmas dinner for a 100-250 people (voluntary work).

This year, I've just baked/cooked for family & friends as well as the Christmas hampers for people. However, preparing food is both interesting and entertaining for me.

I like attending Christmas music performances and the ROH ballet.

I've recently bean watching a wonderful series called "Crimes of Passion". Its a Swedish crime drama and is set in the fifties. I found myself yearning for that time, a time that seemed so simple of free of "things" that we all have to have. Having said that...this is my first Christmas with a shop...so I'm hoping there are LOTS of people who need everything and ANYTHING to do with film and tv...particularly in the form of Funko Pops!

I much rather spend Christmas on an island somewhere though

@nursebean,

I lived through the fifties as an aware, impressionable child, and find the nostalgia for that period nauseating. The only reason it looks good in the movies is because of the huge amount of lying that went on everywhere. For women, it was a period of total suppression. Even a decade later I got turned down for a management job and was told by the hirer explicitly, that with my college record I would have got the job had I been a man, but women weren't given such jobs.

There was so much sexual and spousal abuse. Men were considered to have the right to beat their wives and their children. Children were victimized by teachers and priests and if they said anything they were yelled at and told to stay silent. Racial killings were going on in the U.S.. It was still legal to build neighborhoods where the property covenants explicitly stated that no Jews or black people could buy homes there. Gay people were routinely blackmailed and lived lives of self-hatred.

It was far from a paradise, and when I see the media romanticizing it it turns my stomach. We are all so fortunate to live in a world where though abuse and discrimination still occur, we no longer consider them acceptable.