What’s the general view of STW on the festive season; are you bursting at the seems with festive excitement or crushingly bah humbug?

I’ll nail my colours to the pro Christmas camp. There is no bad in my book, I am well underway with with the main present shopping, and got the lights out of storage yesterday, and there are a lot of them!! I’m penciling shopping trips with friends and family to get the ‘little bit’s’ in the run up. I’ll have my annual 3 week’s off any serious cycling to let me fully appreciate the excess, and as a single guy find the season always presents some festive nookie opportunities. The season can do no wrong for me, I’ve been buzzing since the start of November 🙂

How about you?

It’s OK, it’s nice to be off work, nice to have the dream of snow and buy presents for people….

All in all… i don’t mind Xmas…

I like Christmas, at Christmas time. At the moment it’s November, the weather is shit, it gets dark too early and work is pissing me off.

When Christmas comes it’ll be great to be off work and with the family for a decent period of time.

OMG!! Santa’s coming……..

Another bout of crushing disappointment looms on the horizon for dyslexic devil worshippers.

Not overly keen on the shopping part, but I’m pro. Christmas is about getting family together and having a good time. Can’t complain about that.

Love it.

Chance to see folks I haven’t seen in a while and i love the family atmosphere.

I enjoy Christmas.

Christmas is in December, not November. By all means, start your planning etc, but don’t be putting up office decorations on the 1st November like it’s bloody Oxford Street.

Christmas will be great this year – it will mean that we’ve got the kids through 5 separate band concerts, 2 school musical productions, one gymnastics performance, one Scout carol concert, one Guide Christmas party, (presumably) a Brownie Christmas party and a 10th birthday (female) sleepover.

Plus the Scout group will have raised a few hundred pounds for themselves and local charities selling 1000+ stamps and delivering over 2000 cards across our four villages alone.

Anyone expecting presents, lights, trees and decorations at our house may find we’ve been a bit busy!

We don’t do christmas, or duvets.

We don’t do christmas, or duvets.

Bah! Bedbug!?

Christmas is good, but not in November.
But I will be looking forward to family, food and festivities WHEN the time comes.
until then Bah Bumhug

Meh, work for the emergency services so just another set of shifts in work. 😕
Working Public Holidays means double time however, so not all bad

You lot need excuses to see people you like?

Weird.

I do it in the summer when the weathers nice and we can all sit outside and enjoy the sunshine.

Christmas is for avoiding relatives you don’t like. I wish i could do double time on xmas day.

I love it tbh, I’m a big kid- but I don’t like it diluted. Literally everything I like and dislike about christmas is made worse if you make it a month long. (though, I do more Christmas after Christmas than most people- just family tradition, it weirds me out that people put decorations up in November then tear them down on the 27th. Ours will always come down on 12th night, it’s the law.

I blame plastic trees.

Not a fan, not going to do the anti Christmas rant other than to say it would be nice if was just toned down a touch.

It’s the birthday of our lord god jesus christ, what’s not to like? and I for one will be swinging on down to the local church to celebrate the day with all the old ladies and the vicar. hallelujah praise be.

Christmas begins on the 24th of December and ends on the 26th, follow these simple rules and all will be fine

If you go to dobbies outside Edinburgh you’ll find he’s already here.

Our tree and decorations went up on Sunday. I can’t wait. Currently perusing Amazon before writing my letter to Father Christmas.

Always excited!

I’m very much in the Bah Humbug camp, for the following reasons:

The Build-up.

Every group has it’s Christmas Nutter, or nutters – it seems the moment the kids go back to school after the Summer hols it’s “crimbo” this, and that. I will accept with everything going on in the world at the moment the usual ‘excitement’ has come later, and it’s milder – but this is an exceptional year, most years it’s 3-4 months of “Crimbo” nonsense. For some people that’s a quarter to a third of their life devoted to being a seasonal prick. I don’t want to deal with that for 20 years of my life (give or take).

Our retail over-lords go into Hyper drive. It starts with the pubs and hotels of course, they’ve got bookings to take – a Hotel local to me has taken the unprecedented step of devoting a large part of it’s massive frontage to Xmas, YEAR AROUND, but by August every pub and restaurant in the land has a cynical plastic pine tree in the entrance (Taking Bookings Now!) the Toy makers are next come September the airwaves are full of toys and every one of them is pushing out press releases that it’s wares are this years ‘must haves’ desperately hoping to create the idea of a shortage and that’s followed by the super markets pushing more calories than someone can live on for a month in the 3rd world for already over-weight people to eat in a day to whip us all up into a frenzied orgy of consumption.

The ‘Office Party’.

I know these can be good, but let’s be honest most of them are horrific, come September the boss hands it over to the shrill office dickhead – giddy with power they’ve dreamt up ‘secret santa’ – great, another thing to buy and another bit of crap I don’t need to store, for a bit at least. A night at the local hotel in dinner suits, why? Yay a hot, rented suit so you can look like an 80’s **** before you spend the night avoiding the dodgy looking £60 factory made, locally heated ‘special Christmas menu’ and trying to tread the line between the agony of dealing with this sober or the career suicide of drinking too much and looking like you’re having fun, only to return home to the full Spanish inquisition from the ‘other-half’. I for one *love* being punished for being punished.

The Expense.

When I was single, it was easy, I bought a few things for close family and that was it, I usually spent the day on my own waiting for it to be over. As a parent, though, the ‘parental guilt’ is hard to rise above, when they’re little you feel you need to buy them lots of crap, but by the time they’re in double digit ages they demand them, for their entire life to this point they’ve been told that Christmas means lots of stuff, trying to unwrite that as they get older is hard work. You could be brave, explain the facts of life to them and spend a few quid for something nice and leave it there – but they’re coming home with tales of ‘Stacy in year 5’ getting a Leer Jet for Christmas and ‘chatter between the Mums in the playground’ of Little Timmy getting **** all off Santa when Mum and Dad had a new Car 2 years ago. Couple that with the most effective advertising and marketing machines in the world telling you parental love ‘only’ costs £49.99 (batteries not included) and is made out of pink plastic and it creates a lot of stress and arguments between parents before one (usually Dads) cries, “I just don’t **** care anymore” and Barclaycard has a field day and that’s before the really snide one are posting up pictures on Xmas Eve of a pile of presents with a little star at the top – “oh **** me, that’s not a pile for the orphanage, that’s their Xmas tree, they must REALLY love their kids” fills you will guilt.

The Actual Day.
11pm Christmas Day “So this is Christmas and what have you done?” Really, no really, what did you do?
Rewind to when you were awoken at 6am, that’s okay in my book, but the OH hates non-standard behaviour so everyone must get up at the time we need to for work / school, weird.
the Kids are excited, there’s a moment of joy when they open something and say “wow” but you know you’ve bought too much, they’ve lost interest half way though, they cast aside that you spent half an hour of your life queuing to pay a pair of carbon bars worth of cash on without a second thought, because it’s gift number 17 and they’ve either got the only thing they actually wanted or they’re still trying to find it.
You’re not insane so you don’t ‘surprise’ your other-half, that’s never going to end well, so you buy EXACTLY what they HINT about, from the EXACT shop they HINTED it could be found, in the EXACT size, colour, shape or flavour they wanted and they act surprised, you don’t expect an Oscar will arrive in the post. They pass you your version, you think “I could have had this months ago if we didn’t have to swap” whilst grinning like an idiot.

Then it’s ‘Lunch’ which can be anytime between 11am and 8pm depending on your planning skills, the largest plate you’ve ever seen in your life groaning under the weight of 4 hours of labour for some mug eaten with all the appreciation of someone inspecting their own gallows because the kids have been eating Chocolate since 6am on the 23rd and the adults can’t LEAVE THE **** PEANUTS ALONE.

Afternoon now, the poor cook is exhausted, but is getting stick of the non-cook who’s “been looking after the kids all day!” and the adults what to drop into a coma, but the kids want Lego built (I’m sure they used to sell imagination kits, now they sell 8-bit Airfix) so we get to watch Rodney and Del as Batman and Robin again, hit the booze at 2pm and generally live with the worse version of your children you could ever imagine as their sugar addled, no sleep brains try to deal with all the new data, unless, heaven forbid, someone wants to visit when you have to do all those thing only dressed and with ‘the act’ on.

Come 9pm and the kids are passed out, you hope for a bit of peace and quiet with the other-half, but the weeks previous have taken their toll and resentment runs high, both smart-phones browsers weight heavy with searches for “family solicitors” and one side has to crack, either the “tight” one may ask “do you think we bought too much? “ or the “It’s bloody Christmas” one says with a solemn look over the piles of unwanted and unloved opened gifts “I told you we should have got the plastic crap number 17 (or whatever it’s called) then they would have been happy” and you spend the rest of the evening glaring at the TV never once looking at each other whilst you stop looking for Solicitors and start thinking about new Patios and texting your mates to find out when you can escape the hell and talk to some real adults for a bit.

Back to 11pm and finally the healing starts with the dreaded, but all so necessary SENSE OF ANTI-CLIMAX it’s over, it’s done, the last 3 months (at least) of work has bared its fruit and its sour and rotten – why do we do it to ourselves, it’s “just a day” we haven’t been to Church for anything other than weddings, funerals and christenings since they stopped making us in School, why do we throw ourselves into celebrating its biggest festival in such a crass way? But now it’s over, sure there’s the death throws that is Boxing Day, but without the rampant consumerism it doesn’t punch with the same sting and it’s a decent time for a meet up with other survivors for a bit of a debrief.

For SAD sufferers, Mountain Bikers and pretty much everyone else who likes to be outdoors for their leisure time, there is some glint of joy when you remember that in all the chaos the shortest day passed a week ago, we’ve broken the back of Winter, sure Jan and Feb aren’t any walk in the park, but it gets a little better every day.

For Parents those, there’s little respite, come Boxing Day and Thomas Cook, Jet2 et all will be banging down your door, if you think Christmas costs more debt that you ever thought possible, it’s a drop in the ocean compared to dragging 2 kids to come Spanish Costa hell-hole out of term time. Because your OH wants to “relax in the sun” because she’s forgotten we’ve got kids and we have to take them too, but at least you get a few hours without it.

Christmas, it’s one of those things, if it hadn’t evolved into what it is now over the last few hundred years (I’m talking about Christmas, not Celebrating the Birth of a Jesus) if someone tried to invent it now, they’ve been given life. It creates a higher number of suicides than any other time of the year, it causes more relationships to fail, it creates huge amounts of debt, wife and husbands will be beaten by the one person who supposed to love them more than anyone else, people will be murdered for it – and not just in some middle-eastern country in a fight over which book is best, but here, in the west, people’s lives will be violently taken away over the stress and strain caused by Christmas.

It’s total bullshit, it’s a marketing exercise and one that get bigger every year, ‘Black Friday’ used to be a Tabloid story from the US, then it became a thing here, now it lasts 2 weeks and starts on a Monday. New Year Sales, became Boxing Day Sales and now they start mid-Dec. The push for the early adopters (Pubs and Hotels) went year around this year, in dribs and drabs, next year it will be wide-spread, within 5 I bet it’ll expand to all the industries involved in the scam. It seems laughable now, but so did ‘Black Friday’ 3 years ago.

One day there will be a back-lash, there has been in the past I’m told, a few glorious moments when people said, no more, usually in times of war, major recessions won’t make much of a dent.

I for one hope the whole thing crashes and burns one day, shift the bank holidays to summer and call it a bad idea.

Bah Humbug.

For the first time in my life ,I’m not going home for Christmas .
I was excited ,then ,I was told the in-laws are coming. Humbug.
And we’re skint ,could do without it tbh. Double humbug .

Miserable sods are usually miserable about everything.

Off today, might just be a mince pie lunch, Mrs S picked up a packet yesterday..

And P-Jay’s post is why I didn’t feel it was necessary to do my own rant.

Not a fan then P Jay? 😀

pjay, that was outstanding, I chuckled more than once.

P-Jay’s post is why I didn’t feel it was necessary to do my own rant.

TBF ,he just cut and pasted that from last year 😉

TBF ,he just cut and pasted that from last year

I’d like it to be know that I typed that myself just now 😉

I rarely struggle to come up with bile for Christmas, it’s got it coming.

I espcially liked the on-topic comparison to the equivalent piece of bicyle component. I agree, the amount of plastic tat we choose to fill our homes with for one reason or another is ridiculous.

It’s the birthday of our lord god jesus christ, what’s not to like?

Poor Jesus – an absentee father and he only gets one set of presents 🙁

You missed off the DFS sale adverts P-Jay

p-jay…….. awesome post , can connect with a lot of that !

I rarely struggle to come up with bile for Christmas

Gastroesophageal reflux? 😛

Poor Jesus – an absentee father and he only gets one set of presents

Ever considered the three wise men werent all that wise and have awkwardly appeared to find out the gair colour?

P-jays post was worth just to read the description of Lego as 8-bit Airfix. 😀

It keeps me in a job and pays for the rest of the year. Professionally I love it other wise I could do without it.
Shall send my niece and nephew some nice presents or some money which will not be acknowledged and make me feel bad towards them.
Plus I’m so looking forward to spending a day with a bigoted express reader while trying to keep my mouth shut.
I might need to have a head ache this year. Luckily I got llaryingitis last year and spent it in bed.
In Australia we would go down the beach or have a bbq ,so much nicer than eating too much food and watching shit on telly. Yes I could change how I spend Christmas but Mrs zip likes to be with her family and maybe that’s the best present I can give her .

Good work PJ.

Christmas excess present giving is bloody awful. We won’t be doing it. Some of my kids’ friends have presents unopened from last year. Have a f’in look a yourselves, parents.

Bathams triple x will be on tap soon. 😀

I really have no time at all for christmas anymore, first there is the family politics of either spending it with my folks in Portsmouth where we have to sleep on a sofa bed and my sister will cook (always insists and won’t hear anything else) the food will be cold by the time it is served and the rest of the day will be watching Eastenders/ Strictly/ Britain seems to have run out of talent. Or spent with the in-laws, which is more pleasant in Norfolk, great food, real family affair, but always end up in their lounge with their wood burner on “centre of the sun” setting and me sweating and falling asleep!

The only good bit, still watching the excitement in my 6 year old daughters eyes as she sees the pressies, followed usually by a hypo due to the excitement and her being Type 1!

Much prefer Boxing day, left overs, cold meats and a long walk on Holkham beach or over to Blakeney to see the seals.

I love it, although I don’t do much about it until December. I echo Northwind’s sentiments about it being weird that all the Christmas stuff disappears on the 27th- it’s not over until Wassail time.