So many people on here claim to have different Christmases than what is generally regarded as traditional but I can’t ever imagine doing that – it’s one day where you can have fun, eat, drink, over- indulge so why change what (to me) is wonderfully good fun?

my missus doesn’t really get it these days as a vet she normally works through the holiday. I think having lived away from my family since I was 18 and my brother doing the same it was always good to have a reason to get together with the family for a day off. I have enough holiday and time off to do what I wanted to do outdoors to be able to enjoy a day of doing something different.

My folks are coming over to visit Oz this year so we will have a day together on Christmas day.

Some of the time I think a lot of people feel the need to shout about being different for the sake of it to try and prove something. Not really that bothered.

Having worked away all my life, parents dying early and spending far too many Christmases at friends I now try to have a traditional Christmas with my partner and her grown up children. She works in care though and often works Christmas day so sometimes our Christmas may be boxing day.

This is only the second year she has had Christmas day off although she will be working Christmas Eve and Boxing Day so will make it extra special.

Although it is a religious festival I treat it more as family and freinds and an important time when we can all get together and relax at least for a few days.

This Christmas should be pretty similar to last years. Family, lots of food, chilled out affair. Oh and on a long-boat 😀

Long-boat has been hired for a few days, did it for the first time last year and it was awesome, had 13 people sleeping on it, think it might be a few more this year!

Me. Our family is traditional, with all the trimmings. Personally, I look forward to a couple of days where I get to spend around my parents house, generally chilling with the family.

I think Mike is right that some people go out of their way to try and be “different”, which is fair enough, or it would be if they didn’t shout about being so different all the time.

I’m trying to get a tradition going where I go on a Christmas Day bike ride. Unfortunately I’m normally away from home and don’t have enough room to take a bike with me. This year I’ve asked Santa to make it happen, so fingers crossed.

Christmas was never a big deal in our family. Like many Scots, my Father generally worked that day and so Hogmanay/New Year was the main celebration. We certainly never had turkey or a big family gathering.

I’ve spent Xmas in Ossian’s cave in Glencoe, a bergschund in the Alps, and most memorably in that vein doing a first winter British ascent with only a packet of ginger nuts en route. Oh and one year I left Chamonix on Xmas day and cycled home.

I’m looking forward to a family Xmas in front of a wood fire with the full trimmings.

I’ll be heading round to my parents for xmas day, champagne and brandy cocktails with brunch followed by pressies and more champagne then a family wee wander up the graveyard to lay flowers on my gran & granpas grave (dads side) then back down to the house to help my mum prepare dinner (vegi for me so i make a nut roast), sit down to dinner & champagne at 4ish, finish bout 7ish and help tidy up, crawl on hands and knees to living room and collapse on the sofa, stare at the telly whilst squinting to stop the picture spinning….fall asleep and wake up with a sore head bout 8.30ish as a glass of champagne is thrust into my hand and so on.

Can’t wait….. 😀

I’ve spent Xmas’s in India, Zimbabwe, Zambia but it doesn’t feel like xmas at all – a home/family xmas is the best!.

Boxing day night however is a drink n’ drug fuelled debauchery with best friends that lasts for days….leaving us just enough time to recover for New Year.

For the first time we are not visiting anyone. We’re having her parents round for breakfast/champagne/presents. Bundle them off then mine round for dinner about 2. Leave everything in a mess and head out for a nice walk. Back, puddings in, then it’ll be a quick tidy up before an evening of more games (nerf based) and the outlaws back round for evening drinks. Mum and dad are staying over which will be great.
The tv will be off all day and I’m thoroughly looking forward to it!

Xmas is whatever you want to do, a large gathering eating turkey, going for a curry with friends/family, climbing mountains with a thermos flask, sitting on a beach with a drink is all good if thats what YOU want to do.
I dislike the attitude that YOUR day should be celebrated in a certain way because its ‘traditional’.

Make your own traditions.

Traditional here, visits to various parts of the family followed by my own body weight in turkey and more pigs in blankets than is generally advised.

Boxing Day is an early alarm for the sales (sad I know but it has become a tradition) followed by beef Wellington and a trip to the pub with my old man.

I have to say I bloody love a proper family Christmas.

I miss family Christmases. Next year though.

we’re very Traditional in our house

How Did Christmas Come to Be Celebrated on December 25?

A. Roman pagans first introduced the holiday of Saturnalia, a week long period of lawlessness celebrated between December 17-25. During this period, Roman courts were closed, and Roman law dictated that no one could be punished for damaging property or injuring people during the weeklong celebration. The festival began when Roman authorities chose “an enemy of the Roman people” to represent the “Lord of Misrule.” Each Roman community selected a victim whom they forced to indulge in food and other physical pleasures throughout the week. At the festival’s conclusion, December 25th, Roman authorities believed they were destroying the forces of darkness by brutally murdering this innocent man or woman.

B. The ancient Greek writer poet and historian Lucian (in his dialogue entitled Saturnalia) describes the festival’s observance in his time. In addition to human sacrifice, he mentions these customs: widespread intoxication; going from house to house while singing naked; rape and other sexual license; and consuming human-shaped biscuits (still produced in some English and most German bakeries during the Christmas season).

C. In the 4th century CE, Christianity imported the Saturnalia festival hoping to take the pagan masses in with it. Christian leaders succeeded in converting to Christianity large numbers of pagans by promising them that they could continue to celebrate the Saturnalia as Christians.[2]

D. The problem was that there was nothing intrinsically Christian about Saturnalia. To remedy this, these Christian leaders named Saturnalia’s concluding day, December 25th, to be Jesus’ birthday.

E. Christians had little success, however, refining the practices of Saturnalia. As Stephen Nissenbaum, professor history at the University of Massachussetts, Amherst, writes, “In return for ensuring massive observance of the anniversary of the Savior’s birth by assigning it to this resonant date, the Church for its part tacitly agreed to allow the holiday to be celebrated more or less the way it had always been.” The earliest Christmas holidays were celebrated by drinking, sexual indulgence, singing naked in the streets (a precursor of modern caroling), etc.

I’m dreading Christmas. The in laws are staying. Whilst the MiL is ok, the FiL doesn’t lift a finger. I wouldn’t mind but they are here from the 22nd until the 30th.

It winds me up especially when Mrs Coolhandluke and myself work so hard etc. I simply refuse to wait on him. He won’t cook, make himself a cup of tea, do dishes, tidy his plate away after a meal. He just watches sport all day ( is there any way I can disable sport on Sky for a few days?)

And he smokes! Outside though.

And he’s deaf but says we mumble and he’s not deaf, he’d know. So is the MiL come to think of if so everything has to be said 2 or 3 times or shouted, then I get told not yo shout.

Come to think of it MiL loves all soaps and you can’t say a word while that crap is on TV! …..

It’s like my house has been invaded

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh 👿

( is there any way I can disable sport on Sky for a few days?)

Remove the dish and the TV aerial, blame storms. Next time don’t invite them for that long.

My folks are here from the 22nd – 2nd they PP gifted me money to stock up on wine and just booked a couple of nights hotel in Hobart for a bit of a tour round. Going to be fun

I shall be traditionally cooking something I haven’t tried before and floating through it all on an alcoholic cloud of something expensive.

Further to my original post, I spent last Christmas in LA visiting family. We had goose and I wore shorts.

Although it was fun, I felt like I didn’t actually have Christmas last year so I am doubly looking forward to going to my brother’s family home with my family and my t’other brother is going to be there too.

Can’t wait…

Pretty much as Pingu:

Come from a small family, parents had died, no grandparents and not many cousins, so never really did the big family thing.

But Ms S comes from a big family and I love boxing day at the in-laws;
A beer, lunch, walk in Heaton Park, daft games, prezzies, darts, cake then Dr Who accompanied by various snores and farts from 17 people and 3 dogs.

Care worker so don’t often get time off, but when I do, I love it.

Not religious either, but it takes a special kind of idiot not to love the happiness that shared experiences & expectations can bring at this time of the year.

First Christmas day with my sister and her daughters. Slightly apprehensive but actually looking forward to it.

Not religious either, but it takes a special kind of idiot not to love the happiness that shared experiences & expectations can bring at this time of the year.

I’m that idiot. It’s the expectations that put me off.

Another idiot here, can’t tell you how much I hate xmas and everything about it.

I’m that idiot. It’s the expectations that put me off.

Sorry, no offence meant. 🙂

I have no expectations and am easily pleased. I also eat anything.

Me and Christmas, we’re just made for each other….

Don’t have anything to so with my family, so spending it with the missus’ family,
That’s usually a big family get together with lots of food and drinking, suits me fine.

if i remember correctly, we’ll be spending the 24th, 25th and 26th driving around Finland visiting graveyards. The driving is tedious and the days are tearful for the gf, but the graveyards are full of candles and they look fantastic.