Happy Christmas to all, as they say in Great Britain!
This year is a unique one for our family. Normally we are not at home on Christmas day. In the past, we usually were traveling to another country, so we would pick a day before we left to do our family gifts. Since the kids got older, we have mostly done our gifts on Christmas Eve, then flown to visit family in another state on Christmas Day, which is often a really great day to fly. This year, flights got crazy expensive, so the kids are not coming, and we are going later than usual. As a result, we are hosting a small, casual Christmas Day gathering at our house.
This made me think back to the various Christmas Day gatherings I’ve experienced. When I was growing up, I had to do chores to earn money to buy gifts for my much older siblings, and I could never get it right. I often got teased about my sub-par attempts at gift giving. When I was about 5 years old, I bought my 15 year old brother a keychain with a gun that was a flashlight. He still mocks me for that, all these years later. When I was 8 I bought my sister a sample bottle of Agree shampoo because it smelled good and was supposed to help you “escape the greasies” (the ads showed someone with greasy hair that was then lustrous and shiny). The one I bought smelled like green apples, which reminded me of Jolly Ranchers. She was not impressed with that gift either. I didn’t get a lot of help or guidance on these gifts, and honestly, now that I’m an adult, it seems that I was kind of set up to fail. Nevertheless, as a result, I kind of hate gift-giving. I have always felt that I’m terrible at it, and it makes me anxious. I’m not even thrilled with receiving gifts. The whole thing feels kind of overwhelming.
On my mission, my comp and I lived in an apartment that doubled as the chapel, so we hosted a Christmas party with the 6 elders on the island. We taped up a construction paper Christmas tree on the wall and everyone cooked–lasagna and cheesecake and other snacks. We did a secret Santa gift exchange, and I got the highly coveted Calvin & Hobbes with a missing cover that had been making the rounds in the mission. After gifts, we played games. That was a fun Christmas.
The year I returned from my mission, my parents flew me home for Christmas. When it came time to open gifts, there wasn’t anything for me, which honestly was OK; I felt pretty sanguine about it. One of my sisters was there, though, and pointed out that I didn’t have any gifts, and that alerted my mom that she forgot me, so she went into the home office and grabbed a ream of dot-matrix computer paper, still in the Kmart bag, and said she had forgotten to wrap it, but that she didn’t forget me. Then my sister handed me a small box with some pins in it that had ceramic ladybugs on them and said she had found them in the attic, so “they didn’t even cost anything” she told me excitedly.
The first year I was married, we lived in a very small apartment, so instead of a tree, we put a picture of a tree on our computer, and put our gifts under the computer desk. I married into a family that was really good at Christmas. It was a little overwhelming at first, but I quickly settled into my favorite role in the group: clean up. Dirty dishes from dinner? Happy to help. Wrapping paper that needs to be recycled? Throw that right over here. As we got older, Christmases quit being a huge family affair on the day of, and now instead there is a big extended family get together and most of the siblings and grandkids are able to come, depending on work schedules. This is the first year in a long time that our kids won’t be able to make it.
So this year, we are hosting. We’ll do our traditional family gifts on Christmas Eve (significant others included). On Christmas Day, we’ve invited a collection of “strays” (a total of 13 people, including us) which doesn’t sound quite right, but everyone we know who doesn’t have better plans, and we are intending to keep it casual. We play a dice game that we have done at my in-laws in the past where you buy a bunch of items (30-40?) at the dollar store or on clearance–things like gel pens, candy, air fresheners, kitchen utensils, car wash certificates, bungee cords, etc.–and you take turns rolling dice. For every 1 or 5 you roll, you can take a gift from the pile or steal one from another player. There’s a timer, and when it goes off, you keep whatever you’ve got.
So let’s hear about your plans and your past Christmases.
- Do you like giving gifts? How did your formative experiences make this either a joy or a pain for you?
- If you served a mission, was it a good Christmas or not?
- What was your best Christmas memory? What about your worst?
- Will you be spending your holiday with family? Are you hosting?
Discuss.
Wheat & Tares 
In my childhood home, gifts from Santa weren’t wrapped because so many kids. The number grew over time. It was rather chaotic, but after we inspected our Santa gifts, the wrapped gifts were distributed and opened in order of age (youngest first,) with all of us watching the giftee. I thought that was unusually disciplined for us, and it was fueled by a genuine interest in watching the youngsters have fun. I remember coming home from college and sleeping on the couch, in the dark with just the tree lights on and a fire in the fireplace, overwhelmed with nostalgia or something.
When I had little kids, we were expected to show up at the in-laws fairly early Christmas morning (9am, but I pushed it big time) after our kids opened gifts in our home, for their next round of gifts. It was a free-for-all, everyone handed a gift that was opened immediately and on to the next, and I learned to make notes of who gave what to whom, so that proper thank yous could be given. Then we went home to dress for dinner out. When we had littles, it wasn’t fun, but I didn’t whine about not cooking. As our kids grew older, we simply didn’t open our gifts at home until after Christmas dinner and instead we ‘slapped on a tie’ (as one does) before we left our house.
Our kids have returned home every year since moving out, though the schedule changes slightly with different circumstances. This year will be the first time that two of my three kids aren’t here. Because work schedules, airfares, family drama and whatnot. So it’s the perfect time for me to come down with the flu. Since Sunday night, all of my activities have been canceled and I’ve stayed in bed. I don’t mind. I don’t want to infect anyone, and I don’t want to go anywhere feeling rotten. I’ll survive.
Merry Christmas, I hope your day is healthier than mine!
I just realized I forgot to buy orange juice for Christmas breakfast, so that’s how it’s going over here. 🙂
Merry Christmas and God bless us every one!
My family does the opposite of the OP. We decided when the kids were quite young that it was too difficult to travel at Christmas so our rule is Christmas at home. We can travel to visit family before or after Christmas. It’s a rule I really like but our parents not so much.
Like the OP I married someone very good at Christmas. She makes it into a production, tbh sometimes to the point of making it stressful. I wish we’d tone it down and I often tell people that I prefer Thanksgiving.
However we (she) must have done something right because the kids, even married and into their 20s love our Christmases and insist on all the same traditions as when they were kids.
Merry Christmas!!
Christmass of 1969 I was working in Lajeado a little town in south Brazil. We had been tracking in a even smaler twon just south of Lajeado called Estrella, we decide that on Christmass Eve we would go down to eErellas and knock on doors to deliver a Christmass message, no prosetyzing. We spent severa; hours doing this, I do not remeber how many doors we knocked on but I do remember hat evey door invited in to listen to our Christmas message and feed us cookies, cakes and other vatious treats. We got out fill of Christmas goodies and Christmas spirit. It was an experience I will never forget!
My kids are all teenagers, and I told them no one gets up before 10:00 on Christmas. I planned to sleep in. The cats are not as easy to persuade to sleep in as teenagers are. I’ve been up for a couple hours now, and still have nearly an hour to go before my teens wake up.
We do a very low-key Christmas at home. When my kids were little, we tried to visit go to Christmas dinner at a sibling’s house, after a late evening doing a really special Christmas Eve at grandparents’ house. It made for miserable kids. They just wanted to stay home and play with their gifts. It didn’t seem right to make little kids cry on Christmas. So we don’t visit anyone.
Again, when the kids were little, I thought I’d start half a dozen Christmas traditions and then just keep the favorite ones. Ha! They liked all half dozen. Christmas was a very busy season, what with making salt-dough ornaments, painting salt-dough ornaments, the paper countdown chain to painting day (the day after Tgvg), the paper countdown chain to Christmas day, the kid-friendly Christmas concert, going somewhere special to see Christmas lights, building gingerbread houses, baking Christmas cookies for us, baking Christmas cookies for Santa. However, some of the traditions have gone by the wayside as they’ve gotten older, along with some of the decorating. My rule was that I would decorate if I had help. If the kids didn’t care, I wasn’t going to stress about it either. This year, we put up the tree and hung a wreath on the door. We didn’t even hang the stockings — just set them under the tree. We are down to three Christmas traditions this year: two sets of cookies and one gingerbread house.
I love buying gifts for people I know well. Like my kids. Also my XH. He spends Christmas morning with us every year, so we exchange gifts. I don’t like buying obligatory gifts for people. In-laws, work colleagues, neighbors. None of them get gifts from me. The wonderful women who clean my house and tutor my son get generous Christmas bonuses.
I also believe in buying gifts for myself. This was necessary when the kids believed in Santa. Santa had to bring me something too! Santa always gets me exactly what I want.
It seems like we are traveling every year. When we got married, the draft (yup that old) was breathing down my husbands neck, so rather than wait to be drafted and go to Vietnam, my husband enlisted in the USAF. So, during tech school, we traveled home for Christmas from Mississippi, then from the military’s first screw up in canceling the job but not canceling the people to fill those jobs we traveled home for Christmas, from Tucson Arizona, after screwing up, the AF gave him his choice of assignment in his field and the choices were all overseas, so we traveled him from Berlin Germany, and so it went, traveling home 90% of Christmases for 20 years of military life. After hubby retired, we moved back to Utah so we didn’t have to travel so far….only across Utah. Then the kids moved out and we had about three years of fighting children to go visit their grandparents or we would be on Nana’s shit list, but still every Christmas we were on the highway traveling, staying over or driving home late, very late. Then blessedly the grandparents started dying and grandma wasn’t across Utah, but living with us. I think we stayed at home that year. Then we took some of our retirement savings and bought a little house again all the way across Utah from our children. So, now, here I am sitting in a motel on Christmas Day because once again, traveling for Christmas. Now we come north to visit our children.
It is starting to feel unfair that we, the kicked around baby boomer generation were ALWAYS the ones EXPECTED to travel. But in the lobby where a sort of breakfast was served, whole bunch of grandparents, boomer generation forced to travel if we want to see our children or grandchildren. Raised by the self proclaimed “greatest generation” we were expected to bow and scrape before our betters, our parents. We swore we wouldn’t treat our kids that way, so we raised a bunch of people who expect to be treated as equals and they proclaim it is easier to take two people north than to take 7 people south, besides they have teens with jobs and just can’t manage the trip. So, if we want to see anyone we travel. But maybe next year, I don’t care if I see anyone because I am sick of Christmas on the road living out of a suitcase.
I don’t like gift giving or receiving. Neither does my mother. It feels like obligation, poor communication and deception to us. It’s a game of spending money you don’t have to buy something the other person doesn’t want (you try to read their mind) then they have to pretend they are excited and surprised even if they hate it or know about it already. Or I have to be nice and pretend I wanted it.
I value authenticity very highly, so this the opposite of fun for me. At my house, we make a Christmas list and everyone says what they want. If they won’t say, mostly they get money or nothing. My parents send us money to spend on Christmas instead of gifts.
My kids are all adults . We are mostly owls. They are asleep even now. I still haven’t wrapped any of the gifts. My mother just stacked them in piles, no wrapping paper, but my husband insists on wrapping them. Maybe he will get to that soon? He also likes stockings (stretchy nylon hose) full of all kinds of treats.
I made 4 different kinds of pie yesterday (cheesecake, pumpkin, plum, and chocolate). My son made a batch of cookies. We will have ham today, with funeral potatoes. My son that lives away from home will join us. The lights on the tree are peaceful and beautiful. We sit around the tree, open gifts and talk. Sometimes we play a board game or do a puzzle.
My oldest had RSV one Christmas and we spent Christmas Eve and about four days after at primary children’s hospital on oxygen. We were unprepared for this trip and assumed we would just go home the next day for fresh clothes. Well. It started snowing Christmas Eve and didn’t stop for two days and neither of us wanted to drive in that so the hospital gave us some scrubs. Four days later at home my brother had cleared our driveway which was nice. Worst.Christmas.Ever. Do not recommend RSV.
I hated both mission christmases but did my best. I’m the youngest in a big family so missing all my nieces and nephews when they were that fun age was hard for me.
We are hosting my SIL family from London this year and they are way too excited to spend Christmas in warm weather. We’ve traveled at Christmas but as I get older I just don’t have the patience to travel at the same time as everyone else and pay the premiums.
Merry Christmas y’all!
I’ve never heard anyone say that in Great Britain…
[from Great Britain]
When I was growing up, the days leading up to Christmas were often busy and stress-filled; it was the time when my parents fought the most. They overextended themselves trying to make the holiday special, and it unfortunately made it less so. Christmas Day itself was also complicated, because my mom was a control freak about it. We all had to open presents one at a time, and every family member had to be seated and fully paying attention in order to proceed. If someone had to get up to go to the restroom or any other reason, the whole process stopped until that person came back. If it was someone else’s turn and I got briefly distracted by a new toy I was waiting to play with, I would get chastised to refocus my attention. And when I did open a present, I was required to loudly express approval and amazement at the gift (even if it was something I didn’t really want), and very performatively thank the giver of that gift. If my parents didn’t hear me say “thank you” it didn’t count, and I would get chastised for being ungrateful. As much as I believe in the importance of politeness and gratitude, this charade was just too forced and artificial. Inevitably, there was always a tantrum or melt-down or some dramatic blow-up resulting in one or more people storming off in a huff, with the rest of us groaning and resentful. This process dragged on for hours, and when it ended we all went to our separate corners of the house to play with our new toys and couldn’t stand the sight of each other for the rest of the day.
To my parents’ credit, they got us pretty much everything we wanted each year (within reason), and they never pushed the Santa Claus myth too much, nor did they get too heavy-handed with religious stuff either. With the benefit of hindsight, I’m trying to view my parents’ efforts more charitably; they were doing the best they could in their circumstance, and were probably overcompensating for the deficiencies (real or perceived) of their respective upbringings. My in-laws, I’m told, weren’t quite as wound up about Christmas, but still overdid it in their own way, often emphasizing quantity over quality.
Anyway, with my own kids, I make a deliberate effort to lighten up about Christmas, and I had to stop including my parents in our celebrations, as they still brought negative energy and a lot of anxiety from insisting on doing Christmas morning “their way”. Everybody is a lot happier now. This year, I spent significantly less money on total gifts than I did last year or the year before, owing to the squeeze of inflation. However, my kids seemed to be every bit as happy with the haul this morning. My wife and I were more intentional about our gift shopping, focusing on quality more than quantity, and they seemed to be OK with that.
This past Sunday my ward had a music-focused sacrament meeting. Unfortunately, my ward is bereft of musical talent, so the offerings left something to be desired (I felt bad for any visitors who had higher expectations). The short talks were also devoid of substance. Almost nothing about Jesus, other than the fact of His birth. The Gospel of Luke was never quoted, though RMN was mentioned or quoted at least a few times.
Simon C, also in the UK. I’ve heard “Happy Christmas” and “A (very) Happy Christmas to you all”, but not “all” without “you”… which isn’t to say some people might not use that variant …
I hope you all had a good one!
Boxing Day today, and I am recovering from all the cooking and food preparation yesterday. Now the children are adults we don’t do stockings at the foot of the bed, but we do still wrap presents and put them around the tree to be opened Christmas morning. It’s a long process, carried over from my parents. Each family member takes turns fetching a gift from the tree, reads to label and hands it to the person named. We all watch them open it. This continues until all the gifts have been opened. The tradition I introduced is to read the Christmas story from Luke and Matthew after breakfast, and it’s only once the wise men have delivered their gifts we begin fetching the gifts from under the tree.
I’m trying really hard not to hate your family, your story about your brother and the gun almost made me drop some tears. It’s sad that we have moments in life like that which we never truly get to heal from. No sorry nor moving on can ever cover that painful memory.
I am both a bad gift giver, and a bad gift receiver. It just isn’t my love language. I struggle to find meaningful gifts for others, and I am not a naturally grateful person.
Two missionary Christmases were pretty good. The most memorable present (not opened on Christmas day, but sometime in December) was a scarf that my sister sent me. It was 100 degrees that day. She forgot about that whole southern hemisphere thing. Christmas day was nice, because we’d get all the missionaries in the city (about a dozen) together, and just hang out all day. It was about the only day of the year where I didn’t have to be a missionary! Calling home was always a bit stressful, mostly because when you only get to do it twice a year, it puts too many expectations on the event.
For a number of years we lived two time zones away from extended family, so we got used to quiet Christmases at home. We made a rule when our kids were little that we would take as long as possible to open presents. If someone wanted to stop and play with a toy that very minute, we’d stop and wait for them. We didn’t see any point in getting things “over with” by 8am, when we didn’t have anything else scheduled all day. These days we live close to family again, so we do Christmas morning at our house, a late breakfast at my in-laws, and afternoon at my parents.
When our kids were little, we settled on a system where each person gets 5 gifts: want, need, wear, read and Santa. There are tags with each person’s name with those categories on them that we reuse year after year. It keeps Christmas at a level we can manage financially. Hopefully it also lets us focus a little more on more important things. It’s nice that Santa only gets to bring one gift, because when the kids were little, I didn’t need him stealing all the credit!
In Australia it is summertime. Christmas day was 32c (90f) today it is 37 (99) we are near the coast and the humidity is usually between 50 and 90%, inland much warmer the highest this week was 47c (116) but they have been having rain and flooding, so high humidity too. In the south of the country they are having bush fires. Pacific Ocean water temp is in high 70s f. So swimming.
On Christmas eve my wife was making a final batch of fruit mince pies when her kenwood chef heavy duty mixmaster stripped a gear. Ŵe bought it second hand 50 years ago. So we had to find another one so we could have our christmas mince pies.
We now have great grand children, none living within a couple of hours drive, so the children each have their family gatherings. We had a gift opening with one single daughter who lives with us, then barbecued spare ribs for lunch.
In Aus the Sydney to Hobart yacht race starts on boxing day, and there is the boxing day test match. This year it is the forth 5 day match of 5 between India and Aus. India won the first, Australia the second, the third was rained off, and we are in the middle of the forth. Each test is played in a different state. A cricket ball is much like a baseball but fielders do not have gloves.
India are 6 out for 210 in their first innings, in response to Aus 474 first innings, so still trail by 264 runs.
our neighbour, who is Muslim, brought us a present, and wished us happy holiday season. She was a Mormon, but the husband she married in the temple abused her.
a few comments:
there’s a great Hidden Brain episode about gift-giving recently replayed. I highly recommend it.
as for my favorite gift given, when my daughter was 8, my mom had pancreatic cancer. So my present to my mother was a surprise visit from me and my daughter.
At the time my daughter was really into magic. She and I often watched Penn & Teller: Fool Us together. We kept the trip a secret from both my mother and my daughter. Christmas morning, my daughter opened my present to her: tickets to see Penn and Teller that very evening. (I had arranged a long layover in Las Vegas.) I made excuses to my mom as to why we couldn’t do our usual Christmas Day phone call. She was very bummed about it, but she got over it the next day when we showed up on her doorstep. It was such a magical week, starting with actual “magic” and ending with my final few memories of my mom up and about. The next time I saw her a few months later, she was bed-ridden. And then she was in a casket. That Christmas will always rank #1 in my memory