I feel like there is so much pressure to appear happy about “spending time with family and loved ones”. I’m sure we all have different reasons, but I often wonder how many people actually look forward to it or enjoy it once the day comes?
Edit: thank you for all the comments. You may know about this already, but I take part in Sarah Milligan’s #joinin on Twitter/X and it has really helped the last few years.
43 comments
I struggle with Christmas every year. It makes me feel really depressed. I think it’s a difficult time of year for many people. I’d be interested to know some rough numbers too.
It’s not that I’m not looking forward to it. I just don’t care. In a large part it’s because of the frequently unrealistic expectations that people have about family time etc.
Me. Can’t stand it. The stress it causes people for 1 day of the year is not worth it. Its just a slightly bigger Sunday roast with a few gifts. The main thing that gets me about it is the endless streaming of Christmas songs for 3 fucking months endlessly playing everywhere you go. Got no problems seeing family but 2 days tops for me
I don’t care about Christmas Day at all but I do love the twinkly lights, decorated houses and air of festivities. The day itself is just ok. This year my company is closed for the whole Christmas week so I’m more excited about that.
Thankfully, I work retail so I get to just power through it, otherwise I’d get a little depressed at how lonely I am.
Volunteered to work Christmas Day too, but sadly someone else got the shift before me.
I find it to be just a commercial exploitation exercise. I’m not bothered if people want to buy into that, I just think it’s unfair on the people that can’t afford it. I work over the Christmas period out of choice and just go with the family flow, all grown up now so usually low key. I must admit though a six week lead in time for a fancy roast dinner is a big anti climax. I work nights and will be working the 25th, 26th, 27th, 30th, 31st and the 1st, so if anyone is feeling a bit shit, bung a post up on any of the uk subs and we can pass the time away together, probably sharing some crappy cracker jokes.
I look forward to a rest
No airs or graces like that at our house.
I can eat my own body weight in mince pies any time I really don’t need to wait till Christmas.
I fail to get it, it just a period of unrealistic expectations reminders of people that don’t send you cards and the same music over and over.
Wake me up at Easter, then again maybe not.
I enjoy it somewhat but I think it’s more just a few days of a break I look forward to the most. I love the decorations, enjoy listening to the odd Christmas song and it is a nice build-up.
But on the other hand, there’s such a massive build-up to Christmas and then it just comes up and goes back away so quickly which makes it really anticlimactic.
Though I’ve got quite a small family, so the family we spend Christmas with are fairly local and we see them pretty often anyway, but I can understand those others who perhaps have family in other countries who have flown over and their excited.
But for me personally, no I’m not too bothered about Christmas.
I love Christmas. I love the weather and the atmosphere and all the decorations. My family has always done low key festivities with only close family (parents and grandparents), so it’s never felt stressful or unpleasant. I can totally understand why some people don’t like it, some of the things I hear about sound overwhelming.
Didn’t used to when I was younger and I didn’t even put a tree up in my 20s. Now I have a 5yo I’ve changed a lot and I’m looking forward to it, going to the panto and various Christmas stuff. Having a kid changes you’re outlook probably.
I’m not a big fan but it’s mostly cos I see Christmas as time to spend with family and all but two members of my family are absolute shits.
I’ve secured myself a Christmas dinner, will find out when goonies is on TV and will buy myself a few treats but other than that i can’t wait for it to end.
It’s just another day. Since my partner passed away 8 years ago the step kids moan I’m on my own on Xmas day but don’t have a problem with me eating on my own every other weekend of the year, as I said, just another day
Usually absolutely adore the festive period, mainly because I was raised as a Jehovah’s Witness so I’m making up for having no Christmas’s growing up.
That was until October 2023 and my dad suddenly died. I don’t even want to get out of bed, heck live, let alone celebrate Christmas.
I love it best day of the year ! Presents n food n drink
I hate Christmas. It puts so much pressure on people to spend money they don’t have on shit no one needs. The whole festive period makes me so anxious and low, I just want it all to go away. The only thing which made it tolerable was seeing how happy my mum was at Christmas, but she died a horrible cancer-related death in February. This is the first Christmas without her and I truly have no reason to celebrate Christmas now
I’m not a huge fan. I think Christmas is a day and not a whole month.
I like the idea of having a nice meal with loved ones, but that’s it really. I think we properly kick the arse out of it
I never do. Not for any particular reason. I just find it expensive and forced.
Why do people put so much pressure on themselves and their family for one week a year 😂
I look forward to it every year, the food, the games, the films, the music, the season generally, c’mon people if you can’t take pleasure in the folly of the season and the silliness of it all when can you!!
I’d really love to sack presents off and just see family, eat nice food and have a few Bailey’s. The present thing is a load of bullshit imo.
It’s a shame I can’t hibernate like animals do, sleep all over winter, miss Christmas & New Year, wake up in Spring……if only
Me.
Endless parties and amazing food, seeing people around me enjoy themselves, giving presents to people I like….
Sooner it’s over the BETTER M8
(Ps what’s your favourite Christmas movie? Mines obviously Die-Hard!)
I did retail Christmas (in Thornton’s, of all places, which was a nightmare) for years and then hospitality Christmas for years after that. All in all it was close to 15 years of working over Christmas, and it just sapped any joy I could possibly take from it.
These days I work for myself so Christmas isn’t a stressful time like it used to be, and I get to actually take time off, but the trade-off is that I now don’t get paid if I take a week off to go and see my partner’s family. And I just don’t really get excited about it, because for so long it was the single most stressful part of my year.
Not a fan, annoying Christmas songs for months on end, the stress of having to think of and buy presents. Never been a fan of Sunday roasts, so I have to sit with the family and eat something I don’t like, I’m always so relieved when the day is over.
If you have a large family who all get on and want to be together at Xmas I would love it..However I don’t as my family are all dispersed and quite frankly don’t particularly like each other most of the time..the only thing I enjoy are the twinkly lights indoors but I have them on 12 mths out of the year
Boxing Day is the real deal – still a decent day off but you aren’t absolutely obliged to spend it with family and you can gorge yourself on leftovers, mince pies and gifted chocolates.
If you don’t like your family, why not spend Christmas with people you can tolerate?
I agree with all of this (especially the financial and expectation pressure of gifts) and can’t add anything except a quote about Christmas I heard from Tom Allen on some show a year or so ago. ‘I think it’s tedious, I think it’s gauche. Everyone needs to calm down and shut the fuck up.’
First one in 7 years I’m single. Absolutely dreading it. Same for new years. We normally had plans to go away. All my friends have partners and will be doing fun things, and I moved cities to be with her so don’t know anyone here so will be spending this year home alone. Of all the seasonal holidays this is by far the worst. Roll on January.
I’m not a big fan personally I find it wired to celebrate a religious holiday if you’re not religious and I really like my space.
Your body. Your life. Your ways. Do what you want.
For me, often, on that day, it’s Chinese food and no other bugger to please 🙂
I’m sociable the rest of the year. 👍
Do what you like. There’s nothing not to look forward to, that way.
This is such a UK Reddit thread.
This is the epitome of Reddit.
I don’t have any family and my partner, who does, goes to visit them up north at xmas with her kid. Historically I’ve never gone along due to work but this coming year I actually could have gone but now we have cats so I have to stay here and look after them.
I’m good with this, willingly being alone at that time is probably the most relaxing choice I can make. I remember what family xmas was like – it’s an idea, a notion, a general perfect dream which is so far removed from the reality, there’s very little fun under it all.
This sub is so fucking depressing.
A thread inviting misery one-upmanship, this should get record engagement on UK reddit.
I loathe xmas. I don’t want presents, I don’t want decorations, I don’t want cards – I feel all of that shit is so utterly false. What is the actual point of it? I can understand celebrating the new year – a new start, a chance to wipe the slate clean from a known and generally accepted starting point – that makes sense (even though that starting point is just an arbitrary point itself). But xmas is just a commercial shit-show that is centered around something that is almost certainly not even true and even if it it is true almost certainly didn’t happen at this time of year and is a hodge podge of many other older traditions from different backgrounds all forced together like some very badly constructed and poisonous meal. And ‘peace on earth / goodwill to all men’? That is the biggest joke of it all.
I wish Christmas was optional like every other festival in the Western calendar. If you say no to New Year’s or Easter. No cares but if you say no to Christmas you are scum
Christmas is just a standard Sunday but with pressure to enjoy it
I lost my mum in March, and I’m still really struggling.
I don’t have any siblings or other family apart from my Dad.
My partner is spending Christmas with his family, to which I was invited, but I can’t stomach the idea of a big family Christmas with everyone being happy.
So I’m having Christmas with just my dad, who is lovely, but I know it’ll be very difficult without mum there.
My family and I aren’t on good terms. We have been NC since January. This will be my first Christmas without family so it will be a very different one for me. I also had a miscarriage and my husband and I were supposed to be celebrating our own family with a baby this Christmas.
So overall, there’s not a huge amount of real life joy to be had at the moment. Having said that, I do enjoy the festivities of the month. Decorating the house and baking treats gives me a cozy warm feeling inside. So I guess I’ll be doing a lot of baking this December!!