Christmas already?
One of our neighbours has had Christmas decorations up at the front of their house since the 7th of November, and we counted 6 houses with decorations up over a 5mile journey on Sunday afternoon. Probably most of them will be taken down by Boxing Day.
What happened to the 12 days of Christmas?
What happened to the 12 days of Christmas?
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Or indeed Advent.
No decorated houses hereabouts, but the TV ads are coming thick and fast - whimsical fairytales featuring soulful moppets made inexplicably happy by some meretricious tat, or vast multiracial, multigenerational families round tables improbably laden with the groceries of supermarket X.
Yes - I saw it the other evening.
Thanks! This sort of Tosh is so ineffably Silly that it's extremely entertaining...
Lots of Yuletide goodies in the supermarkets, though, now that Pumpkintide is over.
However, nowadays I don't mind the Winterfest nonsense at all, as the shop staff (especially the Tesco people) seem to enjoy themselves so much - and this enjoyment passes onto us longsuffering customers...
NO Christmas decorations go up before Thanksgiving (U.S.); the day after is fine--go hog wild--but not before.
Christmas decorations MUST stay up until at least January 6. They can stay up longer than that, if desired, but they (including the tree) must not come down prior to January 6.
The tree must be real, not artificial.
The tree itself is not decorated until Christmas Eve. Santa decorates it. No matter whose hands you see putting on ornaments. Santa is a master of misdirection that way.
And, frankly, that is just scratching the surface of the Christmas Rules but experience has taught me that most people have tuned out by now, so I will stop there....
Why (oh why) is this thread not in Hell?
However, seeing a certain extrovert Tesco lass dressed overall as a Christmas Tree - complete with baubles! - is worth the effort of tottering round the store...
Alas, for logistical reasons which I won't bore you with, that's not feasible here, at least for food shopping.
Also, at the risk of being targeted as a heretic, I'll share that my position on when it's OK to sing and hear (real) Christmas carols/songs/hymns has completely changed over the past decade. So often we bemoan the fact that people don't seem to want to know Christ. Then, when they want to sing about Jesus' birth, we tell them they're doing it WRONG because they started before late evening of December 24th. I've come to the conclusion that if people want to sing the meaning of Christmas before the Proper Season has begun, who am I to deny that public evangelical opportunity?
And, as a complete aside, since my family has historically celebrated all the Santa-stuff on St. Nicholas day, I'm perfectly happy to hear the Santa songs in late November and early December!
I love the lights, the trees and the decorations. I just don't like putting them up.
Yes, this.
I've shifted on this.
I've always loved Christmas and
I still personally prefer to observe Advent, gradually building the outward signs of approaching Christmas.
But life is really tough for so many people atm that anything Christmas related that might bring them joy is just fine by me.
Or taking them down and then hoovering up the pine needles.
For months afterwards
I realised years ago that I didn't enjoy having the decorations up enough to make up for being the only one doing the whole thing, from getting them out of the loft to putting them back up there.
Mr RoS doesn't participate, as to him one day is much the same as another. We go to Elder Son & family for Christmas Day, and Younger Son & family visit us in the week following Christmas. There's no-one here but us two in the meantime.
Sorry to have duplicated!
I tended to turn on the Advent music, and Chrismas as well well before it approached, heretick I am. But for some reason I've been listening to such hymns throughout the year.
Do any have particular books they read at this time? Probably of interest to little or no-one, but an Orthodox seminary is putting out daily reflections in the lead-up to Christmas. In case it is does appeal: https://www.svots.edu/daily-nativity-meditations
I love this
We've had a variety of rules re: presents and our own kids that have evolved as they've grown. Lately, as they're now young adults, it's been "stockings before breakfast (which includes a number of special items), and presents afterwards."
You could leave them in your email inbox and read them 13 days later.
The one present we were allowed to open was always new pajamas, which we’d then wear to bed. We followed suit with our kids; when they were young, it was always my mother that gave them the new pajamas. I love that at 27 and 24, they still look forward to new pajamas on Christmas Eve.
If I may be indulged to tell one story that I think I’ve shared here before:
My father died in 2002. My mother died in February of 2009, so Christmas 2009 was my first Christmas without my parents. My son was 12 that Christmas. The day before Christmas, he got very insistent that my wife take him shopping. I could piece together that he’d had an idea about what he wanted to get me for Christmas, and that’s what he wanted to go shopping for. At church on Christmas Eve (5:00 service), he could barely contain himself—more-so than usual—and he asked two or three times when we’d be home and when would we open pajamas.
We got home and ate supper while he tried to hold it together. After supper, we went into the living room so he and his sister could open their pajamas. He handed me his present and said he wanted me to go ahead and open it.
As you’ve probably guessed, he’d gotten me pajamas. When I opened them, he said “I thought since this was your first Christmas without Gran, you might like to get pajamas.”
And the kicker was that he’d gotten me the same pajamas I’d gotten him—Super Mario Bros. My wife didn’t even know that when she went shopping with him. I still have those pajamas.
Actual Christmas presents, from real friends & family, were opened ceremoniously after lunch.
Love that story, and oddly enough, we've given our kids pajamas every year for Christmas, too, the only difference being that we give them at the beginning of December, and don't wait until Christmas proper. The only problem is that since they've largely stopped growing, they're acquiring quite a full collection of Holiday PJs! They both still love the tradition, though, and that's not nothing.
My kids would always get a roll on Christmas soap from Avon in their stockings and even though they rarely used them, it wasn't Christmas without them. Once the Avon lady at my work stopped calling, I'd sneak into the bathroom and re-use the old unused soaps, just so they had one, and they seemed to enjoy that I did that even when they were teenagers.
Our schools finish for the long summer holiday about a week before Christmas and don't return until the end of Jan, early Feb, depending on where you live. Mum's rule was we had to wait for the holidays to start before our tree (plastic) was allowed to go up. In the 70's in our remote town, I don't think we could buy live trees and they certainly weren't native to our area. So plastic it was and I still have some of Mum's decorations, though I don't really use them.
We lived quite far from friends and family (500km), and so we would look forward to cards arriving, presents in the post and of course going with Mum to send our gifts and cards to friends and family down south. Mum had one particular friend from schooldays with whom we exchanged gifts, we were allowed to open the gift from Auntie M on Christmas Eve and then off to bed. The most exciting thing in our pillowcases were the Christmas annuals - Jinty, Tammy, Misty and the June Book. I think that we would have been happy with nothing else, to be honest. They made Christmas for us and we were very sad when they came to their end and to be honest if they were available now, I' buy them.
We generally leave our tree up till 12th night and then take it down. We are not always successful though and I think one year it was Easter before we had time to take it down and I decided not to beat myself up about it too much.