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Azz
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05-12-2015, 05:56 PM

Christmas

Solo's thread inspired this thread... Are you a Christmassy person? Do you go to/have a big gathering? Spend it alone? Think it's over-commercialised? Or...?
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Trouble
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05-12-2015, 06:05 PM
I've always thought it a huge anti climax even as a kid tbh. We've always kept Christmas day to family only and still do the family is just smaller. Last year it was just me and my son, his GF has to go to her mums, her mum insists. This year will be the same, I quite like my own company, have never felt lonely in my life, I'm very good company lol and there is nothing better than pleasing yourself.
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Azz
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05-12-2015, 06:16 PM
Originally Posted by Trouble View Post
I quite like my own company, have never felt lonely in my life, I'm very good company lol and there is nothing better than pleasing yourself.
Me too
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Chris
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05-12-2015, 06:23 PM
I love the run up to Christmas more than the actual day. To see our streets and houses lit up on dull and dreary winter days is lovely and far more cheerful that the drab nights without them.

I used to love Christmas day with eleven or twelve coming for dinner, but these days it is just me, hubby and oldest lad. It's very quiet compared to our past Christmases, but we make the most of it.
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Lynn
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05-12-2015, 06:29 PM
I fnd Christmas not so exciting anymore no small children not even Grandchildren small now. Hopefully eldest son and family will be able to get over for christmas this year if work permits but if not youngest will manage a few days so quite possibly a quiet one again this year.
Christmas is not so magical anymore now the children have all grown up.
This will be the first Christmas without mum too this year and although she was not able to visit last year or the year before we did use to pop and see her.
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Sue L
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05-12-2015, 07:40 PM
No not anymore. I think when you have young children you pick up on their excitement. I don't put decorations up until I feel I have to and then they are down as soon as possible. I used to cook for 8 people every year but now it is usually just the two of us and my eldest son. Sister in law came for the first time last year and has been invited again this year but that is on hold at the moment. My sister always spends Christmas with friends and comes for New Year.
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gordon mac
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06-12-2015, 12:00 AM
Bah! Humbug! Don't get me started on Christmas. There were some clowns collecting outside a local supermarket for donations to a Food Bank, they'd be re-opening the Workhouse if I had my way. The state gives them just about everything and then they need a food top up from the hard working, because, they have spent all their money on alcohol at £3 a pint, Cigarettes at around £10 for a pack, 60 inch TVs, video games and drugs.
So you can imagine what I said to them when they accosted me.
I spend Christmas with my wife, quite quietly and with no great show. Gifts are exchanged between ourselves, with some little things for the animals.
I also make some contributions to Animal Charities to try and help the creatures that really cannot help themselves.
Bet you're sorry you asked - Merry Christmas.
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Azz
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06-12-2015, 12:03 AM
Originally Posted by gordon mac View Post
Bet you're sorry you asked - Merry Christmas.
Lol

I don't think that's true for everyone mind GM, there are many people who genuinely need food banks. It's shameful really, that in this day and age people in wealthy, 'civilised' countries are still living in poverty.
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gordon mac
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06-12-2015, 12:49 AM
Azz - Whenever I hear the phrase "living below the poverty line" I cringe.
It depends what you consider to be poverty. We have a pretty darn good welfare state and we are a "civilised" country who generally don't do a bad job of looking after the needy. If this were not the case - why are so many immigrants risking life and limb - on a daily basis to try and get into our little islands. They know that what we consider "poverty" is quite often to them a life of luxury by comparison to their idea of the norm.
The trouble begins with the instant gratification expectation that is now inbred in our society. "We want it all and we want it now!" I was born at the end of the war and was brought up on rationing etc. Peoples expectations then were much lower then and have now spiralled way past any reasonable target. I am all for personal betterment, social mobility et al, but folk can't just be handed it on a plate, they have to go out and graft for it like so many others have done before them. Just realised that by throwing in my two pennorth (as we say up north) I have gone a bit off thread (for which I apologise) but was just responding to your latest post.
As you will have probably realised if you have read many of my posts over the last couple of years - I am just to the right of Attila the Hun - whereas I take it that you are of a lefter leaning persuasion, so we are never really going to agree on this. Bye fer now. G.
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Strangechilde
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06-12-2015, 05:18 AM
Ah, Christmas. The hollity, the jollity, the skippy skippy doo. The lights, the songs, the gift-giving, the wondrical, magicous, fansplendapular spirity-wirity-widdly-poo.

Spare me. Please, no, honestly, just do. Either that or be merciful and suffocate me with the elf ears already. I used to not mind Christmas, not really. I've never celebrated it, not even as a child; my family belonged to some crazy religious cult that held all things joyful to belong to some wonderland you only get if a certain number of changeable and arbitrary criteria are met, so I have no sentimental attachment to it, but I don't mind if other people do. Good for them! Really, truly, good for them-- if it's magical and wonderful and uplifting and awesome, that's excellent, and being excellent to each other, surely one of the best moral prescriptions around, involves welcoming and rejoicing in excellence that befalls others, right? Right? Even if I don't want any sodding part of it, right? I can do that, right?

Oh no. No, no no no no, sorry old bean, oh ha, you thought that was a thing, you poor dear. I used to not mind it, but now I hate Christmas with a passion, and that's a shame, because there is a lot to like about it. The Christmas mass is beautiful, for a start. Some of the songs are even good. But come on. There is a point-- it comes earlier and earlier every year, now it seems to happen before the leaves even start to hint that they might be a little less green than they were, that people seem to forget how to use a calendar and all of a sudden it's ***Is it Christmas? OH MY EVER SQUINGING PIE OF GLORY YES!!! YES!!! YES IT IS CHRISTMAS!!!!!!!!!!!*** when the answer is actually, no, it's OCTOBER, it hasn't even been Halloween yet, for the love of anything, anything at all, will you people stop putting lights up and guzzling disgusting liqueurs made of mostly milk and something even more appalling and just let me put this pumpkin on my head, allright? NO DO NOT SPICE IT AND PUT IT IN COFFEE IT IS GOING ON MY HEAD AND THEN I AM GOING TO EAT IT. Sheesh. It's a squash. It's food, okay? Okay.

Seriously though... it does come earlier and earlier, which is annoying in itself, but then when the actual day arrives everyone is thoroughly sick of it. What's magical about fairy lights when they've been up for three months and half of them are dead already, the ornaments painstakingly handmade out of dough are turned to black mouldy sludge, the cat has ingested and barfed up way more tinsel than you ever put out, someone has sabotaged every copy of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer they can find (thank you, whoever you are) and everyone is about to collapse from shopping-induced stress and diabetic coma, even if they're not diabetic, and the only people remotely excited are toddlers who aren't going to come down from their sugar high until June and you can time three hours after dawn by the screaming, because that's how long it took them to open their presents, and the screaming begins when they find out that they only got seven hundred and eighty two gifts and none of them are the only thing they wanted (which was everything).

But that's not the worst part. The worst part is having it rammed down your throat, day in and day out, and people going out of their way to point out for you that you you are a miserable excuse for toxic pond scum for not participating. If you say you don't celebrate Hanukkah because you aren't Jewish, that's fine, but mention that you don't celebrate Christmas and people look at you like you just told them that you eat babies with puppy sauce for Satanbash. It's not just for Christians, it's for everybody! they say, stabbing you through the ear with a light-up bauble while secretly replacing everything in the shop you want to buy with egg nog and sausages wrapped in what may as well be baby in puppy sauce for all I know what it is. Join in the festive spirit! Don't be a Scroogy McPolPotPants! Jingle those bells! I said jingle 'em!

How about... not? Usually it's actively encouraged to respect the traditions of others, and I do, honestly, not mind people going all out on their own Christmas. Light up everything! Give strangers ugly socks! Set puddings on fire! Do whatever it is that floats your boat in your... my goodness, what are you drinking... no, make that why are you... never mind. Have fun, be happy, and please trust that little treeless, presentless, puddingless people can be happy too.

But please, please, please, no more Rudolph. I'm about to have a psychotic episode over here.

Merry Christmas!
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