How are your Christmas experiences?

Lots of work and then lots of fun. now my kids help me cook so all good there. I hate shopping. What about you?

As a child they were horrible. As a young adult I ignored Christmas as best I could. For 15 years it was magical. Now I’m back to ignoring Christmas.

I miss the christmasses of the past….... when I was younger. When the magic was there, and Santa was real, angels really did sing, aahhhh the memories….lol
I love making Christmas a special time for my grand-kids now.
(and Santa Still exists in our house at this time of year)
I think our perception of Christmas changes as we go through lifes journey, Maybe when we are older and greyer the magic will come back?

We are on a holiday decline due to dwindling family size and the absence of small children. This year is a very small gathering, very small indeed.

My childhood dreadful. I dreaded it and was glad it was all over and could go back to school.
My adulthood with my younglings MAGICAL i finally learnt how Christmas was truly to be i learnt to enjoy it through the eyes of my younglings.
And now i get all the magic again with my Grandyounglings
True bliss wrapped in ribbons and sprinkled with Elf dust :)

My christmases have been pretty boozy for as far as I can remember, and usually relatively painless.

xx

I married a woman who had four kids. The first Christmas that we were all together was a stressful time of shopping, wrapping, and staying up until 3am putting together a bike and a couple of other things that were not cooperating.

On Christmas Day, when I called my dad, I apologized for all those years that I was unappreciative of what he and my mom had gone through for many years.

Honestly…straight up…even at my age Christmas is this great escape from reality where you get to create your own reality for just one day! Granted it takes a lot of work but it is full of twinkling lights, red ribbons, snow if you live by me or northwards…great food,,,,drink and be merry…Bing Crosby singing White Christmas…Presents…..I mean how cool is that!!!

Don’t you dare ask me about the day before or after!!! LOL!

When my husband and I are on our own, like we will be this year, they are lovely quiet days full of simple pleasures.

Although my mother-in-law did put a damper on things for me by sending the Christmas card addressed only to her son, and the greeting on the inside was only to him. 26 years, and I don’t even rate a mention!

As a child Christmas Day I was bored. I do not celebrate Christmas and everything was closed and my friends were with their families. Now, the Christmas season was nice. I went to the Nutcracker at Lincoln Center every year, and sometimes we would go to Christmas parties and trim trees, etc. Also, I was not too happy that we could not have a Christmas Tree.

As I got older, teen years, and dated someone who was Catholic and had a very big family, Christmas with his family at first was very overwhelming fo rme. Having to buy people gifts who I did not know very well, and accepting gifts, it was all very strange the first couple of years.

I worked in retail for years and really liked the Christmas decorations in the store, and the overall feeling, but I was exhausted. Working 6 days a week for the weeks leading up to Christmas, and they were long days took a toll.

Now, we sometimes go to my husband’s parents for Christmas. We just have dinner Christmas Eve and open presents. This year we are going to Vegas.

Christmas was amazing. Like most people being a kid during Christmas was amazing. Those hours laying awake on Christmas eve trying so hard to sleep but couldn’t from all the excitement. Waking up the next day running up to the Christmas tree getting all my presents. It was fantastic. Probably made me a little bit greedy. Well only as a kid. But in general I think it had a good effect on me. Even when I didn’t believe in Santa Christmas was good. I still got presents and stuff from my parents. I always look forward to Christmas dinner too. Oh god I love it. Its actually being cooked at the moment getting it all ready for tomorrow afternoon. Smells great. I was out shopping the last few days with my girlfriend and it was great fun. I think I’ve generally always had good experiences of Christmas. How did that effect me? I think it made me happy and feeling pretty darn good. I guess I could go into the whole spirit of giving talk and all that but I won’t because its incredibly boring to hear.

I think it would be more fun if celebrated on New Years Eve.

For the first 25 years and MORE of my life ; Christmas was THE day of the year for me… my mother saw to it….

No matter how poor or wealthy we were ; she always mad ecertain that we had our Christmas .

Then; I had a few friends and that made Christmas even more special….. and we’d celebrate together at various locations etc… have wonderful times….

With the passing of my other five years ago and my two best friends in the last couple of years… Christmas has very little for me to enjoy anymore…

I’ll do my part at the Children’s home and Homeless Shelter ; then come home and watch movies… not much else to do anymore or NO ONE to do them with .

This is the first year I’m ‘celebrating’ Christmas – in that I’m here with my in-laws and they actually celebrate it and I’m just sort of hanging around and making sure the kids don’t knock the tree over – we’re also going to Church today so that’s going to be interesting and something to explain to the kids about

It is a peanuckle sour krout and toadstool sandwhich, with arsenic sauce.

loving it but tired… very much like life in general

I’ll have a blue, christmas without you…

I loved it when I was a kid, for obvious reasons. I’m also very lucky that my family, while mostly Catholic, does not really spend too much time on religious stuff, so that unfortunate aspect of the holiday didn’t mess anything up for me.

Now that I’m older, however, I find that it’s just annoying. For the last two years, I’ve felt depressed during this time of year, and I couldn’t figure out why. I know now that it’s because I’m sort of allergic to commercialism, and I’m even more allergic to insincerity, and that’s pretty much what Christmas is; commercialism wrapped in insincerity. It makes me sick, and I would like to not be a part of it. I should move to Canada or something. My parents would probably disown me if I did that, then I’d never have to be a part of Christmas again . . .

Full of tension and awkward silences, as it is any time my family gets together.

I have had 65 Christmas’s so far, and every one of them has a story of its own. There’s the year I almost died from a botched operation (age 12) and the year I didn’t get any presents because I told my Dad ”All I want is a horse and nothing else!” So he taught me a lesson. I got a lot of extra presents for my birthday four weeks later. There’s the year I celebrated Christmas with my brand new son (twice, actually). A couple of really bad years, and mostly a lot of good years.

Christmas used to be so much fun when I was younger and when my parents were still together. They’ve been seperated for about a year or two but this is the first Christmas my dad isn’t even coming home. My mom stopped buying real Christmas trees 6 or 7 years ago when I was still in high school and this year, she didn’t even want the fake one up. This is probably the most depressing christmas I’ve ever had. I hope it will be better when I start my family oneday. :/

Festive and fun, but not without a slight degree of anxiety (that’s my own issue). I come from a large Italian family and they can get pretty gregarious at times.

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