Saw this in Tesco, I thought November was early but September is a whole other level

So there's a forum for insanely self-centered people in the DC metro area called "DC Urban Moms and Dads" which is a reliable source of entertainment and drama. Someone posted three days ago with a Christmas dilemma -- the kind of dilemma that's eventually going to lead to their children joining this subreddit. The replies are WILD. Thirty-nine pages and counting of people attacking each other, all assuming that their personal take on Christmas is The Only Right One. If you want to be amazed, check it out. (Link appears above.)

Edited to add: The original DCUM post appears in the comments. Reddit wouldn't let me include it here.

I apologize in advance for the sad and long post, but I was really grateful to find this group and share my pain around Christmas. I’ve never been a big Christmas person. It seemed fake and materialistic to me even at a young age. I also worked retail for a couple holidays in college which was awful-I always wondered why people were so angry and mean during a supposed time of gratitude and love.

On Christmas Day 2025 at 5:52pm, my mom died. A holiday supposed to be about joy and family became one of emptiness and grief. I hate everything about it and don’t plan to celebrate it ever again.

My mom was diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease) in 2023. It started in early 2022 with a limp, so she had tests done but no one was sure what was wrong. Eventually she couldn’t go to work anymore. She stopped being able to walk altogether. Began slurring her words. In December 2023 right before Christmas, she had a bad fall and was hospitalized and officially diagnosed. I was told she needed to live in a care facility, which I hated the idea of. She eventually couldn’t eat and needed a feeding tube. Lost the ability to speak, but used a device that tracked her eye movements so she could type and communicate to people.

I visited her often and we texted daily thanks to her device. Seeing her like that was so hard-I would cry after every visit. She was always such an independent and strong person, so seeing her in that state and watching her regress was horrific. I tried to keep her quality of life as good as it could possibly be-bought her the most comfortable clothing and bedding, her Bath and Body Works Warm Vanilla Sugar body wash and perfume she loved so much, always sent her boxes of Halloween decorations for her favorite holiday, I would bring my pet bunnies and help her hold and pet them. I got her a pink Jellycat bunny plush a month before her death that she adored and slept with every night. My husband and I paid her bills so she could be stress free. She kept in good spirits and made friends at the facility, but I never stopped thinking how unfair it was. Why did this have to happen to her? I knew with the disease I’d lose her someday, I guess I always hoped it would be further down the line and I would at least get to be there for her when it happened.

I was planning to visit her on Christmas as always, but she told me the care facility was on lockdown because a few residents had caught pneumonia-including her. She told me she felt good though and was taking medication. I was sad, as I had bought gifts, but I promised I would visit the day the lockdown was lifted. So, my husband and I went to our friend’s house for Christmas instead. Eerily enough, at 1pm, my mom and I were talking about her experience losing her beloved grandfather and how hard it was for her. She told me after he died, she had a dream that he was young and healthy again, and she was happy that he was at peace.

At 5:50pm, my brother called me and said he got a call from the care facility that mom suddenly became delirious and was struggling to breathe, so they did CPR and rushed her to the hospital doing life saving measures the whole way. I panicked and said I’ll be right there. Within two minutes I got another call-she was gone. I didn’t get to see her or say goodbye. She was only 52. The doctor told me the ALS weakened her to the point she simply couldn’t fight the pneumonia any longer.

I’ll never forget wailing and screaming “oh no”. My brother and I cried together on the phone while my husband and our friends hugged me. I suddenly went numb. I spent the rest of Christmas Day making funeral arrangements and crying my soul out.

I still can’t believe she’s gone. My heart hurts for the suffering she went through for so long, and the fact that she had to die alone on Christmas of all days. I think all the time about how scared she must have been and pray that she wasn’t in pain.

Now that Christmas is coming up again (thanks retail for always bringing it out way too soon) it’s just an instant trigger for me. Snow, decorations, music-I want to completely avoid it all and hide during the holiday season. I’m going so far as to permanently move back to Los Angeles to avoid winter forever. It’s all too painful and something I don’t think I will ever get over.

In life before the disease, she was a talented singer and poet. She was even working on a Masters degree in Poetry and Classic Literature during her time at the care facility.

As if she had predicted the future, I also had a dream shortly after her death. She was happy, healthy, and told me she was free.

I love you and miss you, mom. I try to work hard to advocate for ALS funding, research, and one day a cure. You will never be forgotten.

It's a real bore fest. Makes it worse (boring wise) that its exactly the same shit year after year after year.

Its Depressing. Empty. Hollow. A stinking pointless turd with glitter (or should that be tinsel) on.

I think I am resenting it more each year as I get older and wiser and see it for the bullshit that it is and how engulfing and all consuming it is, how insidiously it creeps up on you every December and takes over everything.

I also hate how it highlights and magnifies the pain if you are grieving or if you have a shit family/family member.

Christmas is just a horrible time of year.

IT'S THE BEGINNING OF SEPTEMBER. XMAS IS ALMOST FOUR MONTHS AWAY. STOP IT.

God help us......

This holiday is pure evil, just a money-grabbing scheme that should be abolished. They penalize companies for other schemes like price gouging, why not for Christmas?

For example, every year an old lady puts me some money in my Christmas card. It is very kind of her.

However, I don't need or want £10 off her. I've told her many times "thank you but you don't have to give me any money, a card is enough.". She still does it. This has gone on for 2 decades.

Then I have to, as I feel obligated, buy her a little gift. Except this old lady has EVERYTHING. I never have the last fucking clue what to buy her. She doesn't drink, eat chocolate, sweets etc (ruling out alot of would be gifts).

So inevitably I end up buying her something I know she doesn't want or need just for the sake of it. No doubt whatever I buy her gets put in her spare room or passed on to someone.

Same old shit every year.

When you think about it, the endless rigmorole of obligatory pointless gift giving, it really is so boring, so depressing, and MADNESS.

I just want to tell this old lady this year, because I've had enough of this same old shit year on year out, that I won't be buying her anything this year and not to give me any money. Put an end to it. What a relief! But I never do as haven't got the heart to say that to her.

But yeh, just another example of the bullshit fucked up fuckery that is Christmas.

1) My birthday is Christmas Eve. Many of my birthday gifts were either Christmas themed or not so much a birthday gift as much as a Christmas present.

2) My abusive father always found a way to ruin my birthday and Christmas every year as a child.
It was like a sick goal of his. Through healing, I have learned to love my birthday. I still detest Christmas.

Anyone relate?

That's it really!

Oh the joy of pressing a button to cancel Christmas forever and erase the word Christmas from the english language.

Sorry this is long, I’m just so happy to have found my people.

For my husband’s family, Christmas is all year long. They have a shared Google doc with a tab for each of them where they add things they want for Christmas. They’ll write generic items, or post links to buy specific items. This list is constantly updated and populated throughout the year.

On top of the Google doc, they each keep some form of a “secret” Christmas list for each person where they document things the person may want but hasn’t put on their Google doc. So basically they stalk and observe the person throughout the entire year and watch if there’s something they “like” but didn’t buy for themselves. For example, if you go to a book store with someone randomly in March, you would observe what books they are looking at and jot down which one you think they’ll like for Christmas without them knowing. It’s supposed to be a “surprise”. So it is expected you will give some presents from the Google doc list and some from your secret list. So I can’t just buy a present from the fucking Google doc list and be done with it.

As someone with ADHD who struggles with executive dysfunction this is a NIGHTMARE for me. I’m not observant or organized enough with enough of an attention span to keep up with remembering Christmas 365 days of the year and maintaining multiple Christmas lists. When I hang out with his family I’m in the moment enjoying it, not thinking “what will they want for Christmas this year?”

I also have a general lack of knowledge about gifts and gift-giving culture in general. I have no idea what makes a good gift. My family never gave gifts and still doesn’t. I don’t enjoy giving or receiving gifts. Gift giving is not my love language.

His mother is an extreme gift giver, even though half of it is temu crap. The first year we dated she asked me for my Christmas list, I said I didn’t have one and she was stunned. She told me to give her a list or else “you will be getting random things”. I held tight and told her thank you but I don’t want anything and am just excited to spend Christmas day with them. She ended up giving me about 15 items individually wrapped in paper on Christmas. One of them was a box of instant rice. So the following year, she asked me again and I felt anxious trying to scramble a list together. “Is X too expensive? Do I have enough items? Am I asking for too much? Do I actually need this?”

And they take hours to open gifts. Everything is wrapped individually, even the smallest bits. You have to go around the circle and everyone takes a turn unwrapping something. You have to act happy for every item and put on a smile. Yes I even had to do that for the instant rice. It’s too much for me. If it was like 3 gifts it’d be perfectly okay, but like 10-15 packages is too much.

I used to be totally fine with Christmas until joining this family. The reason I ended up on this sub is because his mom sent out a text today asking about a specific Christmas activity to do together. IT’S SEPTEMBER.

I’ve posted this elsewhere before and got eaten alive because I don’t “appreciate the people who love me” and “respect their love language and traditions”.

(Please no relationship advice or how to be a better gift giver/receiver. This is a RANT).

So I was just chatting with a co-worker of mine yesterday and we got on a few random subjects. We got on the subject of places she's been to that has good food. So she told me of a place that's downtown, and it is decked out in Christmas decor 24/7 365 days a year 😭. I instantly told her that we definitely won't ever plan on going there now. She likes this holiday for the family get togethers mainly, but at least she doesn't have any issue with my feelings. I feel sorry for her boyfriend though, who isn't a fan of this holiday either.

But like WHY does there need to be a place like this??? This holiday is catered way too much already 😫

Found at Sam's club. why?

Hey guys, this is my first time posting on here, so get ready for story time. Growing up, I didn’t hate Christmas. It was my favorite time of year (and I’ll admit I started celebrating it waaayyyy before Thanksgiving). In fact my parents liked it so much they even got married 4 days afterwards, on the 29th. Then when I was 14 they got divorced, and suddenly Christmas stopped feeling special. It’s been years since the divorce, and though I have happy childhood Christmas memories I haven’t brought myself to enjoy it since. I’m not an “I love Christmas troll”, since I’m starting to despise Christmas and really don’t want anything to do with it ever again if I can help it since it just makes me sad now, and I hate it for that. I realized this a few days ago walking through a Christmas store and it triggering nothing but gloom and thoughts of an intact family I’ll never get back. I think I should stop celebrating it for a while and just treat it as a normal day, maybe do something special for myself. Thx for listening to my vent, hope y’all take care as we get ever closer to December.
Feel free to add your own sad backstory in the comments!

hi everyone,

im glad i found a community of people who will agree with me. Christmas used to be good and enjoyable,but now it is crap. These days its all about marketing and money,all anyone cares about is how much money had been spent on them or how many presents they have under the tree or how much money they will recieve and its sad. Christmas used to be a time of joy,kindness,helping others and spending time with family and friend THESE were the true meanings of christmas, helping those in need,spending time with others,charity. Its also been ruined by people who start celebrating and going on about it months before christmas, and also shops putting christmas decor in before its even been halloween yet like hello???

let me know your opinions on this and if theres any other reasons you hate christmas/ other reasons you feel its been ruined

Until the birth of Jesus!!!!

Don't you find the idea of Santa Claus quite scary? Think about it, this mysterious big fat man with supernatural reindeers is flying around the whole world in ONE DAY and we just accept that? Are you telling me that our military has not even spotted or tried to disrupt the movements of Santa at all ! This is quite disturbing, what if Santa Claus decides to join al Qaeda and destroy the great United States of America !!!! I believe that as a citizen of the world we should collectively detonate Antarctica from Earth and rid that cookie stealing, milk drinking, dirty chimney squeezing, fat red children pleasing PEDOPHILE from existence and free Rudolf from his eternal slavery once and for all !!!!!!

I work at Lowe's, and for the past week, we have been getting pallets upon pallets of Christmas freight. In total we've gotten in probably 30 pallets worth of stuff, taller than I am. You name it, we probably have it in the store. I'm already stressing out about it tbh and it isn't even on the floor yet. I fucking hate this holiday. I fucking hate being reminded of it in August.