Christmas!

How does anyone cope with Christmas and New Year social expectations?  Although I have very few friends, there's the obligation to buy presents which seems to have become swapping boxes of chocolates, chocolate biscuits or bottles of something.  Not forgetting the 'unwanted/unneeded' gifts.  Christmas cards to people you don't 'know'.

Fortunately (or not) we don't have any extended family who we feel obliged to invite for Christmas dinner - just as well as cooking is just not my thing!!

Now, I face a dilemma - hubs is a social animal which goes against the grain of us AuDHD'ers.  Another, sort of, fortunate thing is that we have a 'holiday lodge' on an Isle of Wight holiday park, so we leg it down there.  Yes, parties, but somehow the 'friends' we have down there are few and far between, plus they're not neighbours and seldom see them, so when I make a complete idiot of myself it's not as bad as being at home.  I cope by having too many bevvies and spending all my time on the dance floor.  I know they think I'm crazy down there, so being crazy and old kinda lets me get away with it - well that's what I keep trying to tell myself!

What do you do?

XX

Parents
  • Having worked in supermarkets for 30 years myself, the silly season really starts right after Halloween, where it’s full-on Christmas, having been planned as early as early August and it moves up a gear in September towards October, where even booking flights, coaches, trains and ferries starts to get more problematic and both the fares and prices of everything starts going up to silly levels - our busiest part of the Christmas Season is usually the week before Christmas Eve in our normally very busy store, where Christmas Eve itself starts out being very busy from 6am - 11am, starts to get busy again after 3pm and gets super busy until 4.30 pm as we move towards a 5pm closing time (we are still tidying the store behind closed doors until 7pm on Christmas Eve) during the “behind closed doors” the seasonal aisle starts stocking Easter eggs on Christmas Eve - but also, among the many silly things we see on Christmas week and Christmas Eve, people spend a lot of money on full baskets full of drink, up to £1,000 a time one year for a big corporate do in 2 huge trollies full of drink, including lots of expensive champagne and spirits, wines and as well as beers - it was a similar story when I started working in a new-build hotel for just over a year after my diagnosis, but they seemed to have wound down a lot and stopped taking bookings the week before Christmas a year after opening (post-Covid) as the hotel was not open on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, even the hotel’s bar or restaurant 

Reply
  • Having worked in supermarkets for 30 years myself, the silly season really starts right after Halloween, where it’s full-on Christmas, having been planned as early as early August and it moves up a gear in September towards October, where even booking flights, coaches, trains and ferries starts to get more problematic and both the fares and prices of everything starts going up to silly levels - our busiest part of the Christmas Season is usually the week before Christmas Eve in our normally very busy store, where Christmas Eve itself starts out being very busy from 6am - 11am, starts to get busy again after 3pm and gets super busy until 4.30 pm as we move towards a 5pm closing time (we are still tidying the store behind closed doors until 7pm on Christmas Eve) during the “behind closed doors” the seasonal aisle starts stocking Easter eggs on Christmas Eve - but also, among the many silly things we see on Christmas week and Christmas Eve, people spend a lot of money on full baskets full of drink, up to £1,000 a time one year for a big corporate do in 2 huge trollies full of drink, including lots of expensive champagne and spirits, wines and as well as beers - it was a similar story when I started working in a new-build hotel for just over a year after my diagnosis, but they seemed to have wound down a lot and stopped taking bookings the week before Christmas a year after opening (post-Covid) as the hotel was not open on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, even the hotel’s bar or restaurant 

Children
No Data