From awkward family phone calls to gagging festive dinners on TikTok, this is how The Cringe stole your Christmas
There are two sides to the Christmas coin. On the one hand it is cozy and sentimental; families gather for dinner and exchange of gifts. On the other hand, there are arguments between brothers and sisters, ungrateful childrenmiserable dark weather and, perhaps worst of all, Christmas fever.
Maybe it’s the mistletoe tradition, the paper hats and cracker jokes, or an awkward Christmas Eve pub reunion with someone you only see once a year.
Before all that fun, we asked the team at The i Paper what gives them the kick during the festive period.
Photos from the dinner
Christmas dinners are inherently horrible. It’s not the job of a Christmas dinner to be pretty. Actually, it has nothing to do with being beautiful.
There’s nothing aesthetically pleasing about a sweaty sausage wrapped in a grease-soaked slice of bacon, nor about a blob of dried-out-looking stuffing. The worst culprit is gravy, which makes everything both brown (horrible) and soggy (disgusting).
Yet every year my Instagram feed is bathed in shiny brown goo. This must end. Your Christmas dinner deserves to be better taken care of. Enjoy it in peace.
Claire Hubble, Head of Audience
Christmas ads
Another year, another Christmas ad featuring a multi-generational family laughing and clinking glasses around a table during Christmas dinner. With each year that passes, I become more frustrated with these ads because they are completely out of step with real people’s experience of the season.
Whether it’s right or wrong, Christmas is a time of significant stress for many people. Standing room only on an oversubscribed train with insufficient luggage space (assuming it even shows up), grimacing as family members grill you about your personal life/appearance/relationship, being forced to spend 24/7 with other people (hell), money worries, no control over the remote control and sleepless nights at a guest campsite: these are the hallmarks of a Christmas in the 21st century.
Social media excels at making people feel like their lives aren’t good enough – we don’t need Morrisons either. Forget cozying up on the sofa: I want shouting arguments and sulking teenagers in the next John Lewis advert.
Joanna Witkop, iWeekend sub-editor
I can’t stand the song and dance around the big box stores putting out their schmaltzy ads. Ads are something I quickly flush or use before a toilet break or making a cup of tea. Steam comes out of my ears when I think I have to look at them deliberately. I guess that makes me a Grinch, but I don’t care!
Clare Wilson, science writer
They are sentimental, maudlin and cringe. The Amazon ad wants me to take a baseball bat to the TV with its pathetic wish fulfillment. And they should be banned before December 10th.
Andrew Johnson, Assistant Editor (Politics)
Not so secret Secret Santa
I love the idea of a Secret Santa, especially when it’s full of new presents, but it never stays a secret. As soon as names are picked, people ask who you are, as if it’s not meant to be kept secret.
Even if people manage to keep their mouths shut until December 25, it all goes out with the wrapping paper. In my family we all know that my brother-in-law can’t pack, so there’s no guessing who bought the horrible mess of tape and paper.
Before you even open it, you always know.
Kia-Elise Green, junior features writer
Drinks
The frantic need to have a drink before Christmas seems so stupid to me. Why? We haven’t seen each other for the rest of the year, so why do we have to do that now?
Marianne Power, deputy editor-in-chief
Terrible abbreviations
I can’t stand it when men use ‘Christmas’ instead of Christmas!
Maya Benson, senior video producer
People who say New Year’s instead of New Year’s Eve drive me crazy.
Sarah Carson, culture editor
Ridiculous advent calendars
New advent calendars really annoy me. Whatever happened to simple chocolate varieties? Now it’s luxury gins, craft ales and craft coffee, and it’s just another splurge. What once was a fun tradition for the kids has been cynically marketed to adults to spend more money. I really love Christmas and I’m not a grinch, but they just annoy me.
Tom Burton, Writer
Awkward conversations with grandma
The Christmas Day phone calls from random relatives. When you get put on the phone to talk to me and you have NOTHING to talk about.
“What are you planning?”
“Oh, you know, as we sit here, we just ate”
Kuba Shand-Baptiste, senior writer
The colours
This is completely personal, but I really don’t like silver, gold and white as a Christmas tree color. It’s not for me at all, it gives me a strange feeling in my body.
Sadhbh O’Sullivan, health writer
Elf on the shelf
Whose idea was it to introduce naughty elves? When I was a kid it was a fear to be threatened with a lump of coal, but kids these days wake up with a toilet roll spit out over their kitchen or a felt-tip pen on their forehead.
The idea is ridiculous, but realizing it is a huge logistical challenge. When my 10-year-old brother went to bed every year, the brain power required to find a new way for this elf to mess with the house took so much energy.
Kia Elise Green, Junior Writer
The shame of opening gifts
My Christmas wish is usually to open presents for people, I hate everyone looking at me expectantly. I prefer to open them in a room alone.
Also anyone who wears a Christmas cracker hat for longer than the prescribed five minutes after pulling the cracker.
Emily Cope, senior writer and editor-in-chief