Family Christmas Cancelled After Host's Footwear Policy Is Applied To Father Christmas

A family that has gathered for Christmas every year since 1994 has confirmed it will not meet this December, following a dispute over a household footwear policy that relatives say ended two of its children's belief in Father Christmas.

The policy, introduced by a couple hosting the family for the first time last year, required all guests to remove their shoes in the porch. It was printed on the invitation. Relatives agree that it was printed on the invitation.

The householder said this week that the rule had been "applied fairly and in good faith", and that she was "a bit surprised" the matter had not been settled by the spring.

Invitations for this year's gathering went out in September. Of the five households invited, two have declined. A third has said it will "see how things are".

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The Householder's Account

Ten months on and my in-laws still won't come for Christmas because I asked people to take their shoes off

I'm putting this on here because I've had ten months of it from one side and I'd like some people who weren't there to look at it properly.

We moved last summer. In late November we had the downstairs carpeted, a wool twist in a colour called Barley, which is a light oatmeal, through the hall and the lounge and up the stairs. It was £4,300 fitted. We'd saved for it. My husband's mum had done Christmas for thirty-one years and said it was time someone else had a go, so we offered, and we were genuinely pleased to.

On the invite I put "We are a shoe-free home, slippers provided." It was a nice card. It wasn't small print. I bought a pack of twelve washable slippers in different sizes and put them in a basket in the porch, with a little bench so nobody had to stand on one leg. I thought that was considerate.

There were fourteen of us. Everyone took their shoes off. My sister-in-law said it felt like a spa and I took that the way I think it was meant.

The thing everyone talks about is Father Christmas, so I'll just go through it.

Every year my father-in-law does Father Christmas for the grandchildren. He's done it since my husband was small. After lunch he goes out "to check the car", puts the suit on and comes back with a sack. This year we agreed he'd come round the side and across the back garden, so the children would see him coming over the lawn through the patio doors. That was my idea. I thought it would look magical, and it meant he wasn't walking the whole length of the hall.

It had rained overnight. It had rained a lot.

He came across the lawn in big black costume boots and I met him at the back door and asked him, quietly, to take them off. There was lawn on them. Actual lawn. I had the slipper basket brought through and offered him a pair, and he said Father Christmas does not wear hotel slippers, which, fine. So he took the boots off and came in in his socks.

They were the reindeer socks. My niece, who's seven, had given them to him that morning. She'd picked them and wrapped them herself and she watched him open them.

She looked at his feet for quite a long time and then said, "Why has Father Christmas got Grandad's socks on?"

Nobody else in the room had noticed the socks. Including his own wife. Nobody has ever answered me on that.

My older nephew, who's eleven, said "because it's Grandad", and I'm fairly sure he already knew, so I don't think he should be counted against me. But the two younger ones hadn't known, and now they did. My sister-in-law's little boy is five and he cried, and then he asked whether the presents were still real, and then lunch was sort of over, even though we'd already had lunch.

I accept the back door was a tense moment. I could have handled it better, maybe offered him a towel to wipe the boots instead. People are allowed to say that. What I don't accept is that the answer was to let him walk mud across a four-week-old carpet in front of fourteen people, because if I make an exception for him then I've made an exception, and next year it's somebody's work boots because they're only popping in.

My husband says I'm making it about the carpet. It isn't about the carpet. It's about being able to say something in your own house and have it mean something.

My sister-in-law is now doing Christmas at hers, just them, and my in-laws have said they'll "probably go to her". My father-in-law hasn't been back for the boots. They're still in the porch. I've got them on newspaper and I change it.

I've told everyone they're welcome this year. I've bought a runner for the patio-door end of the lounge so that, if he wants to do it again, it won't come up. I think that's meeting people halfway.

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What The Family Says

Relatives contacted by this newspaper broadly confirmed the householder's account of the day, but differed over which part had been decisive.

The father-in-law, 74, said he had played the role every Christmas since 1983 and had "never once been stopped at a door". He said he removed the boots "to keep the peace" and had not thought about the socks "until it was too late to do anything about the socks".

His wife said she had not noticed the socks because she had been watching her daughter-in-law watching the boots.

The niece's mother said her daughter had been "very proud of those socks", and had asked several times in January whether choosing them had been her fault. She said she had declined this year's invitation because her son "still asks questions in December", and she would prefer he asked them "somewhere the carpet has been down a bit longer".

The householder's husband said he supported the shoe rule. He confirmed that he had described the garden route at the time as "a lot to ask in December", and said he had nothing to add.

The back lawn, it was also confirmed, had been re-turfed in October and had not yet established.

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Expert Analysis

SC

On a light oatmeal wool twist in its first month, I would have asked for shoes off as well. I would also have asked for a mat at the patio door. Wet garden mud on wool is far less serious than people fear: you leave it alone, let it dry completely, and vacuum it out. Most of it lifts. What I would worry about on a new carpet is pile crush from fourteen people standing in one lounge for an afternoon, and none of them were wearing shoes.

DP

House rules tend to be accepted when they are applied evenly, and this one was. The difficulty is that the host now describes consistency as the purpose of the rule rather than the reason for it. Every concession she has offered since, the towel and the runner, protects the floor. Families tend to remember who was looked after on the day.

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Reader Reaction

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Community Poll

Community Poll

Latest reader breakdown

Which decision ended Christmas?

The shoe rule31%

The garden route29%

Turning down the slippers26%

The reindeer socks14%