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WE’RE NOW WELL into the ‘12 Pubs of Christmas’ silly season and it seems people are finally starting to get vocal about their feelings towards it – which is no surprise. What once started out as a fairly harmless and inconsequential tradition between some groups of friends has now become something much more mainstream and faddish. It has become so commercialised in recent years that now it’s seen as ‘the norm’, much like dressing up at Halloween.
In the last few years it’s been massively fuelled by the emergence of pop-up shops peddling those ridiculous Christmas jumpers with flashing lights, bells and the like. Larger retailers have subsequently got in on the act seeing the juicy profits that can be made. We are at saturation point. This can’t go on.
It was quite funny – at first
Years ago when some ‘pioneers’ (used in the loose sense of the word) started wearing these quirky jumpers I have to admit that I found them quite funny – and it was, for a while. It was something new with a high novelty factor, but now it’s been so beaten to death it’s starting to make me feel nauseous. What this fad has effectively done is to turn the whole Christmas season into one giant stag party. They mill around the city centre totally pissed, leery, barking rules and generally just annoying everyone else who isn’t on their wavelength.
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It’s almost impossible to have a quiet pint now over the Christmas period without groups of boisterous and inebriated lads and girls coming in and taking the place over, knocking into everyone, spilling their drinks, shouting at each other and exiting promptly only to be replacing by another even larger and more annoying group doing exactly the same.
I feel a growing sense of resentment and distaste towards it from a public who are getting fed up with the whole thing. I also saw some publicans are threatening to ban it from their premises. I hope more follow suit. Or better still have pubs that promote it and welcome it so the rest of us know to steer clear. A simple sign in the window ’12 pubs friendly’ would go a long way to clearing things up; they have their fun, the rest are left in peace.
It’s just downright annoying
Yes, Christmas is about meeting up with friends, having a few drinks, having good banter and maybe even getting drunk – but do we really need it to become this commercialised, clichéd, yobbish type event which is just downright annoying for all those not involved? It starts earlier and earlier every year. We have to endure almost four weekends of it now in the run up to Christmas. It’s tiring. It’s also dangerous given the amount of pint glasses that end up in the street and the amount of extra people it adds to already jam-packed pubs.
I’m not a very prudish person despite what I say but I really feel this ‘12 Pubs of Christmas’ lark has gone too far. It’s cheapened the whole Christmas atmosphere that the rest of us hold dear and look forward to every year. It’s really lowest common denominator kinda stuff – there, I said it. What do you think?
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Would you drink 6 pints and then to the next pub or keep walking forward and back after each pint?
If it’s the latter can you please tell me where this happens so I can make a YouTube video with some Benny Hill music in the background!
Bill I’d like to join this 2 pubs if it’s back and forth 6 times between them! At least I wouldn’t wake up the next morning wondering what the last pub was……..actually I could be even more confused on consideration.
The author’s main concern appears to be that it is now too “mainstream” and “commercialised”, but it was ok when a few pioneers / cool kids did it? ok to disagree with it on the anti-social aspect, personally I think Let them off with it, but the argument here seems to be akin to music snobbery – when a good band sell too many albums and old fans throw an “I was here first” tantrum
My take on it is it might be the only time of the year that some people get out to enjoy themselves!! We have enough doom and gloom so let there be fun!! I know of a group who runs a 12 pubs for pieta house and that’s a worthy cause!!!
This is nothing like music snobbery, music doesn’t suddenly change when it gets popular whereas this does the jumper may have been kinda funny when no one was wearing but now it’s ridiculous.
The stag like crowds may have been fine every once in a while but now the place is overrun. The author is completely right imo.
I couldn’t agree more with this article. I enjoy a drink over Christmas as much as the next person but this is just embarrassing!
Watching the idiots parade through town last night shouting at people and getting on like complete tools made me feel ashamed to be Irish. It’s like paddys day every Thursday Friday and Saturday for 5 weeks. Seriously people sort this sh1t out and have a little self respect.
If people want to do the 12 pubs good luck to them, however (similar to Arthurs day) I do not like it when ppl refer to it as a “tradition”. It is not traditional.
What makes tradition? Something being repeated at the same time every year around a particular event? Every tradition has to start somewhere, it may not be your tradition or mine for that matter but for a lot of people it is. Just because you don’t like calling it that!
Good point, I didn’t hear of this till I heard of Arthur’s Day. Its more of the same recession proof marketing by Diageo probably. As I live in Dublin I wouldn’t think of doing it, imagine getting ripped off by 12 pubs in one night.
Hi Clodagh, I take your point, but the definition of a tradition is something that has passed from one generation to the next. As far as I’m aware neither event is that old to pass that test.
I’m all for a few drinks n a bit of banter. in fact, i love drinking. but squishing 12 drinks into a limited time frame is too deliberate to be genuine enjoyment of alcohol. Red thumbs abú… Don’t give a shite. Bingeing like this is bad for the body.
Totally agree with Jamie these people are adults if they did a pub crawl any weekend and managed to have a drink in 12 pubs nobody would be bothered with it !! Let them enjoy their night and if the pubs don’t want their business they can always turn them away !!!
All of the twelve groups I have seen in my local have been very well behaved. No knocking drinks or “barking rules”. It’s a bit of fun, and a bit more money for the pubs. I really don’t see what anyone has to complain about.
I play in a music session in a well known pub in Cork. Since November we have had at least 3 groups each night I play. Some groups are good, and have added some life to the environment, even improved atmosphere. As any group of happy people should do. I would go as far as saying I like them.
Others, however, have come with a very different attitude. Those who feel what they are participating in is an annual accepted ritual that entitles them to upset and ignore the environment they enter should be stopped at the first Pub. They are easily spotted. They usually have 2-3 loudmouths who are in competition with each other, and many others who are barely acquainted with each other. Similar to the bad kind of stag parties, who share similar attributes.
Supposed to go on one on Sat. Having second thoughts now though, reading a lot of backlash. Was never going to wear the jumper though. They’re for pr*cks.
Whatever about the 12 pubs,i think the whole xmas jumper thing has become a bit tiresome,i dont even bother trying to fake that “ha ha look at you,youre whacked out” expression anymore when i pass someone in work wearing one.
There’s always some Scrooge out there begrudging other people for having a few drinks and a bit of banter over Christmas. Like you said the pubs are already jammers who cares if there wearing mad looking jumpers?
You should invest in the volcano Darth. I went through a few pricey vapourisers til I finally discovered it. Worth the entrance fee, and the weed goes much, much further too.
I haven’t smoked weed regularly in a lot of years, but last I checked, it was the king of the vapourisers. Maybe there are better ones out there now, and cheaper too, it was very expensive at the time.
So uplifting reading most of the comments, makes such a change from the bad old days when we were in recession, the country was broke and we were all complaining about austerity.
I think it’s funny how publicans welcomed these groups with open arms over the last few years when times were hard but now their businesses are picking up they dont want to know them.
Should we have designated pubs based on class? I think it would be a good idea, like who would wanna sit beside some welfare case or some other worthless undesirable in a bar?
It’s a fine Irish tradition that when your life gets boring, you have to try to stop other people having fun as well. The McQuaid church provided an excellent outlet for this. (Mrs Doyle: Maybe I LIKE the misery.) Now that Catholicism is a bit more wishy washy, they have moved on to stuff like environmentalism, policing the internet and preaching about binge drinking, a concept which becomes ever broader.
Welcome to the No Fun Club, Mr McCarthy. I hope you don’t enjoy it.
Ive stopped drinking in town in December unless I really have to. Do what yiz want lads, yiz look like dicks, with your “hilarious”jumpers and but sure once you’re enjoying yourselves and f**k everyone else trying to have a civilised drink in the same pub eh?
I agree with the author, most of the comments on here are beyond dumb, I think he touched a nerve. The forced, “banterific” nature of the whole thing reminds me of that other new, great Irish tradition, Arthur’s day.
How can you visit 12 pubs and drink responsibly at the same time? The mask has slipped I think. As much as possible in as little time as possible is more like it.
I must say I prefer a rousing game of beer pong or kings cup a al USA or the traditional monopoly board pub crawl through London… Irish aren’t the only drinkers out there
My take on it is – Go do all the 12 pubs, wear the silly outfits and have the craic by all means, BUT you don’t have to drink in each and every pub!!
Drink at your own pace in SOME of the 12 pubs and drink water (or at least eat!) in the ones where you know you’re going into dangerously drunk territory….
So you tell us to stop doing the 12 pubs, but yet yell be the crowd of whingers when more and more pubs close because they’re not doing enough business. It’s Christmas stop fu*king whinging will ye :)
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