I don't like doing Christmas layouts

I don’t like Christmas layouts either. I’ve skipped many of years.
First, I realized I just don’t love the Christmas collections. They are often too busy with colors I don’t normally scrap together for my personal liking. Second and I think this is most important-I really never end up with great pictures. They are indoors usually in dim lighting so you have that bright flash which never does anyone any favors😉. Also, I like Christmas, but have decided I don’t like being the Christmas photographer, orchestrate which gifts got to who, etc…I just want to be more present in the day. So now I just take a couple pictures and don’t try to document every little thing.

So don’t make them. I stopped scrapping things that don’t bring me joy years ago…Christmas, really any holiday, birthdays etc. this is a creative outlet and if it’s not fun, skip it.

Or you could try making an album of holiday snapshots, no layout, pocket style. Still documented but less stress

Is it the colors? I realized I am not a red and green scrapbooker. If I do pink I’m happy. I also really don’t love my indoor photos so for something like December daily where it’s a photo of stuff I will do it all on a sunny day. For example the other day in rapid fire I took a picture of the tree, elf and my advent calendar. I also have no shame moving my kids activities like gingerbread houses onto the well lit side of our table. Lol.

I struggle with those Christmas layouts, too. I think it's because the photos are always so busy. There are multiple people, gifts, wrapping paper on the floor, etc.

I struggle with this too! My boys are 18 and 20 so the cutesy lines and that don't fit. We have christmas morning pictures but none of the "santa" and that type like when they were little.

I haven't read the replies yet but what about adding a pocket page to that area of your album, if you do chronological, and place photos in it. Then you have the photos and if you feel like it you can journal on cards that you adhere to the back.

I have always struggled with indoor events. Poor lighting, blurry photos, lots of people. But I still scrap them.

Since moving to pocket layouts over single page layouts, I find it easier to scrap them now. Over all the process is easier and more fun for me.

I struggle to get good photos too. That’s part of the issue. For paper, I like combining red and white, or green and white, but red and green together can be garish to my eyes.
And Christmas morning photos are never good, are they? Last year, my dh and I had matching pjs, but we took posed photos wearing Santa hats (with the cats wearing matching bow tie/bandana, of course) well before Christmas morning. I’m so much happier with my photos!

I struggle with Christmas layouts also - in part because our traditions don't always line up with what's available theme-wise...no snow here, we celebrate Advent and Epiphany... but I think mostly because there are just SO MANY photos it becomes overwhelming.

I think that's the best thing I've taken away from DD the two years I did it (2019, 2021) - picking the best or most representative photos to scrap. My opening presents layouts always seem to end up with a ton of pics though - trying to make sure everyone is equally represented and the most important/best gifts of the year are also.

While I love scrapping everything up to Christmas, I don't enjoy scrapping Christmas Day photos.

I usually make one page for Christmas morning at our house & one page for Christmas morning at my parents', make sure each person is represented in at least one photo, and call it good. I only scrap additional Christmas morning photos if there's a really special gift or anniversary/event on the day. Nobody over 5 looks cute opening gifts, and I think a bunch of gift-opening pics are boring to look at & scrap.

I feel the same way about birthday, sportsball, and zoo layouts -- it all looks the same to me year after year (though I do scrap them).

I do very simple photobooks so the scrappy aspect of matching photos to product lines is less relevant to me these days, but the darkness and the clutter are my big stumbling block with Christmas photos. It's quite dark here most of the time, in stark contrast to where I grew up (midsummer Christmas in NZ) and the houses where we celebrate just compound the problem.

One is very cluttered and has a blue sofa on rust red/orange 1979 carpet, ugh. The other is just as cluttered but very large with really tricky lighting. In both houses there's no sense of sitting together around a focal point, no beautiful backdrop, just mess and stuff, and the gatherings themselves are barely controlled chaos or people sitting 10 feet apart looking at their phones.

Black and white photos don't really help much - sometimes they actually highlight the chaos and I don't usually like black and white in my books unless it's really purposeful.

I might enjoy the gatherings more if I could at least get good photos. Getting crap photos compounds my dislike of some of these gatherings tbh. I never appreciated how lucky we were to be able to go outside during long holiday gatherings in NZ until I was trapped in my MIL's horrible house with 3 other people who didn't want to be there and no escape.

(Merry Christmas! I sound like a fun guest to have over, don't I? lol. This is why I planned a big escape this year.)

Perhaps it's the sofa!?! 

I'm not a theme scrapper, so don't view photos through that lens. My scrapbooking is story-focused with a simple/clean/linear/minimalist/"magazine-ish" style that is not product-driven. While our approaches may differ, we share a dislike for busy (& often poorly focused/composed for me) photos. For stories that include such photos, I often create either a one-page or a double-page layout (usually with 1-2 representative photos - e.g. Christmas tree with wrapped gifts) to document the story & add a divided page protector (or mimic with a cardstock base, if I don't have a protector configuation that fits the orientation of my photos) after/between them to house the busy photos. HTH.

I struggle with Christmas layouts sometimes, too. This is my favorite time of the year, and I think the perfectionist in me comes out more when scrapping holiday pages. I want my pages to reflect this magical season, and I put too much pressure on myself to make something equally magical, if that makes sense.

Why do I do this to myself? I dunno. 🙃

I do feel the same about the quality of photos. They're not the best. But I find that if you have a creative, eye-catching page going (at least, that's how I scrap. I know not everyone does) it kind of lends itself towards masking they maybe ho-hum photos.

I just ordered a bunch of my Christmas layouts today from my lab (I'm a photographer and throw in my 8x8 layouts when I am ordering for clients). I plan to put them in a cute scrapbook by next weekend so family can look at them over Christmas. My kids especially love seeing older pics of themselves. 

I am a digital scraper so I have these readily available. Some Christmasy layouts I've done over the last 2-3 weeks.  (Quality not so great since I shrunk down a ton for this post). 

Going to work on another Christmas layout after I hit post!