{"id":653357,"date":"2025-12-25T03:00:38","date_gmt":"2025-12-25T03:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/653357\/"},"modified":"2025-12-25T03:00:38","modified_gmt":"2025-12-25T03:00:38","slug":"manchesters-christmas-eve-looked-very-different-this-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/653357\/","title":{"rendered":"Manchester’s Christmas Eve looked very different this year"},"content":{"rendered":"

‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all across Manchester…<\/p>\n

12:31, 24 Dec 2025Updated 13:02, 24 Dec 2025<\/p>\n

\"ThereThere was a small queue forming just outside of the door at Treadgolds, Timperley(Image: M.E.N)<\/p>\n

Every year, the run up to Christmas creates shopping mayhem across the UK. For those in Manchester, this means queues to get in and out of the Trafford<\/a> Centre, gridlock to get out of car parks in the city centre, and attempting to drive down Deansgate<\/a>? Good luck!<\/p>\n

So on Christmas<\/a> Eve, I went out to go and find some of the classic shopping madness, going to hot spots such as Stockport<\/a> Retail Park and various popular butchers – but I was surprised to find that it was all quite calm.<\/p>\n

Where you would usually find people bustling to get past each other in the aisles of M&S, I simply found people leisurely shopping. I expected there to at least be queues to check out, but there was none of this either. It seems that this year, the people of Manchester have prepared well and organised their Christmas with plenty of time.<\/p>\n

My first stop of the day was Axon of Didsbury<\/a> on Barlow Moor Road, a butchers which is known for its queues in the run up to Christmas. While there were a handful of people in the shop waiting to be served when I arrived at around 8.30am, it was fairly calm, and no queues were forming outside. Maybe people just slept in today?<\/p>\n

\"ThereThere was a small queue forming just outside of the door at Treadgolds, Timperley(Image: M.E.N)<\/p>\n

Next I went to Treadgolds Butchers<\/a>, in Timperley, which is known as “always the biggest queue for the best” turkeys. On December 23, 2023, we reported that there was snaking queues at this butchers stretching all down the road from as early as 7.30am. But today, on the morning of Christmas Eve 2025, there were just a handful of people in the Timperley store, with two people forming the start of a queue outside the door.<\/p>\n

After two unexpectedly quiet stops, I decided on one place that was guaranteed to be busy – Stockport Retail Park, where there is an M&S Food Hall. Surely here I will find crowds of people grabbing last-minute bits for hosting their loved ones on Christmas Day? But I drove through the barriers to find a fairly empty car park – not what I was expecting.<\/p>\n

I decided to do the rounds, heading to M&S first. At first glance, it looked like an ordinary day at the supermarket. Perhaps similar to a Saturday. There were no big queues to get in, no queues at all to check out, and every shelf looked fully replenished. I was expecting to find empty, ransacked shelves. Perhaps their staff are just super hard working and quick at restocking the shelves?<\/p>\n

\"ChristmasM&S in Stockport was surprisingly quiet on Christmas Eve(Image: M.E.N)<\/p>\n

After this I decided that perhaps everywhere in Manchester is the same today, and people have just been incredibly organised this year and done all their shopping ahead of Christmas Eve.<\/p>\n

Yesterday, December 23, we reported that the Cheese Hamlet in Didsbury had queues down the street<\/a> on its penultimate day of being open before Christmas Day. Queues of ten or more people stretched out of the door and down the street as shoppers waited to get their hands on liqueurs, special jams and chutneys, wine, marzipan logs and boxes of chocolate.<\/p>\n

Staff said it had been ‘non-stop’ all day. “Today is our busiest day,” said one staff member. “Yesterday we at least had breaks, but it’s been queues out the door since we opened.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all across Manchester… 12:31, 24 Dec 2025Updated 13:02, 24 Dec 2025 There…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":653358,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8813],"tags":[748,35745,114578,393,4884,2465,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-653357","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-manchester","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-christmas","10":"tag-christmas-shopping","11":"tag-england","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-manchester","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115777977150593592","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=653357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653357\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/653358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=653357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=653357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=653357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}