To judge friend's approach to Christmas?

I hear you OP. I’m currently struggling re the actions of a friend I’ve known for over 40 years. The way she’s treated people mainly borrowing money and not repaying it, now she’s told me how she has made plans to shaft the idiot who was stupid enough to marry her. I feel our morals no longer align

Next time she brings it up, just say you'd rather not discuss it 🤷🏼‍♀️
In case you're interested op we tend to have Christmas just me, dh and the kids. It's not due to particularly wanting it to be just us but because we don't live anywhere close to family, not having space to put them up overnight and often me working one or more of Christmas Eve/Christmas Day/Boxing Day so can't go to them.

My question is why the rest of the family didn't get together if your friend spends Christmas just with her own family? The sister could have hosted the mum?

Christmas is about what you want it to be. After 30 years of being worn out by hosting Christmas for my family I would be very happy to have one entirely on my own. It is just one day with huge expectations set around it.

Not sure what you want from the op - maybe your New Year’s resolution should be to not spend so much time with someone whose choices you find so baffling and distasteful. Also there is something strange about your issue with her having dc and not hosting and sister not having dc and hosting - you said the dc are late teens/ early 20s. What wide eyed magical Christmas experience is anyone missing out on in 2024 with grown up dc?

You cannot change your friend you can only change how you react and respond. 100s of people telling you they think she’s a selfish horrible bitch who will die alone and cold on Xmas day 2075 is going to make no difference.

Did your friend see her parents at all over the Christmas period? I have a bit of a problem with people assuming that if you don't see someone on Christmas Day or Boxing Day, then you're not 'spending Christmas with them.' Christmas Day can be any day around the Christmas period when it comes to spending time with family. My close family is blended and when my DCs were little and they would spend Christmas Day with their other parent, we would have our Christmas Day when they got home, on the the 27th or 28th or whatever. This was always wonderful and magical and not any less special than spending the 25th with them I also used to see my parents every Christmas, around Christmas time, but not always on 25th December.

I'm with your friend on this, I think, but would like to hear her side of things! For instance, maybe she sees her family a lot throughout the year and organises a Christmas visit before or after the 25th. Perhaps she is super busy with work/family demands etc. all year round so she keeps the 25th/26th as special time just for her DH and kids. I don't think there is anything wrong with that.

I admire the boundaries. Maybe she does Christmas Eve or Boxing Day with these others. Maybe she has had awful Christmas times with these very people in the past?

It's difficult, honestly, because there's a continuum. Yes it is a bit selfish to not invite others. Yet, every childhood Christmas I had was a little overshadowed by the duty to older relatives and the pressure of hosting them. And now, apart from the odd year off hosting that we declare, our actual Christmas day is less fun and relaxed than it would be with just my lovely nearly grown up children. There's not even room for them on the sofa so they end up in their bedrooms while I bring cups of tea to snoring relatives and sit on the floor with three days of hosting other visitors ahead of me. And dh can't have a tipple until he's driven them home. And while I fairly happily will go the extra mile for dps, and dils, this has also meant hosting nearly 20 years of my dps partners who I have no emotional connection with. I hope in the future to always be able to see my dds over the Christmas period, whether it is for a Christmas eve dinner, a boxing day walk, a new year's dinner - we will travel or pay or cook as much as helps out. And we would be happy to phone them on Christmas day morning and then cook our own Christmas dinner. Love isn't selfish, but it's ok for people to say what works for them.

Yes, this was my first thought as well.

No one should feel obliged to host, and certainly not to have unpleasant relatives over, but we have almost always spent Christmas Day with PIL and Boxing Day with DF and DSM and DB and his family.

Does she understand how this might well
play out when she’s older, having modelled a nuclear family-only Christmas to her DC?

I'm desperately trying not to judge my friend

I think you need to desperately try a bit harder, OP

I think it speaks volumes about their relationship with their family, really. Sometimes it's a bit like grand gestures on Valentine's day when the relationship is otherwise shit.

The first thing that springs to my mind is what is the rest of her year like?

If she and DH and kids rarely get time together (let's say they work shifts and juggle childcare) then this could be a really special time for them to be together. Also, do they genrally support family the rest of the year?

It depends on the relationships too. I'll sound like a total birch, but it was SUCH a relief last year that MIL wasn't going to cause a scene (because she had recently passed). She was divorced and miserable (had been divorced for 12 years before I met her when I was 18) and was a boarder with poor health. So we ALWAYS had to have her come to us. She had other family, but they fought like cats in a sack. She spent the whole visit finding everything unsatisfactory - she wouldn't eat food if I'd cooked it and instead kept bags of takeaway food in her room, which would start to rot and she'd still eat it and then get ill and say I was poisoning her water so she'd only drink bottled water. She'd smoke out of the window in her room. On the day she'd constantly apologise in a really dramatic way - every time someone opened a present she'd say something like "oh, I hope you're not expecting something like that from me. I'm far too poor to get that, I wouldn't eat for a week". Literally EVERY present. Anything from one of her relatives would be particularly dramatic as she'd want to google it to find out what it cost to see if her present from them was the same amount.

Am I looking forward to this Christmas without her? Hell yes! Nice quiet one with the kids, my parents are coming over for lunch/presents/walk but it'll be low key and relaxed and I'm really looking forward to it

People that didn't know MIL well had no idea. She could put on a good act of being a nice poor little old lady (she was 62 when she died!).

I also don't think you have to do the same everyyear. Having the odd quiet Christmas doesn't make you a monster.

*Easypeelersareterrible

Unbelievably selfish in my opinion. Christmas isn’t just about you and your partner and your kids and your instagram account. It’s a Christian festival which is mainly about being kind.

I bet she gives these relatives a present, when the only really presents they want are to be with their family and she’s stopping them. What a total bitch*

They were with the sister. The sister is family. They were with family.

@NoisyDenimShaker I really don’t know why you’re being given a hard time for posting by some. It’s a perfectly fair AIBU question, I think. I suppose the only thing is to be aware that some AIBU threads turn up in the tabloids but I think it’s usually those which are a bit more sensationalist.

It sounds a bit unkind to me but we don’t know her reasons. It’s certainly not a default position once you have children.

We grew up sharing Christmas with grandparents and occasionally other family friends would also join us. So to me, it’s natural to involve extended family at Christmas.

Now I have my own children: we spend most of our year as the 4 of us; we go on holiday as the 4 of us and so on. So for us, it’s fun and natural to have extended family for Christmas.

And, unless there’s a massive backstory, it does seem unkind to leave terminally ill close family members alone. Does she really want to establish this as a precedent for when her children are adults and it’s her turn to be alone on Christmas Day? Perhaps she would be happy with that but I wonder whether she’s thought of it.

If she keeps discussing it with you, perhaps she wants your approval? I think it’s fine to say it’s not what you would do.

We spend christmas as a foursome we always invited GP’s but they always refused. Are you sure you haven’t got the wrong end of the stick OP.

It's one thing to have your own thoughts and feelings.

It's another to start a thread on MN trying to rally people round to condemn this woman for her behaviour when none of us know her or her family history and her reasons for behaving as she does.

If you want to judge her you have that right. But why do you want other people to validate your judgement?

I don't spend Christmas with my widowed father. I'll go over with DH sometime in Dec and we'll usually have a special meal with him and DSis & DbiL.

Dad lives in the same town as DSis and will go there for Christmas lunch.

Dad was a primary teacher and says he's all christmassed out.

Maybe she's not at all religious? You don't have to be, to enjoy Christmas.

Maybe giving all her love and attention to her own little family is HER way of being kind?

We don't have to all be martyrs, running around and waiting on others. We CAN just spend it only with our own DC and DH.

There are no set rules, as far as I know.
Good for her, hope she enjoys it.

Well, to be fair, pp does have a point.
Why are you here trying to justify judging your friend?

No one was alone. The sister hosted Christmas for the parents

What she says and what her real thoughts are won't necessarily be the same. Perhaps her sister was a nasty piece of work to her growing up and parents stood by amd did nothing so she says "I just want my little family" for the sake of not airing her dirty laundry and being civil as adults.

I would really not judge her. She's doing what's best for her. I hope that one day my child does whats best for her and hopefully that will include an invite but if mot, fine, because i had a child to give her a life she cpuld enjoy how she wants, not so that I could have a family when I'm old.

If you asked my sibling why they don't visit our surviving parent, they would say distance and work. What they really mean is there is childhood trauma that they will never ever speak about.