Adult dc protesting about friend coming for Xmas

Agree, been the drip feed after countless posts of calling them selfish brats of
”actually, valid reason for wanting family only”
that then had more of well, they’re still horrible, lazy freeloaders anyway posts, to now “well they are not like that at all”..

Honestly, if I was Shelia I would not want to spend Christmas Day with a family I do not know. Especially, considering the fact your DC recoil at the very thought of welcoming her.

Why was the dinner inedible last year? How drunk were PIL’s?

My 20 year old Uni students DC don’t drink much whereby my DParents’s and siblings can drink like fishes. We have Christmas dinner at 1pm and drop my DParents back at their house by 6pm. We learnt this is the sweet spot to stop everything descending into a drunkenness on their part and my part because I have been conditioned to drink more when they are around😂It’s a family joke now among my siblings that when you are invited to my house it is a 5 hour turnaround. It works better. No hangovers for us. DC do not mind not drinking and doing the driving on Christmas Day it’s all about the food for them (boys). We always pick DC wherever they are on New Years Eve because this is one night they will drink. It’s not like we take advantage as we pay the driving back!

This 100%!! I think OP owes an apology to all the posters who took time out to think about her situation and to come up with suggestions and opinions when there was a big fat omission in her OP !! Unless the thread was calculatingly intended to stir up some negstive responses against her children?
Posters - read the op's update before wasting any more time!

Let’s hope neither of your kids are alone at Christmas later in life, facing the same predicament as Sheila.

Exactly this!

OP do you know what Sheila actually wants? In her position I might be up for joining a busy Christmas with lots of different guests but being a bolt on to an established family Christmas not so much.

If you feel like this, why did you wait until there were hundreds of posts against your children to tell the truth?

Her children’s grandmother passed away on Christmas Day a few years ago. OP has stated that last Christmas they tried to recreate their old Christmases, but they ended up with the sister in law getting so drunk she served raw turkey. OP’s children asked for a quiet Christmas at home this year in light of all of that, and she said yes.

Id invite Sheila but limit the time, say, if you have Christmas dinner at 4 ... ask her to come 3 until 6.
Your children sound quite intolerant.

That's exactly it - except your kids are being little shits and they can suck it up.

I bet they appear 2 days before Christmas and someone else does all the shopping/cooking/preparations (ie you!) and then everything is laid on for them.

Sod that - you should have your friend over on Christmas day and make her welcome.

My Mum always had her single friend stay over Christmas for several years - and we all made the best of it.

People are so selfish now 🙄

Could you meet her out for a drink/lunch? Not on Xmas day of course, but on boxing day maybe?

I don't think you all have to stay glued to each other during the entire holiday.

I have read the updates, my MIL was also an alcoholic and although dead, she didn’t die on Christmas but our DC were exposed to her appalling behaviour at Christmas and other times. I’m not going to share my screenshots because I know that I am not lying. My colleague has had a crappy six months, she has no family and I invited her into our home for Christmas which I hadn’t mentioned to my DH or DC, this thread reminded me. As I said my father is unwell which is why I had forgotten to mention it. The OP hasn’t got the monopoly on inviting friends over, drunken MIL or adult children. You can choose to believe me or not, maybe my DC are a little older than the OPs, or just see the world slightly differently, I don’t know but they were both ok with the news last night which is all I can say.

My Christmas Day lunches when I was growing up were always spent with an assortment of family, great uncles and aunts and distant cousins I’d never met before and haven’t seen since. Depending on who in the family was hosting. I survived it.

The year before last we spent Christmas Day with my sisters new in laws. They were all strangers to me. Quite a few of them didn’t even speak to me during the day at all. I still had a very nice meal then we went home and put on our pjs and relaxed. Not my favourite Christmas ever but I did it for my sister.

Some people put aside their own needs and wants and volunteer to cook and serve a meal to people who have nothing.

This is such a sad reflection on modern society.

OP I’m sure your children are generally decent, but we are raising an entire generation who believes they should not be the slightest bit inconvenienced no matter what.

Suggesting things for the OP to do at Xmas would get you banned? Do you struggle not to swear and to communicate civilly in normal life? You don’t know how to express dissent without being offensive? You should work on that.

So true. It’s possible to prioritise your kids, and be there for friends. Such an insular selfish lot on MN. Such precious attitudes. Not just this thread.

As an aside, we all love Christmas here, but goodness some people can be so rigid about how it should be spent. No wonder they get so stressed and het up if things don’t go perfectly.

What greater good? Their mother fulfilling her need to help people and host? Putting their needs and comfort to one side for a person they have never met?

that isn’t the greater good. Teaching your children to always put others needs ahead as some kind of greater good isn’t a life skill it is teaching them to be a doormat and that their feelings don’t matter. That isn’t good parenting

yes sometimes you do have to suck it up for the greater good - this isn’t one of those times. There is a powerful life skill I think in being able to recognise when you need to think about others and put others first and when it is ok to put your needs first.

Well quite @ToeJob, I’ve no idea why one poster suggested this (it wasn’t me), I thought it was bizarre!

It's really not that difficult to suck it up for the greater good. Honestly, it's a life skill. If my kids cannot see that by the time they're at uni, I'd be ashamed at my performance as a parent.

Given the context you've provided, I can't believe you're even considering prioritizing your idea of your friend's needs over your children's needs that they have directly communicated with you.

Why are you not listening to them? Do they have form for being selfish assholes? No?

When we have a Christmas that's just the four of us, my teen DC enjoy family movies and games. We have had fun with crackers that develop a game of some sort (Task Master ones last year were a hit). But mainly they love just chilling. Sitting around in their PJs with music on in the background and the tree lights twinkling. Fiddling with their presents. Reading a new book. Experimenting with a new Mocktail, Munching on snacks. And then back to just chilling. I insist we dress for lunch, but they're back in PJs and just chilling shortly after! I think one thing they really like about it is that DH and I are just chilling too. We have great conversations at Christmas.

This is a ridiculously extreme reaction. No one has suggested the children will stop loving their mother over this. But there is a massive level of nuance between “Fantastic, the more the merrier - I LOVE spending Christmas with complete strangers!” and “You are no longer my mother, you Christmas-ruining bitch”.

There’s a big difference between not being able to cope with something and simply not wanting it to happen.

But who doesn’t give a shit about THEIR feelings? “I’m SO caring because I’m inviting my lonely friend - and if you don’t like it, you can fuck off!!”?

By the way - I’m not actually suggesting the OP is like this. If she was, she would have just done as she pleased and never started the thread. But a worrying number of respondents think she should be behaving exactly like this. That she should be so desperate to show kindness to a friend that she basically tells her own children it’s tough luck, and their concerns are irrelevant.

I’d be ashamed of myself in your shoes.