In a bit of an odd situation.
I'm living with my partner, and our parents live in the same town. So, for the past few Christmases, we've gone to lunch at our respective families' houses, then I've joined him for the evening, and we've gone out for a meal with my family on Boxing Day. It works for us both, and is quite an easy solution.
His family have three siblings (including him) and the parents. His parents always used to do Christmas dinner, but now his brother and sister take it in turns as it's too much for his parents.
For a while now, there have been a lot of comments about how we don't host Christmas and "take our turn".
The thing is, their houses are a lot bigger than ours, with entertaining space. Our house is small, with just a kitchen and living room downstairs, and the only space we have to sit at a table is a 2 person breakfast bar jutting out from the work surface.
Christmas dinner for his family alone would involve cooking for and seating 11 people - plus obviously if we were hosting I would have think about inviting my family as well, which is another 5.
There is NOWHERE for that number of people to sit, and not enough space for us to serve up Christmas dinners for that number of people.
They then suggested that perhaps we could invite everyone for the buffet on Boxing Day that his parents usually do - but this includes MORE people, as uncles and aunties come, too! Think 20+ people.
There is no way that we could have that many people in this house at the same time. We have 2 seats in the kitchen, nowhere to put buffet food, and 4 seats in the living room. Even spare chairs would just get in the way of people walking round because of the layout. His siblings' kids both have learning disabilities, one of them gets seriously stressed in crowds, so this would be a nightmare for him anyway and would probably cause a meltdown - no kid should be put through that at Christmas, right?
We have said that we will happily pay for Christmas dinner (or a meal in the days following) for people at our local pub, which does nice dinners. It would cost £50pp so a huge amount of money for us, but at the same time it feels like the only way we can "take our turn" and give everyone else a break.
His siblings have said no to this, because both of their children struggle to behave in public due to learning disabilities. Fair enough.
But his parents are now saying that my partner won't be welcome to Christmas lunch again until he's taken his turn.
It all just seems a bit sad. He has offered to contribute money for Christmas dinner, he always gets turned down. Asks if he should bring anything, they say no (but he always takes plenty of drink).
I don't know what to do! How are we supposed to host Christmas in a house the size of a shoebox?