Kids choice or Grandparents choice - Christmas Day

[openjoy]

Please tell me the right thing to do here.

We have hosted Christmas every year for the past 15 years to include my parents and DH mum (no dad or partner). We both have siblings with partners but no children, that choose to spend their Christmas on their own. Non negotiable to them. This has always been ok, we have 3 children so we host the grandparents and everyone is happy.

Our Christmas Day often revolves around our guests. My DH and I often feel hosting over takes our family time. I suggested to DH that this year, we don’t host. We let everyone know that for the first time in 15 years, we’d just like to be our family of 5. He suggested we ask the children what they would like to do and they said they’d like us to just be our family of 5. I actually don’t think he expected them to say that and he is regretting it.

His sibling has stayed firm in their Christmas choices and is refusing to have their mother at Christmas. DH now understandably is feeling bad for the mother at Christmas. MIL is a lovely, kind person but she does require hosting and she can be difficult. She does take up our time from our children and they feel it. There’s no malice, they love her and we could do something another day with her like Boxing Day.

For context she is 78 and our eldest child is 16. So it’s awful to think of her on her own but it’s also awful for this to possibly be one of the last childhood Christmas’s I have with my eldest and the one and only one where it’s just us together - at their choice. And if I have one grandparent I have to have the others and am back where I am now.

What do I do?!

Am I being unreasonable to stick with just us 5 on Christmas Day??

Kids choice. It's one year. Majority vote wins. Horrible he hoped the kids would back him up. Make sure he doesn't get in their ears.

Interesting how those that voted YABU haven't commented.

I had years of awful Christmas lunch. Put my foot down as I wanted to cook for my kids and husband. I wanted better food. We then would go over for the afternoon and a buffet tea then back the next day for a roast lunch. Leaving mid afternoon.

Nothing wrong with saying you want a Christmas with just the 5 of you. And as you've asked the kids I think you need to go with majority rule now.
Arrange Boxing Day with MIL.

You asked the kids, they said what they wanted, you can't say, "now we have asked and you honestly answered, we don't care and are doing what someone else wants". If you hadn't asked, maybe. Now you have, it has to just be you.

How are you going to tell your parents that the kids don't want them around? Pretty nasty thing to do really.

Part of being a child is accepting that your parents make the decisions around things like this.

I'm nearly as old as your mum and I've hosted virtually every year since forever. Scaled down this year. TBH I think that it would be very difficult to leave your mil on her own.

Can you ask MIL what she’d like (out of the options you can offer). Maybe she’d like to come over Christmas evening, help with “stockings” and share any other Christmas Eve traditions with you. Or maybe she’d like to come Boxing Day for amazing cold cut buffet and seeing the kids with their new stuff? Give her a bit of choice/agency so she doesn’t think you don’t care or aren’t thinking of her, but hold firm on your “just us” Christmas Day.

Could be inlaws and parents last Xmas alive so I would priorities elders. Your 16 year old will come for xmas until they are set up in life and financially able so that's is not until gone 21 if they go to uni might be until after they graduate 24/27.

We don't do Xmas but have our own holidays and eiders are priority and now our grandparents have passed on we now spend it with my parents and go places or whatever we went. Couldn't imagine abandoning my grandparents especially at that age. Also culturally we have a lot of respect for our elders and looking after them is very very important.

I think it’s really horrible to leave your mil alone and I’d be massively disappointed in my children for thinking it was fine too. Let’s hope they are never in that situation. Or you for that matter. 16 is old enough to consider others feelings.

Each to their own and no judgement but I could never leave my mum alone on Christmas Day. She’s pretty independent but I think she would be so sad to think we made that decision knowing she’d be alone.

But then for us Christmas is a family affair. I could only draw that line if her behaviour was out of order.

Personally I couldn’t see my mil or parents alone but now you’ve asked the kids I don’t see how you can backtrack.

What goes around comes around. Called Karma. How they treat their parents / elders their children will treat them the same.

I would not have asked the kids before coming up with an alternative plan for MIL.
I could not leave a beloved family member on their own on Christmas Day and I can’t imagine your children want to do this either.

i think I would go back to the kids and say that you tried to organise this but it now means that MIL will be on her own and that it would not be within the Christmas spirit to do this.

Does she live close enough to come over for part of the day only so you can have the morning with your children only?

I couldn't leave her on her own for Xmas.day - I appreciate you've hosted for 15 years and that none of the other siblings have stepped up, but I think you have to switch off to them and do the right thing.

Maybe it’s time for one of the siblings to step up.

How far away does MiL live?

I wouldn’t say that because it’s not that they don’t want them around, they’d like to have our focus and attention on Christmas Day for once and see them a different day. And it’s not just the children, it was my idea.

You're not wrong in wanting to be just you 5 and the kids aren't wrong for wanting that, you're husband is a unfair to think the kids should back him up. But to be honest leaving one person on their own on christmas day doesn't sit right with me personally and I couldn't do it.

MIL is a lovely, kind person but she does require hosting and she can be difficult. She does take up our time from our children and they feel it.

This is what stands out to me, why would her being there take away time from your kids? What are you doing that is so different to what you would normally be doing? and if it is the case, then why are you doing that and causing your kids to feel it?

Why not spend Christmas day together as a family of 5 and invite anyone else for Christmas dinner but have it later at tea time? This is what we do, we have a morning shift for guests and an afternoon shift for different guests, or we do either or depending on what we want.

It’s completely perfectly fine to want a Christmas at home for once no hosting in 15 years.

The fact the other sibling doesn’t want to host and even the children at 16 and down want just a home with no quest Christmas speaks volumes alone.

Fed up of this nobody alone stuff. If people where genuinely nice and kind people they would have multiple invites from friends in similar positions or all their children offering to host. Being old and alone doesn’t make you a nice person or more deserving than any other person. Just makes you old and alone.

How far away is she? Can you do half the day with her? Sibling/s very selfish not to host her for one year out of bloody 15!

If it was your mum on her own would you leave her

Yes I could do this, she is only 15 mins away from us. She would usually come about 11/12 and stay until about 11 in the evening.

Also as mumsnetters love to point out. Christmas is more than just one day. Mil can always come for Christmas Eve or Boxing Day.

Completely agree, it’s incredibly frustrating that they refuse and do not see our point either.

I think the siblings should step up too! It's one year for them, you've done 15!!
However, it looks like they won't, so in your position, I certainly couldn't leave your MIL alone and as you say, you'll then invite your own parents too.
Your children will be ok, maybe do something really special with them another day.
I have a big family and have come to see that Christmas is often about compromise. Not a bad lesson to learn.

I can understand that your kids want time alone with their parents but I know for a fact that my children would hate that grandma was alone on Xmas day. It's one day, she won't be around for ever so I think YABU
Can you do something with just the kids on boxing day?
I'm working Xmas day this year and all my kids (grown up) were concerned about was grandma being on her own.