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??

I think it’s really horrible that you got your children to choose. How are you going to frame it to the grandparents that their grandchildren chose to have Christmas without them? How will your children actually feel on Christmas Day if their grandmother is on her own? How will you? You will get lots of support for your decision on here because MN loves a nuclear family but truly I think the way you have gone about it is unpleasant. And to add - I think you have left it very late too as your MIL will struggle now to make other plans.

@Jl2014 well she has been told that by ops dh siblings so one would perhaps think, maybe I don't want to fuck this up and up my Xmas guest game?

OP you sound very kind and you seem to put everyone else’s needs above your own.

Do you have a separate dining room?
If so I’d try and get a spare TV and put it in there and play board games/listen to Xmas music in there and put your MIL in the front room with her Tv shows.

It seems that all she wants is company and be around loved ones on Xmas day, which is quite sad actually.

I would try and reduce the prep and cooking as much as you can.

Then I’d have a normal Xmas on Xmas day and then a second Xmas on Boxing Day where you drink, eat lots of chocs and lounge around watching Xmas movies and playing games.

You could even order a takeaway on Boxing Day, so there’s no cooking at all.

This^
I always wonder how all the people who say they want Christmas "just their little family" will feel in 30 years time (and perhaps widowed) when their children say that to them. Because after all that was the experience the children had growing up

Imagine being 63-78 and never being invited for Christmas by your daughter. Where are the siblings in this? Time for them to step up for a year.

It's been a tough year for me and I usually organise the family Christmas lunch where everyone assembled at a pub just before Christmas. I also hosted my mum last year as well and if I hadn't had a tough year, I'd have hosted her this year. So I texted my brothers who have hosted her before and said, I can't do anything this year except show up for the family lunch, sort it out between you. And although I haven't heard the details yet, they are fine with that.

I wonder if the OP can say something similar, e.g. I've hosted for 15 years and I can't this year, please sort out who's hosting her.

How is OP's MIL not to blame for her own selfish behaviour every Christmas Day?

OP shouldn't pander to it but her MIL chooses not to interact with her grandchildren at all and to monopolise the TV.

It seems that all she wants is company and be around loved ones on Xmas day, which is quite sad actually.

But she spends all day watching tv and ignores her grandchildren.

@Jerdect ops dc have had 15 years of hosting granny.

So why would they think that? Surely the take away here is self reflection and being interested in your gc and if you feel you can't survive the day without tv and routine then make it easy for them and say "j hope it's OK if I tuck myself away in x room to watch TV is that OK, I don't want to dominate with my TV".

Yanbu but your dh siblings are.

We used to host my dmum every year because siblings didn't. But she did fit on with us. We did somewhat resent every year but then really missed her the first year we didn't. It made christmas very odd.

I think the shortening the day is a good compromise.

its the oter siblings that are being selfish why is it ok for them not to host for 15 years?

So glad you changed your mind and reducing the time she comes for sounds like a good idea.

Have your mum and dad and your dh’s mum for Christmas Day as it could be their last one. Your DH would feel terrible for the rest of his life if his mum spent her last one on her own. I lost my mum and am so thank for all the Christmas Days we spent together.

I guess if her being there means you can’t go for a walk or play a board game or the kids watch anything they want to, that’s on her too. Being a guest is a role too and it sounds like she’s done it badly for 15 years, so if she has a Christmas on her own that is what happens. It would simply not occur to any of our grandparents to turn on the tv on Christmas Day much less monopolise it all day?

Would you enjoy Christmas Day thinking of your MIL on her own? I don't think DH would enjoy it or think well of you for refusing her.

Sometimes you don't want to deal with anyone over Christmas. Also OP clearly said her oldest child is the 16 year old and so this feels like her last chance to enjoy a family Christmas when her children are all still children, without hosting.

My solution to this issue would be the opposite to what most are suggesting - it seems like most of the issues with your family having guests are around the evening activities, so if your MIL is only 15 minutes away, invite her around for a fancy continental spread in the morning while your kids open their presents, have your husband pick her up around 9am and drop her back home before you start cooking dinner. He will obviously need to be quite clear in advance the particulars of the invitation, that it's for breakfast as your family isn't up to hosting people this year and are keeping dinner low-key.

MIL chooses not to interact with her grandchildren at all and to monopolise the TV.

Not everyone is very confident. Or the life and soul
of the party. Certainly, in my experience, a lot of women in their 70s/80s are more diffident, especially around social situations. Maybe she thinks sitting and watching the TV is “being no trouble” and “not making a fuss”. My own MIL is a lot like this and genuinely wouldn’t realise that just sitting on the sofa makes her more difficult to “host” than mucking in with things would.

Obviously, I don’t know this lady, so can’t opine on her motives. But if she’s just a bit passive, rather than actively obnoxious, it seems a bit rough to exclude her for basically not being “fun enough”. If the family sets the day they want, then they can ask her to join in with that. Fair enough if she chooses not to - but she hasn’t been excluded from something she was expecting to include her.

Goodness, the guilt tripping and drama here.

I'd guess that if they've only just spoken to the children, that they're not a family who make solid arrangements for Christmas 9 months in advance, so there's plenty of time to discuss arrangements with the other siblings.

We're still discussing Christmas with parents and we'll fit in around each other.

If they go back to the children and say "you do realise mil will be alone for Christmas if we don't invite her" the dc will see straight through that as the guilt tripping it is, and see that their opinion wasn't being sought properly in the first place.

It's all very well saying "my dc couldn't possibly..." for a start off, I bet you've never asked them. Or at any rate asked them in a way they think they can say something different.

We always went to my Gran's because otherwise she was on her own. Love her much, but she wasn't the easiest person to get on with. We were also 5 extra people crammed into a tiny 2 bed bungalow with an old lady who was very set in her ways (lunch at 12, dinner at 4 regardless) for a week to ten days. She'd usually had enough of people around her by the 27th and we always had to stay until the New Year. Tempers (mostly from her) were frayed by the end.

I can't remember the age I realised that Christmas there was revolved round her. Heck, our present from our parents one year was sleeping bags (to be left at her house) so she didn't have the bother of washing the sheets. That's a great present for an 8yo isn't it? Weren't even allowed to take them home with us.
But I do remember really feeling the excitement of Christmas was not then, but when we got back again and had our own celebrations, but it always felt muted, because by then we were thinking about back to school and it wasn't the same.

My point is that we can have no idea what different families are like. Because you can't imagine your mil being any trouble at all, doesn't mean someone else's isn't.
Just because OP has hosted for 15 years doesn't mean she should be obliged to always host.

There are other siblings (in my dad's case there wasn't any available) here. OP ask dh to send a email/message to all of them at once saying "We can't host this year, which one of you is hosting mum". Put it into their court.

Maybe what the dc will take forward into their own family life is 'my parents and grandparents placed their own selfish demands on my childhood... I'm not doing that to my children'?

Given the impending doom of western civilization we are already beginning to have family more central eg housing and uni too expensive without mum and dad, less opportunities to make friends. If you are going to model to your children this is how you treat others it leads to the decline of the human species who developed via social skills. Your siblings have no kids so little investment in the future.

Just because the kids say they don't want dmil does not mean that will happen. If you read / watch Jane Austen Emma there is a storyline on this issue.

I think in British culture it will psychologically damage all of you to leave someone out

I am going to be in the minority here but I think you should host MIL. You never know when it is your last Christmas with someone and it would be sad for her if she was on her own (though personally I think it's a bit out of order your husband's sibling wouldn't take her for one year to give you a break...)
I think as your parents have each other, it would be easier to explain to them that you want a smaller Christmas just this once

As someone who deals with someone who talks it can take forever to do anything. The person in my life won't shut up, I can end up stood there for 15 mi uses waiting for a gap so I can go make another drink. Some guests are awful guests.

Christmas is all
about traditions in my opinion.
My parents used to host, 1 set of grandparents plus my widowed grandmother and her single daughter .
Slowly the circle got smaller and smaller as they all passed away.
Then bigger again when partners and grandchildren arrived.
My inlaws were the same, always hosted whole family until circle got smaller due elderly passing on.
We knew no different as kids as in we never not had them around.
Same for my kids.
To think as a 16 years old one or both grandparents would spend xmas day home alone so
we could celebrate alone wouldn't ever occur, how tragic, literally would have ruined my xmas.
Sure it was probably a lot of work plus the odd little squabble here or there.
Nothing a quick glug of mulled wine or whisky couldn't solve.
All their habits/tales/outfits/presents/choice of drinks.
You'll have plenty of xmasses without them and believe me you'll miss all the "hard work " they were.

All the 'poor MIL... oh it'll be AWFUL for her on her own'... any expectations that she should stop being so demanding and selfish? Or should the dc continue to have a shitty, boring childhood Christmas because she's older?

If there's absolutely no compromise on DH's siblings side, then maybe MIL could come round an hour or two before dinner and the TV is not occupied by one person's choice.

I feel for your position, OP. You're really in a rock and a hard place. How selfish of DH's sibling! Is there a backstory in regard to their relationship with MIL?