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??

So seems like the good plan is to pick her up maybe an hour before dinner and take her home an hour or two after dinner.

Also add in a no tv rules or a preselected movie to be on and hide the tv remove.

She’s not alone. She’s not hogging the tv. She’s not sat in one spot for 12! Hours.

Never no next year she might of made her own plans.

Well, there is a choice.
Some religions celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve, so you could do that with your own children then, or alternatively, you could host your MIL on Xmas Eve, or on Boxing Day, etc.
If you have been hosting for many years, no reasonwhy you can't do something different this year.

Dear PILs, we're changing things a bit this year as we want to prioritise Christmas day for the kids. We'd be delighted to see you Christmas day at 6pm for tea and drinks

You could even get her a lovely Christmas hamper for during the day with all sorts of nibbles to keep her going? Then collect her beforehand?

I think pick her up for 12 and drop her home around 6. Compromise as that way you’ll have the evening to just relax with no hosting.
I do think it’s the expectation that’s getting to you and fair enough. BIL and SIL are the selfish ones here

I think it's okay, but you should do it next year, it's too late to change the plans now.

Your husband's brother should take his turn in hosting his mum, but that needs to be sorted out at the start of next year.

Go away for Christmas and break the chain. Book somewhere with no room for granny.

We find Christmas Day very much easuer now we plan to eat at about 5ish.

I’m with @FriendofDorothy on this one - it really is a game changer. And this gives you the perfect opportunity to show you’ve listened to the kids as well.

To MIL: “We’re going to do things a bit differently this year now the kids are older. They’re desperate to have a lie in and …...(insert vague teenage activity here - FaceTime friends in France/watch a concert online/whatever), so we are going to shift lunch to teatime. Do you want DH to pick you up after you’ve watched the King on the TV and we can crack open the sherry when you get here?”

To the kids: “Heard what you said about having a more relaxed day at home, so we’ll do it differently this year. We’ll have a nice relaxed morning and brunch just us and ask Granny to come later for dinner so that she isn’t on her own on Christmas Day.”

And, you never know, your MIL might prefer it. My MIL was a very difficult guest; like yours, she’d sit and wait to be “hosted”. But I genuinely do think she thought it was the right thing to do “not to interfere” and I’m sure she’d have said “we’re no trouble”. Whereas my auntie would bring her drink into the kitchen and chat while I prepped food, or take a tray of nibbles and hand them round and was just a much more enjoyable guest.

it’s very hard; I’ve been there for many years with my own mother. She’s now in a residential facility and we go over to see her for an hour before she has lunch there (not mobile enough to go anywhere). I won’t lie - it is much easier! So I absolutely get where you’re coming from. But I fear that just telling her that “you want a quiet one” this year will hurt her very deeply (she’ll think “I don’t make noise. I don’t get in the way” and won’t be able to do anything other than take it personally) and is likely to make you and your DH feel a bit crap on the day. And it may make your kids feel guilty as well when they ask or twig that Granny is actually on her own because of what they said. While I’m a firm believer in the “it’s just a day - why so much fuss” line of thought, what I have come to realise over the years is that you have to accept there is and that it’s a hugely pervasive cultural norm. Given it’s November and she’ll be expecting to come, I’d just change the format, shorten the visit and see how that goes. If you then decide “no more”, you can hash it out with the siblings on 1 January and they can’t claim that it’s too short notice…..

Noone needs to say that. It was not just the kids "We" covers it.

I always thought, well next year one of them (GP) might be dead, so best invite them.

And then one year, it happened. And then kept happening. Just 1 GP left now, and no way would I miss one without her (MIL).

I have no regrets.

I think leaving her alone would be really hard.
Given as she is so close I'd just say you are moving Xmas meal to the evening this year and want to spend the morning relaxing with just the kids, and have her come over at like 3 or 4 pm.
I don't know about your parents, will they make a fuss if you see MIL and not them? If they are travelling I'd just ask them to come boxing day instead

No way would I leave a close family member on their own, not a chance, but there's also no way that family member would dictate what was going on.
Can't you do what we do when we collect our oldies and record their favourite programmes at their house so they can watch them when they're on their own?

We find Christmas Day very much easuer now we plan to eat at about 5ish.
I’m with on this one - it really is a game changer. And this gives you the perfect opportunity to show you’ve listened to the kids as well.

Yes- my parents made this swap years ago when I was an older teen. For my mother (who cooked) in particular it meant she could relax for the morning’s present-opening, enjoy a lie-in and a nice breakfast without messing about basting turkeys and roasting potatoes. We do it now with my MIL and it means we can go for a nice walk, open presents in a relaxed way, and have a delicious meal together. Gives each of us time to do what we want during the day and the day has a nice pace without any frantic bits.

I hate the "it could be their last" stuff. It could be the last for any of us. I agree that it feels like more than just being one extra for dinner.

OP's kids have seen their parents hosting both sets of grandparents every Christmas for 15 years. Why would the one year when OP doesn't host be the example that OP's kids will take on board rather than the 15 years when she made both sets of parents her priority?

OP's MIL expects to be waited on hand and foot, takes over the TV and doesn't interact with the children at all. She doesn't sound like a particularly loving grandmother at all. The kids would prefer at least one Christmas as a family of 5 which isn't unreasonable.

It sounds as though the OP will invite her MIL anyway, despite her behaviour and the impact on her children.

They have no idea that MIL would be on her own, why would they?

They haven’t made an informed decision then. How could you weight the vote by leaving out this salient fact? You only have her for 12 hours anyway, it looks pretty heartless from where I’m sitting.

I'm not sure why you think that someone who has hosted Christmas for her own parents and MIL for 15 years finds the idea of social obligation intolerable. From OP's later posts, it is obvious that her MIL is a difficult and selfish guest who expects to be waited on, takes over the TV and doesn't interact with her grandchildren at all. She is not a pleasure to host, so these years of hosting by the OP have definitely been a social obligation.

I'm also not sure why there seems to be no social obligation on MIL to be a good guest and kind grandmother.

You'd think, after missing out on spending Christmas with their mum for the last 15 years, that DH siblings would be thrilled to get the opportunity to spend the day with her.

I feel sorry for MIL. I do totally understand where you are coming from, but I feel for MIL too.

Do your parents understand that you would like to have the day with just your husband and children? If they do perhaps they could invite your mother in law, frame it as a lovely lazy adults only day. You could have all of them on boxing day.

I think I would go with your children’s choices and maybe invite MIL over Christmas Eve or Boxing Day instead.
You should be able to have Christmas Day just for your family at least once, you shouldn’t feel obligated when you’ve already done 15 years.
I think in your shoes I would phone the siblings and tell them it’s their turn to have MIL , they can’t be non-negotiable on it and just leave you with all the guilt, that’s unfair. Lay the guilt trip on the siblings , not your children.

Yes. Christmas is supposed to be about showing goodwill and seeing the family, not leaving a 78 year old at home alone.

I genuinely couldn’t live with knowing that MIL would be by herself on Christmas Day. And I’d be so very disappointed in my kids if they were happy to see her on her own too. Let’s hope they don’t do the same to you in years to come.

What will happen next year if you exclude her this Christmas. Will you welcome her back to the fold?
If I was her I’d be off somewhere else over the Christmas period, preferably somewhere warm.
We have never had Christmas Dinner with either of our married ACs, despite living near by. We see them and GCs in the morning, it save a lot of bother. If one of us was left on their own ( possible, given our ages) I doubt if we’d want to be an ‘ obligation’ guest.

This.

This sounds lovely!

Your issue doesn’t seem to be having her round. It seems to be that she wants waiting on and hogs the tv.

if it were me I would get her round later than normal but not too late maybe just 2-3 hours after her normal arrival time.

i would give her a drink on arrival and point at the drinks station for future drinks. Then do not offer any drinks. She will work out how to get herself a drink.

for the tv problem, I would ask the kids if there is anything they want to watch. Then I would announce that the kids are watching their programmes. If she asks to change the channel say no it’s the kids programmes. If she changes the channel, just change it back.

next year you may find that she doesn’t want to come for as long.

we got fed up of constantly getting people drinks so this year we are announcing a drinks station and we are sticking to it!