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??

@Boredoutofmyhead imagine if she does want to be alone and her ideal of hell is year on year having to sit in someone else's house feeling awkward and clings to the TV

How will you feel when you're on your own on Christmas day? I really think it's a day for being together not just for kids.

Well this is a fair point: you are teaching your DC it’s more important to put their own wishes first than to include elderly relatives.

If your grown up kids or grandkids decide they don’t want you there one Christmas, is that ok with you? As that’s the message they are getting now

Still think the best option is to have MIL over but not let her dominate the day.

Omg I'm so.sad for you and your kids to.have never even once had a taste of your own Christmas without someone else's needs over taking 5 other people's!!
Your DH siblings should be feeling guilty, not you!!
Stand up for your needs and your chilrdrens righhts! Otherwise youll bitterly regret it.
I'd like to know how many of these posters who call you selfish for wanting ONE chance to find out what Chriwtmas is like for your family alone, actually have hosted BOTH parents for 15 yrs!!

One year. That's all your asking.
Your husband just doesn't want to deal with discomfort of telling her.
His siblings should be the ones telljng her and your husband should be sticking by you and the kids.
He should also be grovelling that YOU hosted his mum for all those years.

I think I'd rather spend the day alone than have one of my kids turn up just for an hour, with a plated 'guilt meal', before leaving me alone again. How depressing.

I'm sorry but regardless of age of kids etc there's no way if either my parent or dh parent was going to be on their own I'd exclude them.
Your parents have each other so nit the issue, but mil is on her own. I understand uour dh has siblings who officially could, but won't, step up.
I'm not sure how she is difficult and maybe she needs to be 'handled' differently but there's no way I could enjoy my day knowing and elderly relative was on their own.

Same.

No matter how you temper it, the point is the same.
You are telling yours and his parent's that you and your children don't want the bother of them around on Christmas Day.

It is what it is, no matter what you "call" it.

There are other solutions, but you want to just exclude them. Own up to that fact.

I have (my DH works odd shifts) and I kind of enjoyed it. Other years it’s been just the two of us, and other years I (or the both of us) have been invited out, and yet other years been invited (solo) to others and declined.

🤷‍♀️ This year I’ll be on my own for (US) Thanksgiving (DH is working) and it’s fine with me.

All this to say everyone has their own feelings on holidays. Maybe Granny looks forward to this day all year and maybe she dreads the inevitable invitation… only Granny knows.

Your MIL and in-laws all sound pretty selfish!

DHand I always keep Christmas eve for just us. Maybe you could extend the just your family time by starting in Christmas eve. E.g. make Christmas cookies / gingerbread house decorating in the afternoon. Hot chocolate bar at 5pm.

Christmas eve evening spent watching a Christmas movie all together with popcorn and / or playing board games. Stay up til midnight and open one small present each. Then Christmas morning opening presents, playing with gifts / chilling out together in pj's. MIL comes round for a meal at 6pm and is dropped off home after. That way MIL can look forward to seeing you and plan her tv viewing accordingly...

OP asked her children what would be their ideal Christmas and they said the 5 of them. The children weren't aware that MIL's other child would refuse to spend Christmas with her.

OP has hosted her parents and MIL for 15 years. MIL is a difficult guest who expects to be waited on, insists on watching her TV programmes all day and pays no attention at all to the children. MIL's needs and preferences have been prioritised over her children's needs for 15 years. They have never had a Christmas without her.

OP isn't going to leave MIL on her own and will still invite her but will try and organise things so that the children enjoy the day more.

I think you are setting yourself up here.
On one hand you are making Xmas day unrealistically special putting such emotion and meaning on it, and on the other saying sorry mum not for you it’s just a day get over it.
You have been in charge of your Christmas since you have had children, you wanted that. Before that, for god knows how many decades, your mother hosted. Now she’s older and alone you want to dump her.
Children will always go for more for themselves, they are quite heartless about others. As they have little relative empathy , the world is their oyster. Don’t set such selfish precedents.
I ‘hosted’ my mum after my father died and it became as part of Christmas as any other tradition, right into her nineties and the logistics of her travelling so far was brilliant logistics. Everyone had to make a big effort which made it more valuable. There’s also something about having a member of the older generation there that keeps traditions going.
Stop being a child, it’s a massive rejection. The trouble with Christmas is that everyone thinks it for them. Its a very symbolic cultural occasion. Or it’s just another day? either way to exclude her is not kind or wise.

On the basis that people invite strangers into their home for Christmas having your children's grandmother doesn't seem like a big ask. Your children are learning from you. Would you be happy to be left to your own devices in a few decades time?

Maybe you would, but are you 78?

That’s not what she said!

No it’s not “ours” it’s yours! You DH doesn’t like the idea. So you don’t want to bring up ‘people pleasers” but you do want to bring up selfish individuals. God help you when you’re old, what goes around comes around, so when you’re in your late 70’s and your children tell you, sorry mum our kids don’t want you for Christmas, maybe you’ll look back on this and remember what you did, whilst you’re sat all alone on. Christmas Day. It amazes me how people try to justify their actions. Be honest, tell your children that Grandma is going to be totally alone on Christmas Day and then ask them again what they want to do. Hopefully they will have more compassion than you, it’s not about ‘people pleasing’ it’s about being kind!

That's not what who said? The poster I was replying to or the OP?

The OP has said in later posts:

'It's been really helpful to see suggestions to make it work for everyone and that does seem to be a reduced time of hosting. This is what we are going to go with.'

'Ultimately no one is going to be on their own at Christmas. We will adjust.'

The op, originally said she didn’t want mil at all for Christmas Day, not that she’d have her and structure the day differently!

She did say that in her OP and I don't think she was unreasonable as she has hosted her MIL for 15 years and MIL is not a great guest.

However, as the OP seems to be a kind person, she has taken comments on board and come up with a solution so that her MIL won't be alone on Christmas Day.

this is one of the saddest things Ive read on here about xmas

talk about bringing up entitled kids in an age where family bonds mean nothing

the day the kids want can be ANY OTHER DAY

you are prepared to let the grandparents feel left out and crap to appease some teenagers

In my family there is no way on gods earth children would be asked a question like this

They weren’t asked ‘will we till Granny to piss off and have a sad lonely Christmas by herself and it can just be us?’ they were asked what their ideal day was. They’re allowed to be honest and say whatever they might prefer - that doesn’t make them selfish and it doesn’t even mean it’ll happen! MIL doesn’t sound like a warm and fuzzy grandparent who wants to make the day magical for her grandkids so who can blame them?

I never said they were! Maybe read my post!!!

Absolutely! Well said. I cannot believe all the people on here that thinks it’s fine to leave an elderly relative alone on Christmas Day! I hope when they’re old, it happens to them. I bet then they’ll have a different opinion.

Unfortunately I'm not all that far away from it. Which is why I find this so depressing.

It would be like a double rejection.

1. (Weeks before) Sorry mum, we can't have you for Christmas Day
2. (Christmas Day mid afternoon) I hope you enjoyed that plate of Christmas dinner that I microwaved for you, Mum. I'm off now, back to my little family to watch your grandkids play with the toys you bought them.

2 world be the worst

Honestly that makes me feel really sad for your MIL. Every year for 15 years she has had a big lively Christmas with family to suddenly spending it completely alone. Does she at least have friends she can go to?