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??

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.

OP’s kids have been experiencing that lesson for 15 years… all they’ve ever had are christmases that revolve around hosting grandparents, at least one of whom is difficult and hard work. I love and value my older family members, but this idea that older people should get to act however they please and everyone else just has to accommodate it and shut up is bullshit, and I think it’s lousy to teach our kids that family members can be rude guests or treat us poorly and we’re expected to just accept it.

OP, block out Christmas morning and luncheon for your family of 5. Do it now so your parents and MIL can plan for that part of the day. And take advantage of your MIL being close by inviting her to join for evening nibbles either Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, making it clear that you’ll be doing something low-key during that time and structuring the invite with a specific time frame.

Your DH’s sibling being so firm with his boundary makes me wonder if MIL is more than a little difficult, btw.

I wouldn’t do this to yours and DH parents. They could stand to feel very rejected by this. Your eldest is with you every single day, you could do a special second Christmas anytime before or after the day itself where it’s just you 5.

OP- here's a suggestion- I would move both MIL and your parents to Boxing Day. I would say that due to some (fictional) work situation one of you will be working super hard and late in the lead up to Christmas including Christmas Eve and therefore you need Christmas Day to chill before being on good form for the family on Boxing Day. Might that spare feelings whilst also giving you your nuclear family Christmas Day?

Absolutely this, DHs sibling is the one who doesn't appear bothered about their mother being alone, not about their nieces and nephews having a Christmas focused on them

I also think it's likelt the children didn't twig that a day as a family would mean Granny was on her own, very possible they assumed she'd go to their aunt/uncle.

Having said that I would also feel bad leaving my mil alone (she, like yours, has no partner and is very nice but can be hard to host). I'd explain to kids that aunt/uncle is not going to invite Granny round and you don't think she should be on her own. At the same time you've heard their desire for a more family-focused day, so ask for their ideas on ways to do that while still including grandparents.

So manipulative of your DH to ask them when he was expecting a particular answer and didn't have a plan for the other answer.

I would stay firm on the plan to have it just the 5 of you.

I would however (between now and then) talk with your MiL (or get your DH to do it) and however you want to phrase it get her to complain/mention multiple times to her other adult child(ren) that they haven't stepped up and welcomed her into their homes and you are quite right to stop hosting for the time being. You deserve a break.

I'd also be giving consideration to not hosting the siblings who don't step up on this for a while. Give yourselves a break.

Enjoy your Christmas!

Let's hope it's not her last Christmas...

Take a tip from the step parenting board: kids don’t get to dictate what goes on in the house. This is for and your husband alone to decide. The kids will go along with whatever the outcome is.

So dramatic. The sibling, cousins, on holiday, alone, whatever. There are lots of ways to spend a day. 16 yo olds shouldn't be crippled with anxiety wondering what everyone is doing with themselves. FFS. I assume she just thought if an adult was asking, there was a plan.

I just don't think I could leave my MIL all on her own on Xmas day. The guilt would cause a cloud over the day.

Unless there is a back story, I think it's pretty awful that your DH sibling won't step up and host her.

I wouldn't leave my MiL on her own. I would also call my sibling and give them a mouthful about how they can't call their mum around once in 15 years.

I think the time to have this conversation was months ago.. not six weeks or so before Christmas

I'd host your MIL this year as I think it's v sad she'd be on her own.....the other sibling is being a selfish bellend......I'd be v annoyed about their behaviour

Set your stall out for next year.. ... it will just be the five of you on Christmas day 2025

Making nan spend Xmas day all on her own, when she lives only 15 mins away, is horrid IMO. If she had a partner or literally anyone else to spend some of the day with, it'd be different.

(Yes, his siblings are even worse but they are not here for me to tell them)

Why don't you just push back the time you pick her up by an hour or two so you get all of the morning together as a family, get her just before dinner and spend a few hours in the evening together?

Why don't the children know that MIL would be on her own? It sounds as though you haven't given them the full facts on which to make their decision. You say they care about their grandparents so surely they would be unhappy to realise that excluding MIL means she will be on her own

She could have 20 years left. My MIL died very young. This kind of FOG for decades is really harmful to children. I still remember my step-grandmother telling me she was dying when I was a tween. She lived into my 40s. She loved guilt too.

Tell your children that their grandmother will be alone on Christmas Day. Surely they won’t want this?

DH & I have always said we don’t want our parents alone on Christmas Day unless that’s what they want. In fact we’ve had to change our plans for this year because my brother has been useless but my dc totally get that they don’t want their grandparents on their own so they were the ones who suggested changing things even as DH & I were giving each other meaningful looks across the room.

I don’t really get the ‘just us’ for Christmas thing though, I love having loads of people around for Christmas.

Is there something you could do around changing your mentality of ‘hosting’ - work out with the dc the most important bits for them & make those still happen. MIL is family - I would expect her to fit in rather than doing loads of stuff especially for her.

Host them, they won’t be around forever so make the most of Christmases with them whilst you can. You can spend lots of other days as the 5 of you.
you can’t leave a family member alone at Christmas (unless that’s what they want)

Nice bit of guilt tripping the last 15 years could have been her last or the next 15. People shouldn’t be beholden due to age. A 17 years old last year could be this year while an 80’year old lives on.

I don’t really understand why you can’t have the 5 of you on Boxing Day and make that your special day, doing whatever it is you plan to do without all the grandparents there. It could be a new tradition.

I say this as someone who is trying to scale back Christmas this year too. I have teens 13-18 and they are just less interested in the whole thing though enjoy a quiz or board game on the day. My family split the cooking but my dad can no longer really manage the meat (and his hygiene is no longer there). I’d like us all to eat separately and convene late afternoon for cheese and desserts, but I’m not sure how they will take it.

Exactly. They've had 15 years off and OP has told them. MIL has multiple children and it's time the others got their in gear and stepped up. As long as OP acquiesces they won't, got that t shirt myself.

Entirely agree.

Surely the I don’t see why you can’t have Boxing Day goes both ways.

Why can’t mil have Boxing Day? If it’s just a day.

Thank you for all of your replies, all very varied with lots of interesting points! I can take any “grief” - I did ask!

Again, there was no “shall we have Christmas on our own this year and leave Grandma on her own?”. It was “how would you like to spend Christmas with no right or wrong answer”

With regards to hosting, it’s a whole day thing with us getting her drinks, food, she has a set tv routine of what she wants to watch so that is on most of the day, she doesn’t really interact with the children to be honest, more talks to us, usually about what she’s watching. Not a grandma that would take part in a board game with them etc.

Don’t tell the grandparents that their grandchildren don’t want them there. That would be horrible.
you need to own it and say you can’t face hosting

Why don’t the siblings want to host their mother? Is there more to it?

the only reason I ask is because my MIL has 3 kids, none of them want to host her but take it in turns cus they have to. It’s horrible but it’s the bed she’s made unfortunately! She’s ruined so many christmasses in their childhood that they are reluctant to involve her in their own childrens. It’s really sad.