To judge friend's approach to Christmas?

[NoisyDenimShaker]

I'm desperately trying not to judge my friend, who keeps talking about how much she loves spending Christmas only with her husband and kids. I don't have kids, so perhaps I just don't understand. But I feel I've watched her turn into someone I'm finding more and more difficult to respect. Here's the situation: Her parents are dead now, but when they both had terminal cancer, a few years apart, she wouldn't invite them for Christmas. Even when her mum was terminal and widowed, she wouldn't invite her. The mum did have a companion, but she was desperate to spend Christmas with her daughter and four young grandchildren the last two Christmases of her life. She was terminally ill for both of those Christmases, although the cancer hadn't yet overwhelmed her and she could have travelled. Anyway, it didn't happen, because she wasn't invited.

My friend also has a sister whose husband had an affair, and the sister will be alone this year since the parents are gone and her husband is with OW, but she won't invite her sister. (When I say alone, she'll probably have invitations since the sister is cool, but she has no family left to spend it with.) Neither will she inviter her in-laws, who live nearby and are old and one is terminally ill.

She gets on fine with all those family members, whom I know are deeply hurt, as our families know each other and go way back. What she says to me is that she just wants to spend Christmas with her husband and kids.

So my question for all the parents here is this: When you have kids, is it understandable to just spend it with the husband and kids. even when various family members are dying and/or alone? That they grow up so fast, and in the blink of an eye, they'll have their own partners and Christmas will change forever? So you want to have Christmases alone with your spouse and kids while you can?

I'm just really trying to understand, because friend keeps talking with glee about how she's having the Christmas she wants, and I'm having difficulty not judging.

I don't have kids, so perhaps my friend is being totally reasonable and it's what all parents want - just to be alone with their spouse and kids at Christmas? Maybe my friend is not being unreasonable?

Goodness 🤣🤣🤣🤣

I find it a bit strange that you've apparently talked about it so much but you haven't gained any insight into why she prefers it this way.

As for hosting terminally ill relatives, are you sure they wanted to be part of the day? Depending on their health a full family Christmas could be too loud and overwhelming for them, a shorter visit might be the kinder thing to do.

Some grandparents talk a good game about wanting to see their grandkids but don't actually ever make any effort to do so. Family dynamics can be complicated. Maybe there was some huge sibling rivalry with the sister who insisted on having the parents with her so the friend's nuclear family only Christmas is actually a defensive move.

If the only motive you can ascribe to your friend is that she's horrible and selfish then you probably don't like her much and might be better off not being friends.

I will preface this by saying I don't celebrate Xmas so this is like 'an outsiders observation'

Every year, year after year there are posts on here by women so frazzled and exhausted that they've bent over backwards to accommodate everyone else's needs, family members that are rude awkward and overstay, DH that don't get presents or help or just drink too much and honestly it sounds awful. Then all the posters pile on and say, don't do it, just have your family, don't host, just chill get a takeaway, etc SET BOUNDARIES.

Then you have this scenario where someone has clearly set boundaries and a lot of ppl think she's a mean old scrooge who will have mean kids that won't want her at their house for xmas when they grow up. Does anyone win??

The 25th Dec is one day...will the terminally I'll widowed parent be alone on the 2nd Dec, the 26th? Jan the 15th?? Does she NEVER have them over? Must she be judged on this one day that very many people aren't even bothered by the religious aspects of?? The hype truly baffles me. If she is always like this then it's mean, if she not always this then maybe she's just trying to create that pretty matching postcard of little nuclear family in matching pj's and hot chocolate stations that's very hard to create when you start hosting anyone else with needs different to your own immediate family.

I've noticed xmas means different things to different people...clearly it does not mean the gathering of family and being together for her, but maybe she has other times in the year for that.

I think there’s more to it than she’s letting on, not that it matters as it her decision.

we used to spend Christmas at the in-laws, I love them but hated Christmas there as my MIL would always be so stressed but not allow help, my late FIL would kick off about something random in the afternoon, no doubt overwhelmed by so many people in his home and his stressed wife. When my kids were old enough to express an opinion about wanting to stay home that’s what we did. We hosted for a couple of years but my MIL just brought her stress with her! We’ve had Christmas in our own for a few years now and it’s bliss. Our eldest lives away from home and she and her partner do Christmas alone too. We celebrate the week before together and everyone is happy.

i do think it’s sad that she has/had loved ones who desperately wanted Christmas with her but refusing is her decision. I’d be curious if her kids and partner agreed or were just not able to have an opinion.

I have my dad and my sister round. Do I want them? Not really as it's added stress/less relaxing. But I wouldn't want them to be alone.

I dread to think that one day my children will be complaining about who gets me!

What she says and what her real thoughts are won't necessarily be the same. Perhaps her sister was a nasty piece of work to her growing up and parents stood by amd did nothing so she says "I just want my little family" for the sake of not airing her dirty laundry and being civil as adults.

I would really not judge her. She's doing what's best for her. I hope that one day my child does whats best for her and hopefully that will include an invite but if mot, fine, because i had a child to give her a life she cpuld enjoy how she wants, not so that I could have a family when I'm old.

If you asked my sibling why they don't visit our surviving parent, they would say distance and work. What they really mean is there is childhood trauma that they will never ever speak about.

No one was alone. The sister hosted Christmas for the parents

Well, to be fair, pp does have a point.
Why are you here trying to justify judging your friend?

Maybe she's not at all religious? You don't have to be, to enjoy Christmas.

Maybe giving all her love and attention to her own little family is HER way of being kind?

We don't have to all be martyrs, running around and waiting on others. We CAN just spend it only with our own DC and DH.

There are no set rules, as far as I know.
Good for her, hope she enjoys it.

I don't spend Christmas with my widowed father. I'll go over with DH sometime in Dec and we'll usually have a special meal with him and DSis & DbiL.

Dad lives in the same town as DSis and will go there for Christmas lunch.

Dad was a primary teacher and says he's all christmassed out.

No, like I said in my posts, they were able to travel. For many cancer patients, there's a period where you're terminally ill but able to go about your normal life between treatments. My own parents also died of cancer. Our parents were all friends and they would talk. When they all got to the stage of pads and needing to be toileted etc, none of them were going anywhere!

It's one thing to have your own thoughts and feelings.

It's another to start a thread on MN trying to rally people round to condemn this woman for her behaviour when none of us know her or her family history and her reasons for behaving as she does.

If you want to judge her you have that right. But why do you want other people to validate your judgement?

We spend christmas as a foursome we always invited GP’s but they always refused. Are you sure you haven’t got the wrong end of the stick OP.

@NoisyDenimShaker I really don’t know why you’re being given a hard time for posting by some. It’s a perfectly fair AIBU question, I think. I suppose the only thing is to be aware that some AIBU threads turn up in the tabloids but I think it’s usually those which are a bit more sensationalist.

It sounds a bit unkind to me but we don’t know her reasons. It’s certainly not a default position once you have children.

We grew up sharing Christmas with grandparents and occasionally other family friends would also join us. So to me, it’s natural to involve extended family at Christmas.

Now I have my own children: we spend most of our year as the 4 of us; we go on holiday as the 4 of us and so on. So for us, it’s fun and natural to have extended family for Christmas.

And, unless there’s a massive backstory, it does seem unkind to leave terminally ill close family members alone. Does she really want to establish this as a precedent for when her children are adults and it’s her turn to be alone on Christmas Day? Perhaps she would be happy with that but I wonder whether she’s thought of it.

If she keeps discussing it with you, perhaps she wants your approval? I think it’s fine to say it’s not what you would do.

The in-laws too though?

*Easypeelersareterrible

Unbelievably selfish in my opinion. Christmas isn’t just about you and your partner and your kids and your instagram account. It’s a Christian festival which is mainly about being kind.

I bet she gives these relatives a present, when the only really presents they want are to be with their family and she’s stopping them. What a total bitch*

They were with the sister. The sister is family. They were with family.

I think she might have some social anxiety, yes. She does get very het up about things.

The first thing that springs to my mind is what is the rest of her year like?

If she and DH and kids rarely get time together (let's say they work shifts and juggle childcare) then this could be a really special time for them to be together. Also, do they genrally support family the rest of the year?

It depends on the relationships too. I'll sound like a total birch, but it was SUCH a relief last year that MIL wasn't going to cause a scene (because she had recently passed). She was divorced and miserable (had been divorced for 12 years before I met her when I was 18) and was a boarder with poor health. So we ALWAYS had to have her come to us. She had other family, but they fought like cats in a sack. She spent the whole visit finding everything unsatisfactory - she wouldn't eat food if I'd cooked it and instead kept bags of takeaway food in her room, which would start to rot and she'd still eat it and then get ill and say I was poisoning her water so she'd only drink bottled water. She'd smoke out of the window in her room. On the day she'd constantly apologise in a really dramatic way - every time someone opened a present she'd say something like "oh, I hope you're not expecting something like that from me. I'm far too poor to get that, I wouldn't eat for a week". Literally EVERY present. Anything from one of her relatives would be particularly dramatic as she'd want to google it to find out what it cost to see if her present from them was the same amount.

Am I looking forward to this Christmas without her? Hell yes! Nice quiet one with the kids, my parents are coming over for lunch/presents/walk but it'll be low key and relaxed and I'm really looking forward to it

People that didn't know MIL well had no idea. She could put on a good act of being a nice poor little old lady (she was 62 when she died!).

I also don't think you have to do the same everyyear. Having the odd quiet Christmas doesn't make you a monster.

I think it speaks volumes about their relationship with their family, really. Sometimes it's a bit like grand gestures on Valentine's day when the relationship is otherwise shit.

I'm desperately trying not to judge my friend

I think you need to desperately try a bit harder, OP

Yes, this was my first thought as well.

No one should feel obliged to host, and certainly not to have unpleasant relatives over, but we have almost always spent Christmas Day with PIL and Boxing Day with DF and DSM and DB and his family.

Does she understand how this might well
play out when she’s older, having modelled a nuclear family-only Christmas to her DC?

It's difficult, honestly, because there's a continuum. Yes it is a bit selfish to not invite others. Yet, every childhood Christmas I had was a little overshadowed by the duty to older relatives and the pressure of hosting them. And now, apart from the odd year off hosting that we declare, our actual Christmas day is less fun and relaxed than it would be with just my lovely nearly grown up children. There's not even room for them on the sofa so they end up in their bedrooms while I bring cups of tea to snoring relatives and sit on the floor with three days of hosting other visitors ahead of me. And dh can't have a tipple until he's driven them home. And while I fairly happily will go the extra mile for dps, and dils, this has also meant hosting nearly 20 years of my dps partners who I have no emotional connection with. I hope in the future to always be able to see my dds over the Christmas period, whether it is for a Christmas eve dinner, a boxing day walk, a new year's dinner - we will travel or pay or cook as much as helps out. And we would be happy to phone them on Christmas day morning and then cook our own Christmas dinner. Love isn't selfish, but it's ok for people to say what works for them.

I admire the boundaries. Maybe she does Christmas Eve or Boxing Day with these others. Maybe she has had awful Christmas times with these very people in the past?

Did your friend see her parents at all over the Christmas period? I have a bit of a problem with people assuming that if you don't see someone on Christmas Day or Boxing Day, then you're not 'spending Christmas with them.' Christmas Day can be any day around the Christmas period when it comes to spending time with family. My close family is blended and when my DCs were little and they would spend Christmas Day with their other parent, we would have our Christmas Day when they got home, on the the 27th or 28th or whatever. This was always wonderful and magical and not any less special than spending the 25th with them I also used to see my parents every Christmas, around Christmas time, but not always on 25th December.

I'm with your friend on this, I think, but would like to hear her side of things! For instance, maybe she sees her family a lot throughout the year and organises a Christmas visit before or after the 25th. Perhaps she is super busy with work/family demands etc. all year round so she keeps the 25th/26th as special time just for her DH and kids. I don't think there is anything wrong with that.

Not sure what you want from the op - maybe your New Year’s resolution should be to not spend so much time with someone whose choices you find so baffling and distasteful. Also there is something strange about your issue with her having dc and not hosting and sister not having dc and hosting - you said the dc are late teens/ early 20s. What wide eyed magical Christmas experience is anyone missing out on in 2024 with grown up dc?

You cannot change your friend you can only change how you react and respond. 100s of people telling you they think she’s a selfish horrible bitch who will die alone and cold on Xmas day 2075 is going to make no difference.