AIBU to refuse a full early Christmas with young children?

[WarmHare]

My in-laws want to celebrate Christmas early (28th/29th of November) due to them going away throughout December.

They brought this up last weekend & we tentatively agreed, however it’s now clear that we all misunderstood what “celebrate” meant.

They are wanting to replicate Christmas Day, my issue is we have very young children, who very much believe in Father Christmas, therefore I don’t want two Christmases confusing them & our second actually real Christmas having the shine taken off.

I offered a compromise of them coming over for the weekend, helping the children decorate the tree, we’ll go to the Pantomime (they start mid November here) then we’ll give them their gifts & have a curry, they really want to give the children & us our gifts & recreate Christmas morning.

As to not drip feed, some context points

DH thinks we should let them replicate Christmas.

They're cruising the first three weeks of December then having Christmas week in Canada, this has been planned & booked for 2 years, its for their 50th wedding anniversary.

We don’t always spend Christmas Day together so we’re not breaking any traditions.

They are lovely people & don’t usually ask much of us, so the guilty side of me is feeling bad

My DH checked that the reason they are being so insistent about early gifts isn’t because they’re are for things before Christmas i.e concert tickets etc, they’re not planning anything like that

So am I being unreasonable & we should just let them completely replicate Christmas or am I not being unreasonable & my compromise seems fair.

Your idea with a gift exchange sounds lovely.

Also, you could start a tradition here 😁

sorry if you’ve said - but why not have it at their house so they have to sort the decorations and dinner. So that you wint have the feeling of repeating yourself come December 25th.

and maybe ask her what she imagines you’ll be doing on 25th December if you do the whole thing in November? May help her realise she’s being a bit selfish.

I think it’s okay. Just tell the kids it a pretend Christmas. Children under 5 are always confused about Christmas as it doesn’t make any sense anyway. By the time actual Christmas Day comes it will have been largely forgotten.

Their plan sounds fine.
But only exchange GP to DC and your gifts to GP. Call it Granny's early Christmas. Your kids will understand that GP wish to celebrate Jesus' birthday but will be far away on a ship then.

I think some people are probably underestimating the confusion to two very little kids! Things like:
A) not understanding why next year they won't have two Xmas days with presents to open.
B) not understanding why they aren't getting a big pile of presents from mum and dad etc in Nov.
C) not understanding why there's less presents to open on the real Xmas day because they have had a good few to open in Nov.
D) Also they may go and say to other little kids how they've had a load of presents in Nov and cause upset to other little kids who are wondering why they didn't.

Why about face timing / filming the kids opening the present ok Xmas day for the grandparents so that you can have an early festive meal without completely confusing the kids.

It probably depends somewhat on the kids but I agree. When mine were this age managing the excitement and yet confusion would have made my life a lot more difficult at what can already be quite a stressful time of year form parents of small children.

Glad mine isn't the only one to have been confused by Christmas, but what would you do if they are heartbroken sobs and everything if what they really want isn't there?

If DC are young they won't really know or remember! Just rename it as early Christmas meal, thanksgiving, even simply a meal?