I don't have my DC this year. My exH lives a few hours away from me so Christmas is alternated, one of us has them on birthdays and the other has them at Christmas then the following year it reverses. This year is a birthdays not Christmas year for me.
The DC will have a great time, exH has a lot planned and they will have a lovely Christmas & we will have our own Christmas on 27th December when they come back, they can choose the food (a buffet this year) and we will do presents & have family over for lunch.
But what do we all do on Christmas Day when we don't have them? I will be spending the day with my DP & we will visit one set of parents for lunch & the other parents in the evening. I won't have to cook. I can get drunk if I want (I don't usually as everyone comes to us & I cook a big lunch) Its nice sometimes to sit fatly on the sofa & not have to build Lego or to be able to talk to relatives you haven't seen for years without constant punctuating of 'hang on I'll have to find the batteries' or ' DS2 you can wipe your own bum, try it first before I come up'. There is a lot about an adult only Christmas that I like.
But the low point for me is Christmas morning when there are no squealing children & no ecstatic present opening. I phone them at exH's and they always speak to me & its wonderful to hear the excitement in their voices, but it just exaggerates the silence when they hang up.
I wouldn't choose it this way, but its preferable to living with him (he's sober now) and if this is what it takes to be an adult and to put the childrens' needs for a relationship with their father first, then its the way it has to be. And that's OK.
But I can't be the only one, so tell me what you are all doing as well this year and maybe we can support each other 