Not seeing relatives who live locally on Christmas Day

[Mardybummode]

Apologies for the title

My parents live a ten minute drive away. My in-laws live 3 hours away.

I don’t have a great relationship with my parents. I don’t like my mum and wouldn’t choose to spend time with her although we do see her once every one-two weeks. My DH doesn’t like her either.

We have a 4 month old DD so she’ll be about 10 months at Christmas.

I had hoped that me and DH would spend Christmas Day and Christmas Eve on our own this year so we can start making traditions for DD and any future children we might have. However, my mum has said “we will come round Christmas Day afternoon” and me being a coward I didn’t say anything.

I do prefer spending time with my in-laws but last Christmas was probably a bit too long spent with them (lovely people but I got cabin fever towards the end), plus we’d have the logistics issue of presents, baby and what to do with the dog.

I’ve only got a small 2 bedroom house so hosting isn’t an option.

I’m not sure what to do. Am I unreasonable in not wanting to see my parents on Christmas Day? I’ll still see them over the Christmas period. I didn’t spend Christmas or New Year with them the year we got married and my mum kicked off about it in the January & February following, even though we did see them during the Christmas period

I’ll tell them when they next bring it up then :)

The year we got married, we gave them loads of notice that we were spending it alone and my mum seemed fine with it. (She probably wasn’t but just wanted to look reasonable in front of DH) but when the time came to it she was not happy.

The in laws were in the Caribbean so I guess in my my mums head she thought that as we weren’t busy seeing the in laws then we should see my mum. Which we did just not when she wanted.

I can totally why you do not want to spend time with your parents if you don't have a good relationship.

I get where you are coming from OP, my mum is hard work and never made Christmas that special (even when we were kids) However we lived near my parents when my kids were little so ended up having Christmas lunch with them, probably on did it for my (lovely) dad's sake who utterly adored his grandchildren.

After we moved away, I think we had maybe four Christmases whilst our girls were growing up (and that was generally when DH was working over Christmas so we didn't have any better offers...), and at least my brothers were around so it did make it more enjoyable. But definitely Christmas was soooo much better as our family of four.

All of my DH family live at the other end of the country and made no effort to invite us to their dinner. Thank fuck for that, I am more than happy with that arrangement! My MIL is even more hard work than my mother...

@UnderTheTree - my mum didn’t really make much effort at Christmas either. For the past few years she’s been saying “I’m not putting the tree up this year” etc and she always does in the end. I think she likes the idea of us all being there at Christmas rather than the reality. Her and my dad snap at each other, my dad will snap at my sister and my mum will bitch to me about my dad, brother and sister when they aren’t in earshot.

My brother and sister have ASD so they do get a bit OTT at Christmas. My sister loves the build up to Christmas and the excitement but can’t cope when the day comes as it’s a huge anti climax for her. My parents don’t handle this well at all.

My parents also don’t join in any games. They just put a film on and sit on their tablets not really interacting (going by previous years)

DH spoke to his parents the other day and the topic of Christmas came up. DH said that on the day it’s just going to be the three of us even though the in-laws suggested that they get an air bnb closer to us.

So when my parents mention it again I’m just saying that to make it fair on both sets of grandparents we aren’t seeing either of them on the day.

I’ve also just found out I’m pregnant (only 4 weeks so really really early days) so I don’t want to host anything or do anything to their schedule on the day if all goes well with the pregnancy

I would say something along the lines of 'change of plan mum, we're spending Christmas day on our own this year so won't be having guests but would love to see you Boxing Day. She can either accept it or not.

Don't wait til they mention it again, that could be ages. Bring it up now and just tell them.