Narcissistic relatives at Christmas - how do you manage?

[Cosyblanket99]

I guess this partly depends on their relationship to you. But what do you do? Invite/see them and just grin and bear it? Not see them at all? Something in between?

If someone was a jerk to me, family or not, I definitely wouldn’t be inviting them to my house. I might humour an invitation somewhere else where they might also be in attendance if there would be enough people there that I wouldn’t have to interact with them. I’m NC with my family (because they are highly dysfunctional, not narcissistic) and I don’t see them at Christmas or have any sort of interaction with them.

You’re allowed to have peace and make a lovely Christmas for yourself without throwing yourself in the sacrificial heap for someone who isn’t even kind to you.

With difficulty! It helps me to decide beforehand what boundaries I need to keep ( eg I will go out for 30 minutes walk alone in fresh air even if others don't like it. I will take time to myself by going to bed early etc

NC

Don't see them.
DH takes the DC to the MIL (with some persuasion) a week before and I saty at home

Too little information here but I can say that one of the reasons I like a bigger christmas is it's a lot easier to just quietly ignore or avoid the family members I have less time for.

I have restricted the amount of times a year I have to see the person. This is one of the times I do. I grin and bear it for DM but god it's hard and the adult in question is (quite unsurprisingly) raising a child who needs a high level of tolerance as well.