If you do Christmas Eve boxes

[PoesyCherish]

How do you handle it when DSC are not with you Christmas Eve? Do you still make them one up and give it to them next time they come?

I used to have a big dinner, minus the turkey, but with crackers etc a week before Christmas with the step kids. We would put names in a hat and buy a present for the person we got. Which we gave out in the meal. We’d play games afterwards too. It worked really well. It was a way of equalising the present giving, and saying we are also a family.

So obviously we put names in the hat the week before the dinner! (Usually DP bought them out to buy a present that week as some needed... encouraging!)

It’s a way of making sure everyone is equal too. My experience of SM was a disaster but I got some things right! My youngest DSD still remembers it and used to say it’s ‘our tradition’.
Which is the only ‘our’ I ever heard her say.

Can I just throw in: my dickhead ExH took me to court (numerous times) and one of the (made up) reasons was because he wanted to formalise contact arrangements (because he was allegedly worried I would breach our informal contact agreement at some point in the future). During this, one of the things that he brought up was that he wanted DD to spend every other Xmas with him. (For the record, DD didn’t want to spend Xmas day there, or I would have considered it before it went to court!) This was one of the few of his otherwise ludicrous demands which was granted by the judge. So it might be worth considering going down that route by some of you with unreasonable ExW?

How on earth is it ludicrous to want to spend time with your DD at Christmas @SummersB?

@PoseyCherish - if you read my post correctly you will see that’s I have A) sympathied with your Situation and given you advice to go to court and see if you could get access to your DSD every other Xmas and B) written that this was one of his otherwise ludicrous demands - these included to be informed in writing, as in actual postal letters, of any school days our DD missed due to illness, because he felt she was missing too many school days in primary school (she wasn’t), and being made her passport holder as there was a risk of me fleeing the country with her (this was completely fabricated and even left the judge speechless, before he gave him a bollocking for making stuff up). Despite all this, as I said in my previous post, my DD didn’t want to go to his house for Xmas day. Despite this I agreed to her going there every other Xmas day when it came to court because frankly I was exhausted and broke by being in court constantly because he had yet again made shit up about us.
ExH has since cut contact with now teenage DD, probably because he could no longer manipulate us and make all our lifes a by dragging us through court for made up shit every five minutes. Instead DD now sees her grandparents on his side and has previously gone there for Xmas day because she wanted to - just for the record.

@PoesyCherish - just realised I got your tag wrong, sorry.