Should I invite parents for Xmas?

georgiesmum

You sound very selfish. What about all the years your mum tried to give you a good Christmas? She will be working very hard to make Christmas special for the old people,and will be exhausted no doubt, surely her daughter can make a little effort now. Why would you not want your mother for Christmas. ( unless she is a particularly bad one )Remember, this is how your own children will treat you when they have their families. ,they will go by your own attitude to your mum.
I have been away for Christmas but still get invited to my daughters and son when i am home.
Why are you annoyed that they had a Christmas meal out, probably something they have always wanted to try. Bet your mum is there for you though, baby sitting etc.
I would give the world to have a mother to invite for Christmas. We always invited my MIL, and i hated her.

newcook

neverdespairgirl wrote: »

It can work. As a child we had my grandparents and uncle round - no other grandchildren, other than the 4 of us my parents had. Sorted!

Before my parents got divorced, I remember as a child going to my grandma and granddads house for xmas – there would be:

Grandma and granddad (obviously!)
Dad
Mom
Nan (moms mom – divorced, no other children)
Me
Brother
Aunt 1, uncle + their 2 children (who alternated Christmases at parents)
Aunt 2, uncle + their 2 children (who also alternated Christmases at parents)

I have no idea how we all used to fit in the house as it’s a little 2 up, 2 down and although my aunts used to alternate xmas with their inlaws, they used to have it so they would be at grandma and granddads at the same time!!

neverdespairgirl

And did you all enjoy it?

CH27

georgiesmum wrote: »

You sound very selfish. What about all the years your mum tried to give you a good Christmas? She will be working very hard to make Christmas special for the old people,and will be exhausted no doubt, surely her daughter can make a little effort now. Why would you not want your mother for Christmas. ( unless she is a particularly bad one )Remember, this is how your own children will treat you when they have their families. ,they will go by your own attitude to your mum.
I have been away for Christmas but still get invited to my daughters and son when i am home.
Why are you annoyed that they had a Christmas meal out, probably something they have always wanted to try. Bet your mum is there for you though, baby sitting etc.
I would give the world to have a mother to invite for Christmas. We always invited my MIL, and i hated her.

Very true!

newcook

neverdespairgirl wrote: »

And did you all enjoy it?

hell yeah!!!!

POPPYOSCAR

georgiesmum wrote: »

You sound very selfish. What about all the years your mum tried to give you a good Christmas? She will be working very hard to make Christmas special for the old people,and will be exhausted no doubt, surely her daughter can make a little effort now. Why would you not want your mother for Christmas. ( unless she is a particularly bad one )Remember, this is how your own children will treat you when they have their families. ,they will go by your own attitude to your mum.
I have been away for Christmas but still get invited to my daughters and son when i am home.
Why are you annoyed that they had a Christmas meal out, probably something they have always wanted to try. Bet your mum is there for you though, baby sitting etc.
I would give the world to have a mother to invite for Christmas. We always invited my MIL, and i hated her.

I did not have a good relationship with my mother, but my children do have a good relationship with me and they do not treat me like I treated my mother.

I also would not want to be invited somewhere through guilt, or as payment 'for all the christmas dinners they had as a child'. I would only want to be there if they wanted my company.

blue_monkey_2

I am the same as poppyoscar I am afraid.

Water has long passed under that bridge and if parents are quick enough to dump you as soon as you are old enough and not help you when you ask them to, well then they should expect that those children are able to cope without them and have a life of their own without them. Some parents choose to do this later in life and yes, as a child, it still hurts because they dummp you for something better.

The OP seems annoyed that her mother can only be bothered when she wants - we do not know the rest of the story. I;ve got a son who is disabled and no-one ever offers to help, ever asks if we want to go out and they babysit. So yes, it is all relevant I am afraid.

She should not be obliged to spend time with her just because she gave birth to her. Some parents ARE awful - and if yours are not then be thankful every day for that.

For those of you saying that you wish you had mums/dads and we should be grateful ours are - no, we do not need to be emotionally blackmailed into that - you should be grateful for the time you had and that your parents were decent to you. Not all mums and dads are like that sadly. My friend speaks to her mum 3 times a day on the phone and sees her almost every day - I personally think that is weird!!

And if the OP is in the same situation as I am with my mum and the mum could get to my house (I am not picking her up, I like being at home on Xmas day), I'd probably invite her for lunch and explain that we have friends coming at 6pm so they are welcome to stay until 5.00. And then put my feet up and enjoy the rest of the evening.

But my first thought was 'why is the husband not cooking if his wife is at work all morning' too. OP, why is your dad not doing all of the cooking? We have a turkey breast from Tesco/Sainsbury, only takes 70 mins in the oven, it's already prepared. How hard can that be?? Tell your mum to buy it frozen and it'll be less effort for YOUR DAD.

SingleSue

My parents house is a free for all on Christmas and Boxing day...we all descend upon them, the only difference now is that we tend to do the most part of the cooking, preparation, washing up etc as they are getting on a little and mum gets exhausted easily.

But my parents would not have it any other way...they love seeing everyone at Christmas and that includes friends of the children (meaning me and my siblings) and now friends of their grandchildren too!

For dinner this year they have me and my boys and my brother with his wife and her mother, on boxing day lunch they will have my sister, her husband and their 3 children and in the evening, me and my boys and my brother, his wife, her mother and his children bundle down for the party.

For present opening on the morning of Christmas day, they will have me and my boys, my ex mother in law, a family friend, my brother, his wife, wife's mother and his two children plus at some point, another family friend arriving with his wife and two children...it's why we call my parent's house the madhouse!

We all muck in, even the children (usually setting the table and putting dishes away) and the financial cost is shared too, I make mince pies and the christmas cake plus supply some veg and non alcoholic wine, my brother and his wife some bits and bobs extras and her mother, the assortment of piccalilli etc.

To me, Christmas is not Christmas without the family..the thought of not being around all my family on Christmas day is unthinkable.

Back to the thread - Is there a possibility the parents decided to go out for dinner last year possibly because they didn't receive much help (or reluctant help) in previous years and they just fancied a break, or a change from the normal routine where all the hard work had been taken out?

*Louise*

I would never leave family memebers out at christmas unless there was a massive rift, which in the OP's case there doesn't seem to be.

We usually have MIL and FIL over every second year, the alternate years they go to OH's brother and wife. I found out last week that they haven't been invited over this year (and they hadn't liked to say to us because they didn't want us to feel obligated to invite them) so of course I told them they should come to us, can't have an older couple alone on christmas day not spending time with any of their 6 grandchildren.

Christmas is meant to be about family

balletshoes

OP is there an underlying problem between you and your Mum that we don't know about? On the surface of it, from what you've said on this thread, if you get on okay with your parents and your Mum is working in the morning on Christmas Day, it would seem to be a reasonable thing to do to invite them for Christmas dinner, whenever you'd planned to eat. Unless I'm missing something, it doesn't need to involve any major upheaval for you, does it?