Coping with Xmas Day - help please

Serendipitious

OP, you can't change Christmas Past, and it's a bit late now to do much to alter the shape of Christmas Present, so for this year I would just employ whatever coping strategies you can think of that will help you get through the day.

But there is a great deal you can do regarding Christmas Yet To Come, and I would suggest you start creating some traditions of your own, that suit you (and your OH) a bit better than the current arrangements. The best time to discuss that is sometime well into 2015, when the emotional impact of this year has faded a little. But be sure to do it well before next year's Christmas is in sight, as then the new plans will have chance to gain a momentum of their own.

For now, I would use this Christmas as an opportunity to get clear about what you really do want for the future, and how you want Christmas to be for any future family you may have.

I hosted family Christmases single-handedly for over 20 years and found it very hard work trying to please everybody. So when my daughter married, I told her I had no expectations whatsoever regarding Christmas, and that the newly-weds were free to do as they pleased without the burden of duty visits or making dutiful invitations. This worked well, they got to create their own Christmases, we saw each other when we felt like it, and nobody felt obliged.

Mojisola

Lily-Rose wrote: »

I know, but still, if she plain and simple doesn't want to go, then she shouldn't have to really. Even if it IS only every other year.

Like I said, no easy answer.

Thankfully, I've got nice in-laws but, even with ones as described, I would have tried to do the every-other-year if that's what my OH wanted.

What I wouldn't have done was just put myself in their hands for the whole day. I wouldn't have sat around starving the first time - what's wrong with saying that you had breakfast early and will need something to eat before 8pm?

In the following years, I would have taken some control over what I did during the day.

There wouldn't be any need to go down the pub with the in-laws so that would give a few hours peace in the afternoon when I could eat something that I brought with me.

Or, most likely, I just wouldn't arrive until mid-afternoon.

If you feel overwhelmed, even small things can really get you down. Taking back some control over how the day is managed can make the rest of it manageable.

(At really bad moments, I'd just keep reminding myself that I wouldn't have to do this again for more than 700 days!)

FBaby

notanewuser wrote: »

Sorry, don't understand what you're trying to say here.

It's not hard! Some step-parents have to make efforts every day/or twice a week to adjust to accepting their partner's family in their lives. Given a choice, many would have said they would have preferred to marry their partner without the children, but they love their partner and therefore are prepared to make the efforts for them. So I find whinging about having to make an effort once a year (or 2 or 3) really petty in comparison.

When you marry someone, you might not marry their family, but you marry everything about them, and that includes their love and desire to spend time with them.

FBaby

Nobody should be made to do things they don't want to do, or go places they don't want to be, just to keep their partner happy.

Speechless, but then explain the divorce rate in this country! Are you saying that you should only be in a serious relationship with someone who is a double of your own self, so liking exactly the same things, so that everything they want to do you want to do to every single day? Compromise out of the window? It's funny that one of the things that makes me love my OH so much is the fact that he is prepared to make efforts to make me happy. It makes me feel loved and gives me a sense of security.

Pollycat

Andypandyboy wrote: »

Christmas is for families and family interaction.

Where does it say that?

Andypandyboy wrote: »

The OP has not given any detail which would mean it was too much to ask, ....

Then you've clearly not read the OP's posts.

notanewuser

FBaby wrote: »

It's not hard! Some step-parents have to make efforts every day/or twice a week to adjust to accepting their partner's family in their lives. Given a choice, many would have said they would have preferred to marry their partner without the children, but they love their partner and therefore are prepared to make the efforts for them. So I find whinging about having to make an effort once a year (or 2 or 3) really petty in comparison.

When you marry someone, you might not marry their family, but you marry everything about them, and that includes their love and desire to spend time with them.

To me you're comparing apples with elephants.

It isn't that easy to compromise when you become a stepparent. It's completely possible to compromise over xmas. (My DH has just spent several days visiting his family - for various reasons DD and I couldn't go. Unlike with (young) stepchildren that was an easy compromise for both of us.)

SnooksNJ

DFlights wrote: »

Hi all, hope you can offer some practical advice.

Partner and I have tried to do the Xmas day in turns; eg, one year we have a quiet one together, the next year we go to his parents' house (I don't have contact with my family).

Well, this year we're going to his parents, and I'm already not looking forward to it!

I'm going to have to drive OH there and back, so no drinking for me. I'm not a big drinker, but a glass or two of wine would have helped calm the nerves.
OH's mum gets incredibly stressed about everything being her version of perfect on the day - full roast dinner, stupid paper hats, queen's speech (apart from the dinner, I don't really like any of that and just go along with it to keep the peace, although I really hate the queen's speech and usually just disappear outside or to the loo when it's on). Trouble is, OH's mum will not accept help and gets so stressed that it has a bad effect on everyone else there.

She also likes everything very formal - we have to dress up for Xmas dinner. This year, I've decided I'm wearing jeans and a warm top (their house is always cold) and that's that. I don't like the formality, I really don't want to do any of this anyway and would rather stay at home with a bottle of bourbon and the old films on the telly. I'm quite happy to drop OH at his parents, spend an hour or so, then drive myself back to that bottle of bourbon and let them get on with it, leaving him to stay over. This makes me pathetic and weird and to be pitied. Hm. So they're not having it, I have to go do the dinner thing with them.

I know it sounds miserable and ungrateful, but it's not a time of year I'm all that bothered by and, as an atheist, (OH is too), I don't fancy yet another speech from his mum about how the country's going to pot because nobody goes to church anymore, about all sorts of other political rants that I will biting my tongue to, and getting stressed out without even the comfort of a glass of wine/bottle of beer, and another worry is how late I'll be allowed to get back home - it won't be a time of my choosing. I'd like to be back home before a certain time, but knowing how utterly dreadful his parents' timing is, dinner won't be until the evening even if it is scheduled for lunchtime, and then the presents have to be unwrapped after dinner, never before, so that's more time.

I don't know, I just don't really want to do this and it's hard not to sound like a Scrooge, but this year, I just don't want the faux formality, stupid paper hats that we have to wear, in fact everything has to be done his mum's way or she takes it personally. She's very inflexible. I'm already in trouble for refusing to go to a family wedding on New Year's Day! I really had to struggle to get across that that is not my idea of fun and though I'm grateful for the invitation, I don't feel that New Year's Day is a day I want to be spending driving for hours and attending a wedding of people I hardly really know.

So - anyone have any coping mechanisms they've found successful for these situations? And how can I be sure that we get to go home when I'd prefer, rather than waiting around?

I do get on with OH's parents, really I do, but they're from a different generation and not terribly liberal in their outlook, so very different to my values, and I feel very uncomfortable when they start going on about Christianity, how strange I am for not being all that bothered, etc.

Not going is now not an option, I just want to be sure we can withdraw at a time I feel suitable (don't want to be driving in the pitch black to get home), and do so without causing vast amounts of offence (which may be taken anyway). I also want to be relaxed and enjoy their company, but they're always so wound up on Xmas day and won't consider changing the way they do things (like opening the presents before dinner - apparently my family was odd for "allowing" me, as a child, to open my presents first thing!)

Already a bit worried about it.

Next year, I'm staying in our own house and doing our own dinner, hopefully just the two of us!

I have an in law who doesn't like to go to family functions. I want to say to her don't come, I don't care, and it's better you don't. But my Mom yells at me and says I can't do because it's rude. I reply coming to my house with an attitude because they don't want to be there isn't? But problem solved when I moved to the UK and this person doesn't have a passport.

Pollycat

SnooksNJ wrote: »

I have an in law who doesn't like to go to family functions. I want to say to her don't come, I don't care, and it's better you don't. But my Mom yells at me and says I can't do because it's rude. I reply coming to my house with an attitude because they don't want to be there isn't? But problem solved when I moved to the UK and this person doesn't have a passport.

I guess it depends why your in-law doesn't/didn't want to go to family functions.

From what the OP has posted, the Christmas Day that was in store for her (before arrangements were changed) sounded dire.

Mojisola

SnooksNJ wrote: »

I have an in law who doesn't like to go to family functions. I want to say to her don't come, I don't care, and it's better you don't. But my Mom yells at me and says I can't do because it's rude. I reply coming to my house with an attitude because they don't want to be there isn't? But problem solved when I moved to the UK and this person doesn't have a passport.

I wouldn't phrase is as "better you don't come" but I would give a relative who doesn't like functions a way out - "we'd love to see you but will understand if you can't make it".

I'd have said to Mum that it's not nice to make someone feel obliged to attend an event when you know they don't want to be there.

missprice

Andypandyboy wrote: »

Christmas is for families and family interaction. ....

Since when is that what Christmas is about?
Surely its what you want it to be.
I have done family Christmases and they are no great shakes, I have done child centered Xmas, and hopefully will do them again with grandchildren one day, they are my favorite. I have done lonely Christmases with no one at all, and I have done let's be somewhere else/another country/avoid Xmas.

But one thing I have managed to avoid so far is any Xmas day where I had to dress up, starve, spend too much time with people I don't much like, not drink at all to numb the pain, and drive home dead late.
I have done all the above things, just not all in the same day. Sometimes you have to just do these things to please the OH, but all of them?
And then know that in 2 years you will have to do it again.