Family Christmas Vents go here

[BioNerd]

Long story short: no one wants to have Christmas at their house. I am one of four. I'm pretty sure my mom is depressed. Everyone is bickering. I'm trying to keep the peace. My dad hung up on me. Christmas is going to suck.

Now you go!

[pinkdutchtulips]

my sister decided at the last minute to bail on Christmas at her house and go to NC to visit her h's family out there. I know she felt bad about it bc she sent an email rather than call us .... oy !

dd was PISSED at the change in plans bc she REALLY !!!!!! wanted to be there for her cousin's 1st Christmas instead we're spending the holiday w/ my mom's family in So Cal and I get to sneak away for a drink w/ a college drinking buddy of mine who I haven't seen in FOREVER since she lives 10-15 mins from where i'll be. i'll take advantage of having THREE sitters at my disposal (my mom + 2 teenage cousins !!)

this means an all day trek down to So Cal rather than the quick trip down to the Central Coast

[mcc]

I'm Jewish. I nearly forgot about Hanukkah and totally thought I could get away with no presents...until a box from my brother and SIL showed up at my door. Now I need to get them a gift card to something somewhere because I suck. I bought for my niece and nephew though.

Also, there is no good Chinese delivery in Boston. My Christmas is going to suck unless I can find someone to go to a restaurant with me.

[Deleted]

I don't really hav any this year. Everyone seems to be getting along for once! I guess I'm just hoping that my BIL doesn't grab my ass again or ask me to fuck him again this Christmas!

[Deleted]

Well, my mom is going down to her fucking BFs daughter in NC ...AGAIN (like last year 6 weeks after my SD passed <---that still gets me and the more I think about it, the more fucked up it seems).  Then they're going to their new house in SC and will be there most of the winter.  I hate it.  All of it. 
So christmas will be just me and J. (He has not seen his parents since we went there last Christmas). They haven't been on good terms in quite some time. 
Although I always had a small family, christmas was about us being together.  Me, mom, stepdad, my grandmother--that was the usual crew --sometimes with a few friends or my bf at the time sprinkled in.  Now that nana and my stepdad are gone....everything is gone.  

[1confused1]

I know this is a stupid vent: I usually host Christmas dinner. This year part of my family wants to go out of town on Christmas Day afternoon (no idea why it has to be this day, we are going the next day) so my mom decided we are now doing Christmas brunch. I love hosting Christmas DINNER, but there is no telling my mother other way when she has made up her mind.

[1confused1]

Happy Hanukkah mcc ! The kids loved lighting the menorah tonight.

[onedayatatime]

My sister is still dating her manipulative worthless boyfriend and he will be there for Christmas. He never speaks to me and apparently complains to my sister all the time about how "I had it so easy". He has one of the two degrees I do & we are the same age but I have a job in our field, he doesn't. It isn't me having it easy - it is me getting good grades and him not so much. Plus my other degree. When the divorce happened he made some comment apparently "well I guess she failed at that".

With my sister we have to let her come to these realizations on her own, so I have been biting my tongue on what I think about him for years. She has started talking about breaking up with him, she's starting to become more aware that he treats her terrible and is just not a nice person, but it hasn't happened yet. So yay! Christmas together again.

[jenstar]

Dec 17, 2014 1:05:20 GMT -5 inara said:

MIL has been acting weirdly bitter toward me since FIL passed away. He really, really loved me and my kids and now I kind of wonder if she was more going along with it because we made him so happy. She bailed on us for Thanksgiving kind of last minute, which was really understandable considering how recent FIL's passing was and I know holidays are just going to be really, really hard for her this year.

This weekend she brought up Christmas dinner and asked if she should come over to our house to cook or if we wanted to go to her house. I said "Oh, I hadn't even really thought about that yet! We should probably figure something out." and she (in a snarky tone) said "Maybe you two can talk about it privately then." and then turned to W and said "By the way, I'm getting a ham since inara won't eat turkey." W looked completely bewildered and said "I just said inara and I prefer ham. We will both eat turkey. It isn't a big deal to either of us." She got all weird and said SIL's BF prefers ham too (making that the preference of 3 of the 5 adults eating dinner, but somehow it was all about ME and MY demands?) and then threw in "If you even want to spend Christmas with me. I don't know. Maybe you two have your own plans."

Whaat? I have spent every christmas with them since we started dating. Last year I made them all brunch at my house and made the kids wait to open presents until they got there so they could enjoy it too. Then we all spent the rest of the day at their house. I have never done anything to make her think it wasn't a priority to spend time with them on holidays. My family is so far away we spend every holiday with them, we don't even alternate. WTH.

Do you think maybe she might be a little jealous or something because you just gained a husband and she just lost one? Like a weird kind of jealousy? She might also feel like she's "lost" her son at the same time..?

It sucks that she's being like that but I would say if you carry on as usual (with making her priority, treating her the same as normal etc) she will probably recover from what is hopefully a temporary insecurity and concern about her place in the family without FIL there. Just try not to take it personally. GL x

[seabitch]

I have a love/hate relationship with the holidays. Goes back a long, long way.

I am not going to travel home to see my family until the day after Christmas. This makes me sad. I know my 20 something (age, not number) don't seem to mind, but I do. I want all the people I love in one place for the holidays.

[abcdefu]

Everyone is venting about who was going to host Christmas and backed out and here is my family fighting over who is going to host Christmas at their house. LOL!

My Christmas should be drama-free this year. I have one uncle who is a major asshole. One Christmas he snapped his fingers at me and yelled "Waitress! Waitress! I need some water" If my family wasn't there to witness it, he would have had toilet water, for reals"

Then one year I got out of the hospital with a really bad kidney infection and while all the kids (me included) were getting our picture in front of the tree he decided to comment "oh abcdefu shouldn't be in the picture because she looks horrible today and will ruin it!" WTF! Dude! I just got out of the hospital! STFU!

Thank god he isn't coming this year!

[seabitch]

abcdefu, your uncle sounds horrid. Does he not have a filter?

[abcdefu]

Dec 17, 2014 8:03:25 GMT -5 seabitch said:

abcdefu, your uncle sounds horrid. Does he not have a filter?

Or manners, or anything! I'm not the only one. He has made horrible remarks to my brother. He asked my sister's boyfriend if he flunked out of med school the first time he met him! He was starting med school, but decided he really liked teaching, so he withdrew. When my sister in law was pregnant, he said "oh I hope the baby is going to be more than a ::insert my brother's profession here::"

Yeah! He's a major Douche!

Funny story though, my younger sister had to write a paper for high school about their family at Christmas. She wrote the paper about my uncle. Spoiler Alert! She got an A! lol

[bullygirl979]

Dec 16, 2014 18:44:15 GMT -5 BioNerd said:

Long story short: no one wants to have Christmas at their house. I am one of four. I'm pretty sure my mom is depressed. Everyone is bickering. I'm trying to keep the peace. My dad hung up on me. Christmas is going to suck.

I feel like we have the same family. Except I'm one of six (although one lives OOT). Because my family is so big, not every one has a house big enough to fit everyone. For Thanksgiving, my mom and sister were fighting over who was going to have it because neither one wanted to. I finally told my mom that it isn't about fighting, it is about spending time with family and that I would host 22 people in 1,400 square feet. She said "yes, it isn't about fighting. I wish your sister would realize that." 

Needless to say, Christmas is in just over a week and they are back to fighting about who will have Christmas. Sigh. 

[spunkypenguin]

I don't like my family and I am dreading having to deal with them. Ex's Family Christmas always made up for what my family Christmas lacks, but I don't have that to look forward to now. I put my tree up two weeks ago and never decorated it. I plan to drink merry cocktails this weekend and doubt it will get decorated at all this year. I usually love Christmas, but can't find my Christmas spirit this year :/

[Wanderista]

I don't have much drama for Christmas yet. As I've mentioned, I'm going out of state with the BF and I will meet his parents. They are secular Jewish (yeah, he randomly has some Scottish mixed in, he is a Scottish Jew) and they practice some secular Christmas traditions. I might also get to experience a bit of Hanukkah. I get the impression that his mom is a little bit eccentric but I will keep an open mind hehe.

My own family isn't doing much anyway. We had a great Thanksgiving and we're spending some of this week together. We'll then spend time together when I am back too. I'm giving them nice gifts. My sister opted to get dental surgery during the holidays and so that kind of put the kabosh on our family traditions anyway. I think they are wanting a lazy year. No real drama.

[moolarkey]

Dec 16, 2014 22:33:42 GMT -5 @blueyes623 said:

Well, my mom is going down to her fucking BFs daughter in NC ...AGAIN (like last year 6 weeks after my SD passed <---that still gets me and the more I think about it, the more fucked up it seems).  Then they're going to their new house in SC and will be there most of the winter.  I hate it.  All of it. 
So christmas will be just me and J. (He has not seen his parents since we went there last Christmas). They haven't been on good terms in quite some time. 
Although I always had a small family, christmas was about us being together.  Me, mom, stepdad, my grandmother--that was the usual crew --sometimes with a few friends or my bf at the time sprinkled in.  Now that nana and my stepdad are gone....everything is gone. 

I am so sorry.

We don't have much family either, all our parents are gone. Our kids are both married so they also need to share time with their in laws. It makes holidays so hard, especially the first few years. We're adjusting and H and I are making our own traditions but it's so different with now it just ibeing 2 of us all Christmas Day.    I used to love the holidays, Christmas eve was us and our kids and church stuff. Christmas Day we went to my parents as H's family always held their family get-together on a different day - now they don't even get together at all.  I miss the days of having our kids here, I do understand that our DSIL and DDIL want/need to see their families too but it doesn't mean I don't miss them all.

It's hard and I'm sorry and I hope that it gets easier for you.

[jellymankelly]

Dec 17, 2014 21:50:09 GMT -5 inara said:

Dec 17, 2014 4:24:34 GMT -5 jenstar said:

Do you think maybe she might be a little jealous or something because you just gained a husband and she just lost one? Like a weird kind of jealousy? She might also feel like she's "lost" her son at the same time..?

It sucks that she's being like that but I would say if you carry on as usual (with making her priority, treating her the same as normal etc) she will probably recover from what is hopefully a temporary insecurity and concern about her place in the family without FIL there. Just try not to take it personally. GL x

I do think there is some weird jealousy happening. She has said a few other things like "you don't know how lucky you are - I would know because I was married to FIL for 32 years. You got a good one."

She has just been out right rude on a few occasions though - like telling me what a great couple W and his ex were and how sad she was that they broke up. They broke up when he was maybe 20-21 and dated on and off for like 6 months total. So this isn't some serious girlfriend that they thought he would marry and they broke up recently. It's like she is TRYING to be hurtful.

I think you need to pull out the SueSue "Why would you say such a thing?!" (Brightly!)

Grief is an awful, awful thing, but she can't go around being blatantly mean to you.

[Mrs.Rad888]

Really, my only complaint so far is with DH. This would have been the year that we went to the ILs for Christmas, but they were here at the beginning of November, so DH said we could go to my parent's for Xmas this year.
He was waiting to see what dates were put out for the leave period, but since he can take leave at any time, it didn't matter what dates the base put out. Our only limitations were that he has to be back to work on Jan 5, and it's a 2-day drive for us. I kept asking him when he wanted to travel, but he wouldn't commit, and I found out today that he never even put in for the time off! Luckily he can still get the time off, since he's not in a critical job. In his defense, we did need to wait and see if there was going to be a government shutdown, but even after that was resolved, he still wouldn't decide on his leave dates. I finally told him when I want to go, within the dates that he has available, and he's reluctantly agreed. It's pissing me off that he had his leave request in a month before his parents got here, but he won't even look at a calendar when it's time to go see my parents.
I know that he doesn't want to miss out on a chance to save the world, but he's a technical trainer for the Navy, and there won't even be any students. Sometimes he makes me think of that Robert De Long song "Long Way Down". The words start out "I've been fucking around while you were saving the world....from nothing." I mean, if that PowerPoint program doesn't get made, or the server room doesn't get insulated, the world will keep on turning.

[Emerald1486]

My only annoyance is with my mom's side of the family. They scheduled the family get-together for the day after Christmas, when DS is with his dad. Then my aunt gets upset that DS won't be there. I've told them several times that my time with DS is Christmas Eve and first half of Christmas Day. It's been like that since year 1. I've told them many times that if the want DS there, it has to be on the 24th.