There are many of us who have worried about the Holiday experiences that we have provided for our own kids.
Some of us live far from our families and have decided not to travel.
Many of us have small families and so have discovered ways to make the day meaningful.
But–when you think about the big chaotic family gatherings, were they really great?
We lived close enough to my mother’s parents so that on every Holiday and many Sundays we spent the day there.
I do not remember being that happy. Mostly, I was bored. I did not enjoy the cousins all that much.
My brother and the other boy cousins would get in a fight and my mother would take only his side while
he was an obnoxious kid. (He is like a son/BF to me but he was not a nice kid!).
One year my older sister rebelled and went to her BF’s house and I went with her.
That was an odd experience but give my mother credit for letting us
Always mostly loved the holidays, warts and all with whatever family was around. When I was in college and law school, I’d fly to be with my sister or other relatives rather than flying home but would always fly home for summers. I loved holidays with my family and really love them now, with my kids and 13 nieces and nephews and my folks and sibs and their spouses. There are quite a number of gatherings and the cousins are starting to get themselves together, even without us older adults. I’m thrilled with how close they all are to one another.
My grandparents were stern, my cousins boring, the food always the same (Midwest jello and so on).
We sat around and barely did much. I do not even remember playing cards or board games.
All I wanted (and no doubt did) was want to go off with a book.
Many of the adults smoked. The kids stayed in the kitchen and the adults in the dining room.
Our Normal.
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No. My mom went wilfly overboard with presents – dozens per person. My kids hated it in the years when we went there, too. We eventually stopped traveling there for Christmas at all. Better to deal with the Thanksgiving travel hassle and stay home for Christmas.
I loved it! Christmas and Birthdays were the only times we got gifts so of course I loved that. We got together with my Dad’s family on Christmas Eve and my mom’s family on Christmas Day and I always enjoyed the family gatherings. I miss them.
I think back on our family Christmas celebrations with very fond memories. Although I only recall a few actual gifts, the memories of all the things that made the holidays special are more about all the anticipation of the events. I was talking to my mom about how excited I was for each Christmas show that came on TV and how it seemed that every kid in school watched them too…our neighborhood had a night ( usually the last day of school before Christmas vacation ) with a caroling party , going door to door to sing to neighbors. Getting the house decorated , bringing out the holiday records …arrival of our grandmother. The food !
There was only one Christmas that I didn’t care for, which was when I was 15 years old and my father ( who we hadn’t seen in years ) was invited to share it with us…I had animosity towards him and the decision to include him was decided without consulting with me or my sister who was 17 at the time. That one was just awful
I didn’t enjoy thanksgiving. We went up to my aunts with my weird cousins and I didn’t like thanksgiving food…dry turkey, creamed onions, turnips? Blech
Christmas was always at home. 4 kids plus neighbors as close as sisters. Sometimes my grandparents would come. A few years my dad brought out a huge strap of jingle bells and led the kids around the neighborhood singing carols and we came back for hot chocolate. It was the one day ofor the year we’d all play games together. My dad got us pit…a crazy stock exchange game that had us all screaming and laughing.
I had lots of fun as a child. We alternated years between maternal and paternal grandparents. Christmas Eve and Day with one set one year, then a switch for the next. Whoever didn’t get the “real” days was visited in the days after Christmas and we celebrated a 2nd Christmas - with presents divided up and ferried in the car trunk from house to house. That must have taken a lot of organizing on my mom’s part. The cousins were on the same rotation with their grandparents - more coordination! The drives were hundreds of miles from my home and more hundreds between the grandparents’ homes. In all those 20 some years, Midwest snow never cancelled the plans.
The fun sort of broke down as everyone hit high school. Although my cousins are great people, we saw each other only occasionally and it was hard to warm up to each other since we no longer “just played” like kids. By the time I was in college and the pattern continued, I’d had enough. Doing my mom’s Christmas routine became tension filled and a source of conflict. I needed to be allowed to grow up, not treated like a young adolescent.
As an adult, I recognized that I missed out on a connection to my home town by never celebrating Christmas there. I was active in my church and had never been in a Christmas Eve program and missed friends’ parties. I made sure our kids had Christmas with the nuclear family in our home with all the church, school and community connections that were important to them throughout the year.
I don’t recall many happy holidays when I was a child. My mother got so stressed out and took her anger out on me. Once the last of my siblings went off to college, when I was in 4th grade, mother announced it wasn’t worth it to cook for Thanksgiving for just the three of us so we ate out, usually at a military base. For Christmas she insisted we had to dress up for dinner because she’d spent days polishing the silver and hand washing her good china. Our reality never lived up to her fantasy, which made her angry. Nearly every holiday ended in her being a very melodramatic martyr and loudly crying.
Compared to most of my friends, I received a lot of presents. As I got a bit older, I didn’t even enjoy the gifts because they reminded me of the too many times when my mother would buy me something the day after a beating instead of ever apologizing (or stopping.) Mother was always dieting, so when I was in first or second grade I gave her some chocolate Metrecal thinking it would be a treat. That resulted in an epic meltdown.
Absolutely loved it. The noise, the travelling, the food, e house full of people we rarely saw and barely knew plus seeing favorites, getting presents, eating together…we were blessed in our happy family. I’m sure our mothers remember it differently! The noise, the travelling, the inlaws…
The Christmas celebrations that my mom put together for the three of us kids were splendorous. Not a lot of gifts (3-4 each?), but lots and lots of sparkles, tinsel, gaudy lights and general splendour. It was wonderful.
I even fondly remember the chaos. Most often we were home with me and my sibs. Sometimes we would see my mother’s family (which was huge). We got the whole picture, presents, board/card games, fights, mischief…etc. It was all good in the grand scheme. The only ‘bad’ Christmas I remember is when my older sister convinced me to help her sneak a peak at our presents before they got under the tree. Worst ever for me opening things when I already knew what was in the package. To this day, I hate knowing early. Sadly, DW is horrible at secrets and I accidently find out much more than I like.
Silpat, I’m so sorry. My mother had stress and a fantasy version of holidays that also didn’t match reality but that was kept in check. As I grew older, the underlying tension definitely affected the holidays, but not close to the degree you endured.
I haven’t spent a holiday with my birth family since I was a young married. On Christmas Eve Day, DH and I had taken vacation time from our jobs, flown out at our cost, rented a car to get to my parents’ home. Christmas morning, I awakened and went to have my morning coffee with Mom. She took one look at my bright red Christmas sweater and jeans (Calvin Klein - big back then, fashionable and expensive) and said, “Well, you aren’t very dressed up for Christmas Day.” As if one needed to be dressed for Christmas dinner at 8:00 AM. I decided then and there that we would make our own family traditions and I have never regretted that decision. I hope you also replaced the bad childhood experiences with happier memories.
No. My parents divorced when I was 10, before that they avoided each other when possible. I am an only child so I spent my Christmas’s trying to make them both happy. My grandparents were not fun. But we didn’t have a lot of money, so I did enjoy getting special things I never would have otherwise received, and a little bit of extra attention sometimes.
My mother is now in Florida, and her Christmas package still hasn’t arrived, and I’m totally stressed because, as I am the only child, I am the only one sending her gifts and she’s going to be grumping at me for weeks
As a child I loved Christmas. Christmas morning was spent at home with my parents and younger sisters when they came along (one was 10 years younger than me, the other 16 years younger). I always felt like I got so much, but looking back on it now, I was happy with the popular doll that year or the newest board game that was out and my parents only spent a small fraction of what I now spend buying video games and electronics for my son. After our Christmas breakfast and opening gifts at home, we’d travel to my grandparents where I was one of 17 cousins and they’d all come every year - my mom’s 3 brothers, 2 sisters, their spouses, and all their kids would all squeeze into one small home…it’d be loud and there would be little room to move, but it was tradition. There weren’t many gifts…my grandparents never had much and there were so many kids that we’d ‘draw names’, so there wouldn’t be too many gifts to buy, but it was about spending time with family that didn’t see each other frequently during the year.
Now the cousins are grown with families of their own and spread throughout much of the country. My youngest sister passed away almost a decade ago and the holidays will never be the same for my mom, so my parents now spend the holidays wintering in Florida. My other sister now has a family of her own and since our parents aren’t around to celebrate with, she spends the time with her in-laws. So, Christmas now is generally very quiet. My son who is home from college and I will have dinner together and exchange a few gifts. I don’t mind the quiet and don’t really miss all the chaos from when I was younger and wasn’t the one to do the planning and cleaning, but yes, I did enjoy every minute of it at the time.
I loved Christmas as a child, especially after my parents divorced.
Divorce meant that my sister and I became part of two families, both of whom celebrated the holiday. And we were very welcome at both celebrations because, well, children really add something to Christmas.
At my father’s house, the holiday was celebrated on Christmas Eve. There was a fancy but non-traditional dinner (often featuring lobster – a family favorite), which my two unmarried aunts (one of whom had to work on Christmas Day) also attended. We kids were allowed to decorate the tree because nobody cared what it looked like. And there were lots of presents.
At my mother’s house the next day, there was a traditional family dinner with some relatives from that side of the family. And there were lots of presents. There was also a very beautifully decorated tree that we were not permitted to touch, but we didn’t care because we got to do the tree-trimming part with our other family.
It was exciting, but I would always sneak off and just watch the blinking lights on the Christmas trees at some point during the celebrations. I love Christmas trees.
My children never had Christmases anywhere near as good as the ones I grew up with. I feel bad about that. But our family had shrunk by then, due to deaths and people moving far away, and my Jewish husband understandably has no enthusiasm for the holiday. In my opinion, my kids’ childhood Christmases were sort of dull. But perhaps they don’t feel that way because they have no basis for comparison.
“But–when you think about the big chaotic family gatherings, were they really great?”
Yes. They were. I’m the oldest of 5, and we lived in my dad’s hometown. We spent Christmas Eve at his mother’s, where we ate Polish food, played gin rummy and danced to polka music. Christmas Day my mom made spaghetti and we’d play with our new toys. My mom had a tradition of wrapping little thingies in tissue paper for our stockings, and sometimes those were the best presents.
As time went on we consolidated the two meals into Christmas Day only-both Polish and Italian foods at dinner. It was years before I knew that other families at things like roast beef or ham on Christmas. While my dad was an only child and mom had only 1 sibling who lived far away, it was rarely just our family at Christmas-my folks always invited people who had nowhere else to go, or who they were close to-coworkers, the kids who worked for my dad at his store, friends of ours. As we started dating seriously, getting married, having kids, we just made more places at the table. Our kids grew up as close as siblings-and they’re all still close, even though some live far away from each other.
The only bad Christmas we had was the year we had to cancel due to a stomach bug that had us all fighting for the bathroom. I don’t think we even opened the gifts until a day or two later.
I am sorry that some of you had such difficult childhoods.
They were wonderful. And so were the weeks preceding, as we baked cookies, tried to scope out what this or that brother or sister would want for Christmas, got presents for one another, baked cookies, sang Christmas carols, baked cookies, watched schlocky Christmas movies and TV specials. The house would be filled with good smells, Christmas wrapping, and good secrets. I loved Christmas then, and I love it now.
Some of my very best memories are the many years we spent Christmas with my 2 paternal aunts, families, cousins, and grandparents. This always involved at least 5 hours travel one way, in snow. So much fun and memories.
I do grit my teeth when I think of my mom and holidays. She has spent 53 married years being angry and bitter, trying to keep my dad from visiting his sisters, whom he loves dearly. She finally made us stop spending Christmas with them, and we had just the 4 of us. Those were lonely, sad, and quiet. She loves to be the matyr and play the victim, especially at get togethers and on holidays.
My mom has 6 siblings, so lots of cousins. Always a Christmas get together there, on a close weekend. My mom was oldest and I am oldest grandchild by 9 years, so they all doted on me. I still really love getting together with these people!
The only year my dad ever bought presents was 3rd grade. I don’t know why, but we got double the presents–pretty fun. The worst year was 8th grade, when my sister and I sneaked and opened ours early. That was awful…never again!
I had wonderful Christmases as a child. Like someone else already mentioned, when your parents are divorced but both happily remarried, you get to have two nice Christmases. Christmas Eve was always with my Dad at my stepmom’s parents’ home or their home, always with the step Grandparents present. Lovely meals, good music, presents, and STOCKINGS! My Dad and stepmom spent the entire year getting us interesting stocking stuffers. Christmas day was at home with Mom and stepdad. There are six kids in the family, so lots of chaos, wrapping paper, and good food. Everyone usually behaved and tried to make it a special day.
We have tried to always make Christmas special for our kids as well. But it can be stressful because DH’s parents are also divorced, so we have FOUR Christmas celebrations to do. That can be way too much everything.
