We got used to that with our son too,we have become grateful of when we can see him and treat that as a holiday. Often if he has been home for the holidays, it has been we pick him up at the train station at 3pm, have dinner, then next morning he is gone, we have had christmases where he comes christmas day and is gone by 9pm christmas night…or obviously, not able to be here. Like Thumper1’s S, our son is a musician (part of a chamber group) and they can end up with performances coming at them from nowhere. So we enjoy what we can get with him (with or without his group, they have become family in a way too), and on the holidays we at least talk on the phone to share some time.
5 Likes
This year all three sons and families will be with their in-laws for Christmas, none near here, including the ones in Thailand.
To OP, yours is a very complicated issue and I wish I had a solution for you. You’re in the sandwich situation with your parents and in laws still living and then your son now has a widow mother- in-law, his wife is her only child and son in law can’t come because of work and daughter won’t. That’s a lot of consideration. Hugs. I’m so sorry for your disappointment.
6 Likes
We are on the first edge of holidays being a more complicated issue with our children, and trying to figure it out as we go along. DH and I decided early on in our marriage that we wouldn’t travel for Christmas or Thanksgiving. We live far away from all relatives on both sides and it seemed better for our family to make our own traditions.
Our oldest graduated from college this past May and has an overseas fellowship this year which precludes her from coming home for any holidays. Or rather, she has decided that she doesn’t want to make the trip home for the holidays and deal with jet lag on both ends of her 3 week break. We did offer to pay for the flights if she wanted to come home, but also understood her reasoning in regards to jet lag.
So, for the first time ever, we won’t have all of our kiddos home at the holidays. It’s also the first holiday season as empty nesters (though our two college-age kids are coming home for part of their Christmas breaks). Because of this, we’ve decided to re-think some of our traditions/plans and reclaim some of our time going forward. For the first time since we’ve been married, we aren’t putting up a Christmas tree.
We’ve been talking to all three kids about what holidays might look like; what traditions will remain (all three kids said their Christmas Eve gift of Christmas pajamas was sacrosanct - we are mailing oldest her Christmas pajamas early so she’ll have them in plenty of time), what traditions some wanted and some wanted to drop, and what new traditions we might create.
I don’t know what this will end up looking like, or how I will feel as it evolves. Right now, it looks as at least one of my kids might never live near us again, presently she is hopeful to be overseas for the next 3-4 years and jet lag for short trips might not make a lot of sense when you are on a limited budget of money and holiday time off. I’m reminding myself that DH and I made a choice decades ago to make holidays for our nuclear family, if my kids decide the same - well I would understand the reasons.
13 Likes
This has been very cathartic for me.
Warning more whining!
Our plans for thanksgiving were to spend the weekend before with the big kids and the granddaughter. Since they work during the week. That is an 8 hour drive.
On Monday we would go see my mom who moved near my sibling. They live 1.5 hours from my son. Stay there Monday night and Tuesday, drive 6.5 hours to my daughter’s whose H is working.
This was done so no one has to take time off work.
My sibling has an adult child who is severely immunocompromised. The adult child is now only seeing people outside which is great as long as the weather is good. She doesn’t live with my sister.
I tell my mom our plans. I don’t want to upset sibling, so I say I can stay with her but since we are visiting our little germ factory first, I don’t want to infect the immunocompromised person.
Of course my sibling wants to change all of our plans. Why don’t I visit them first? Because the others work. Why don’t they (my sister, my mom and maybe the daughter) go visit the big kids, I know they want to see the toddler but I don’t think my mom can get into their house and see above, germ factory. Why doesn’t everyone come to her house for the holiday? See everything above.
Sorry but 
!!!
My mom who I explained all of this before is, oh I don’t think your sister has thought any of this out! And apparently I’ve done a good job of thinking of all of the contingencies!
9 Likes
I have an in-law sibling who is a self proclaimed expert at logistics. Someone arriving at noon because they’re starting the drive at 5 am to avoid the traffic- she knows better- leave at 8 am, add an extra 80 miles to the drive and avoid the traffic entirely. Or someone’s flight gets in at 10 am- she knows better- take the redeye- it gets in at 5 am, heck, you can sleep when you are dead.
I learned a while ago- “This is our schedule. Let me know if the current plan doesn’t work for you, and if not, we’ll have to skip our time with you. Sorry, too many moving parts to change things around.” She got the message. She’s still messing with the rest of the family’s plan- disregarding time, space, disabilities, costs-- but she knows enough to leave me alone.
15 Likes
Thank you. Yes. Agree.
1 Like
Interesting way to put it, but I agree. The priorities have changed. I guess in the scheme of things, having parents secondary is OK with me as their family comes first now.
I will join in the whine, and this is not over my kids.
This year I have my girls for thanksgiving and Xmas. My sister and her H do not have their kids, so they decided to come to NYC to see my mom and her H family. She and I decided to spend Monday (day before Xmas eve) together with my mom. I would then stay over at D1’s place on Xmas eve. I would spend Xmas eve and Xmas with D1 and D2’s families. My sister would spend Xmas eve with my mom and my mom would come to D1’s place for Xmas.
Great plan until my brother decided he wanted to get in on it too. He decided that we shou,d rent a place for Xmas eve for all of us to get together. Someone would find a caterer and order wines for this event (not sure who would do this). It’s his wife’s birthday on Monday night, so he would like my sister (and her husband) and my mother to go, but not me (so now I won’t get to see my sister as planned).
I told my girls not to volunteer for this crazy event, but to just show up if I am going. One thing I will say is that my kids will show up whenever I ask them. My siblings are crazy and they drive me crazy.
9 Likes
We are trying to figure out when “Christmas” Will be here. Probably the 27th.
1 Like
This is about 4 steps/stops/meals more than I’d be willing to do. I think I’d stay home and get a frozen dinner (turkey and mashed potatoes, of course).
But I really do not like driving. I have theater tickets for the weekend before and the weekend after Thanksgiving, so that pretty much dictates that I’ll be staying home.
1 Like
I think you should do what you did last year…get away! Maybe even every other year! Perhaps it doesn’t have to be overseas. Maybe it could be renting a condo in Florida and inviting your kids if they want to join you. Or someplace Warmer than where you are.
2 Likes
I’m sneaky like that. If I ever am fortunate enough to have DILs, I think I’d book a condo or house in a desirable location and say they’re welcome to come if they like. Do something I know they want to do, that I’m sure would be appealing to them. I’ve found that lodging can be inexpensive over Thanksgiving.
4 Likes
We have one kid and she’s in college. If it weren’t for my mom and siblings, we’d probably be spending Thanksgiving at Golden Corral 
. My wife and daughter don’t eat much anyway, so at best it would be a Thanksgiving rotisserie chicken.
1 Like
Don’t go knocking on Golden Corral for thanksgiving! After my MIL (and SIL) got too old to host her way over the top feasts, we went to Golden Corral for several years. I much preferred those dinners. So much easier on everyone and I prefer that kind of food.
If it was up to me, we would just have frozen pizza. And my favorite ones were when we on trips. Dennys was just fine!
5 Likes
We did vegetarian Indian takeout that first Covid year and the entire extended family (on Zoom) all agreed that the novelty made what could have been a depressing experience into something fun and exotic.
We eat Indian all the time (as do the vegetarians in the family) but we all decided ahead of time to order things we’d never had before.
8 Likes
My vent. The kids spend every Xmas with DIL’s parents. I claimed Hanukkah. This year that falls on December 25. They said I could come T-day, but that could be $$$ and a mess. Or, middle of November. My SO isn’t wanting to go, and I dislike flying across country for just a weekend. So, I feel stuck.
9 Likes
(Disclaimer: I haven’t read all of the replies yet)
Your situation is frustrating for sure. Your extended family has a lot of different things going on and it sounds like the logistics don’t ever seem to work out for everybody getting together at your house.
Some general thoughts:
- totally understand your situation, where you probably feel pulled in different directions and trying to make 1 person happy means that somebody else in your extended family isn’t happy.
- You’ll need to get more comfortable with the fact that your ILs WILL be disappointed that everybody isn’t going to them for every holiday.
- I grew up with grandparents a plane ride or 2 away. Guess what? We didn’t have every Thanksgiving and Christmas with them. Some holidays, it was just our immediate family with NO grandparents. It was fine. You know what made up for it? …
- …regular phone calls with my grandparents. Now there’s stuff like Facetime available, so you can see your extended family on the phone on video. At the very least, for the Thanksgiving & Christmases that you ILs can’t be with all of you, you guys could get a little creative and do a big speaker phone call with them and everybody in the room wherever you happen to be celebrating Thanksgiving or Christmas.
- re: your kids not coming to your house - it’s normal & fine to feel disappointed by it. But for the sake of maintaining a good relationship with your adult kids, their spouses, & their children, you’ll need to suck it up and realize (which you already have) that you can’t have what you want a lot of the time.
- I spent YEARS knocking myself out when we were a young married couple traveling to different relatives’ houses at the holidays. OMG there was so much driving. We moved 1 state away prior to having kids and then when we had children, there was $0 disposable income for traveling to visit all of them. So the grandparents had to come to us. Was my mom frustrated by this? Yes. But it was simple economics and we couldn’t afford to travel, and my mom (who was retired at the time) wanted to go on cruises instead of coming to visit us at our place more often.
- You can be happy or you can be right.
- You are not responsible for the happiness of your ILs.
- Re: your mom - ok, so maybe taking your mom to your house for Christmas might not be an option, but does it have to be ON Christmas? For example, what about a few days around New Year’s Eve instead?
- Your relationship with your granddaughter can flourish despite her not having ever been to your house.
4 Likes
For what it’s worth, it’s not always easier if a lot of your extended family lives in the same general area. Here’s an example:
Forever and a day, SIL (DH’s sister) + her husband + their 2 kids have lived in 1 city, while AIL & UIL (DH & SIL’s aunt & uncle) lived about an hour away (in San Diego county…this will be relevant later in the story). (FIL died over 18 yr ago before my D24 was born, so he’s not in the picture).
Every Thanksgiving & Christmas, SIL tries to make arrangements w/AIL & UIL to meet up at somebody’s house for those holidays. And every year, it’s impossible. BIL (SIL’s husband) doesn’t want to drive an hour to AIL & UIL’s house. “It’s too far.” AIL & UIL don’t want to drive to SIL & BIL’s house. “It’s too far.” Nobody can make up their mind, so SIL plans on making a meal at her house for her immediate family. Meanwhile, trying to get a straight answer out of AIL & UIL is impossible because AIL’s family of origin takes priority…and every year for 15 yr, AIL always says, “Oh this could be my mom’s last Thanksgiving/Christmas, so my family needs to get together.” And last minute, some or all of AIL’s siblings flake out and then last minute, AIL & UIL end up at SIL’s house anyway.
…but they’re never on time. They’re always 2-4 hours late past the time you tell them to show up.
A year ago when my MIL was on death’s door, they didn’t show up until the middle of the night and couldn’t understand why the care facility wouldn’t let them see MIL at midnight. 
…all the while, UIL babbled to DH & I about how “the heat here (AZ) is just too much for AIL, she could die from the heat, you know.” Meanwhile, my MIL literally WAS dying.
OUR immediate family (except for 1 Christmas & 1 Thanksgiving) haven’t ever travelled to them at Thanksgiving or Christmas. Work obligations & lack of paid time off at the time prevented that. And I honestly didn’t want to deal with the ridiculousness of hiding a bunch of Santa gifts in the back of our minivan.
So as an alternate, what we did several years in a row when our kids were younger is we (in AZ) would spend some times a few days, many times 10 days, in southern CA in the summer. But SIL & BIL would refuse to drive an hour to AIL & UIL’s house. And AIL & UIL would refuse to drive to SIL & BIL’s house. As a result, we stupidly had to split our time between the 2 locations…and then listen to all of them complain about how far it was for any of them to drive an hour.
It all finally stopped one year when my DH said, “You know what? I’m sick of this. We drove, like, 6.5 hr to get here and they can’t even drive for an hour? Forget it. Next time, we’re just going to Disneyland and if they want to see us, they can meet up with us in Anaheim.”
Every year after that, we’d tell them where we’d be staying, how long we’d be there, we’d love to meet up with them, etc. SIL would never respond. AIL & UIL always said it was way too far for them. But they were fine with driving a couple of hours to their cabin in the mountains, so ok…we were not a priority.
And because SIL’s house is really small, all of the times that we’d stay w/SIL at her house for a few days, we’d end up sleeping in a tent in their backyard. Like…on my 20th wedding anniversary, I was sleeping in a tent in my SIL’s backyard just so we would make everybody happy.
It was stupid.
5 yr ago, I had a double mastectomy due to breast cancer. leading up to the Thanksgiving and Christmas right after that, the normal circus w/SIL, AIL, & UIL started, with everybody asking ME, “What should we do for the holidays?” I told DH that going forward, I am DONE with being the cruise director for a bunch of people who can never make up their minds…and I wanted that year to have a RELAXED holiday season so we could celebrate the fact that I’d cheated death.
DH said a lot of “But what am I supposed to tell them?” Hey, I don’t care what you tell them, honey, but if they want to come here, they are totally welcome to. If nobody says anything by 11/1, then I will assume that nobody’s coming.
Guess what? Those were the best Thanksgiving and Christmas. for Christmas, we ended up with friends in southern CA. SIL didn’t come (SIL is also friends w/these same people as we are…has known 1 of them since high school) because she only wants to have those holidays at her house. That’s fine. AIL & UIL? DH never told them. They learned later on where we were and AIL called me to complain that we didn’t include them. So I said, “Well, we were in City X, would you have driven up there from where you are at City Y?” She said, “Of course not, that’s too far.” But guess what? City X is on the way to AIL & UIL’s cabin in the mountains. So it’s all about priorities.
Life is too short to keep worrying about making all of your parents & ILs happy. If you want to spend the holidays with YOUR kids, then DO THAT. Don’t complain to any of them about how they don’t come to visit you where you live. Complain here or to a close friend or to a therapist, but don’t complain about it to your kids.
9 Likes
Put aside for a moment all of the external forces you’re dealing with right now on this topic. And spend a few minutes thinking about what your answer to this question would be…
What would REALLY make you happy?
IF your answer to that question is something similar to “For my kids, their spouses, all of my grandchildren, my mom, and my ILs to come to our house for Thanksgiving or Christmas every year or every other year,” then I would challenge you to think about another question…
Is it the PLACE that is important? Or is what would make you happy for everybody to spend time together, regardless of the place?
AND…Consider the likelihood that even if your family is like 1950s Beaver Cleaver and everybody gets along all of the time, that if you put a group of relatives together and have them share the same space for a few days in a row, everybody will end up irritated at some point. So EXPECT that to happen and PLAN for it and allow everybody a little bit of grace, like give everybody the OK to give themselves time outs when they need a break.
5 Likes
Oh you are singing my song with the circus of relatives. I have lived that same mess for many years. It’s exhausting.
And it’s ridiculous.
So your sibling wants you to change all of your plans. Great. You know what? I’d like a pony. We don’t always get what we want. And your sister won’t get what she wants this time.
And guess what else? Your sister will be annoyed by this. Her annoyance is NOT YOUR PROBLEM.
You know what else? You’ve been adulting for long enough to get to decide what YOU want to do and how YOU want to spend your free time. I think your solution of how you’ll be spending time with your kids is a fairly reasonable one. So this will mean that one person won’t get what they want. TOO BAD. She’ll have to get over it.
You are not responsible for other people’s happiness.
If it was me, I’d move heaven and earth to be wherever my kids were at the holidays if I had the time, means, whatever, to be able to go to where they are. Because it’s about spending time with the people you love. It’s not about them coming to your house.
We all only get a limited number of trips around the sun in this lifetime. You can spend that time with people you want to spend time with. Or you can be like my 79 yr old dad, living in his gigantic house on the east coast, grumbling about how come his kids don’t ever go to visit him. He came up with a bunch of stupid rules about how we are supposed to go to him a certain # of times per year to pay homage and kiss the ring. He has been more interested in being right than he was being happy.
As a result, he hardly knows my kids, my kids think he’s weird, and he just continues to be mad and grumpy at the world because he never got the memo that life isn’t like Burger King, where they make it your way.
6 Likes