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When Good Holidays Go Bad

I’m feeling like I’ve used the “I have my period” card twice in a month to get out of swimming class.

I guess I don’t get it. Why does doing the right thing for my own family make me feel so bad?

So I turn to you, The Internet, for your experiences. How do you guys manage the holidays with all of the assorted obligations–and guilt, let’s not forget guilt–that come as naturally with it as cat poo garland and Elvis crooning about Blue Christmases?

First published December 2009

7 readers liked this story.

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Comments

I've just given in on the entire "we're going to have a happy holiday dammit" idea. With three small children, we're determined to make it about them. My parents split up just before my middle one was born, so now there's dad and his disturbingly young new wife, mom and her "I have no one since your father left," my husband's family which manages all to be in the same city and yet is still extremely scattered. And I understand all of them and their desire to be with us and to see us at this important time and not to be alone or left out. But in a sea of "are they going to be there?" and "I thought you were going to be somewhere else on Christmas Eve," I am about to map out an hour-by-hour schedule of all Christmas holidays to come and tell anyone who doesn't like it to check back in with me for Easter. Because this is 4 years in a row and I just can't take it anymore. Was that helpful? It was for me, even if it was no help at all for you.

My family are all within 30 minute drives of home so that is no problem for us, but what I find heinous is the shuttling around of the children of divorced parents. We spend an hour either retrieving or delivering our boys to their mom's grandma's house, out at the back of beyond, and I feel bad for the kids who are expected to be bright and pleasant and grateful at two different events, when the second event finds them spent. This is a good reason not to get divorced.

You are SO right. I have been married 11 years, and we now have four kids, and we have YET to have a holiday of our OWN in our own house. Everyone expects that we should schlep all four kids - screaming from lack of sleep and a totally different environment - plus the dog 250+ miles away every holiday (six different Christmases over the course of a week this year). It's ridiculous. I said last year that I wouldn't do it again, but somehow, I forgot. We're doing it again. We'd back out now, but our kids would be crushed. That is the ONLY thing keeping it together. Never again. I'm sick of catering to everyone else and putting my own family last and having everyone be miserable because of it.

I got tired of crying every Christmas so this year I am taking this holiday by the Christmas bulbs! I think it's important to see family, but I didn't like it that our Christmas morning was ruined because of too many commitments. So we changed the time with my husband's dad and his wife, set a time limit on my extended family get together (that notorioulsy runs late, and if we haven't eaten dinner by 7, we are still leaving), and thankfully my parents and mother-in-law are flexible when we get together. So I guess I managed my stress by putting my family's needs first. For me, it's all about boundries; I want to see our families, but don't want to be miserable. Good luck this year!! There is NOTHING wrong with putting your family first.

...................My brain is not communicating with my fingers to type out anything that makes sense.