vent all you want, this site is sometimes hostile and when they don’t agree with you watch out, the rudness comes to the surface!
that said i would be peeved if a girlfriend took over my day that i have holiday gatherings.she should of checked with you before stealing your party day. can you invite the folks over for christmas day instead? or the weekend before or after christmas or even do a big spread for new years?
(we always have 4 parties to attend with family during the holidays one is christmas eve, one is christmas day, one is the saturday after and the other is the sunday after. i try to keep it planned this way so we see everyone that we can for the holidays.)
Well, it seems fair for your someone else in the family to want to have it at their house some years. Personally I would do whatever food and decorations make you and your own kids happy. Do it for yourself and not for all the in-laws who will visit. Some years they may come for the whole time. Some years they may come for part of the day. Some years they may travel elsewhere. I would not expect everyone to come to my house every single Christmas eve because some years plans will naturally change. I’m sorry the holidays are hard for you but you sound super inflexible concerning other people’s wishes. Change is hard sometimes. I also struggle with it. Make a list of what really stresses you out about preparing for the big Eve party and then see what you can change in order to give yourself less stress and make things easier.
Sigh.
Holiday stress comes in two varieties.
First is the stuff you put yourself through - you are in total control of this - simply “stop” doing what ever does not bring you joy - and I don’t care if it is a long standing tradition.
If it no longer makes you happy then it’s served it purpose and it’s time for it to go.
Second is the stuff imposed in you by others - generally this is stuff coming from extended family (any relative that’s not your husband/wife/kids, etc).
This covers the 'I’m always hosting and I’m sick of it", the “we’re never in our own home and I’m tired of dragging the kids to no less that 2 or more places”, and a host of other common complaints.
I think you’re suffering from the second variety.
You were all set to do things as you usually do - and now someone’s thrown a monkey wrench into your plans.
Upsetting, I know.
BUT this COULD be a HUGE opportunity - if you can bring yourself to look at it the right way.
Take this opportunity to redefine your holiday.
You DON’T HAVE to ‘bust your behind’ or budget preparing a huge spread for ‘chew and screw by 2’.
Heck, if only 2 hrs is what you can expect - cut the spread back by at least %75 - put out cheese and crackers, chips and dip, and a few Christmas cookies and be done with it.
Sit back, relax - let the other place worry about feeding the crowd - you just do appetizers - and maybe have some warm cider (easy in a crock pot) for a beverage.
Just learn to relax - and if ANYONE complains - just smile, say you had no choice in how things were altered.
If you have the food purchased choose a different day. Let her have Christmas Eve and you plan get together for New Year’s or the Saturday in between.
I know it’s difficult. My birthday is December 24 or Christmas Eve, my kids always knew where they were spending Christmas Eve – then my daughter got married and her ex-husband’s family tried to dictate where they would spend Christmas Eve. I compromised and held my birthday celebration at a time (lunch or dinner) to fit their schedule.
I worked in retail and my daughter worked at an IHOP by the mall. She would have to work all day Thanksgiving then be back to open on Black Friday at midnight so the shoppers could have breakfast before shopping. We just started planning Thanksgiving dinner for Saturday. It turns out the day and time don’t matter as much as getting together and enjoying the day.
ETA:
The holidays are difficult for me also 29 yrs ago I lost my daughter’s dad on November 14, an aunt passed between Thanksgiving and Christmas and my mom passed 4 years ago on December 19… add the stress of the holidays and I just want to find an island to live on.
In my family, boyfriends/girlfriends/fiancés/fiancées do not get to host. That’s reserved for family.
I’m sorry about your dad. We buried my mom two days before Thanksgiving last year. I get what you are saying.
I always had Christmas Eve at our house. We didn’t live near any family so our friends became our family. It was a wonderful tradition. Then, my husband got transferred and we moved back to Texas where all the family lives. I started planning our traditional Christmas Eve and I was told that SIL does a party on that night and its tradition. I said “us too”. Long story short, we stopped and went to hers. I missed our tradition but things change.
Life changes. You need to roll with the flow. You need to realize that you are making “new” traditions with your husband and children.
You act like it has to be you or her, but can’t there be compromise? Talk with her and see if she would be okay doing a tradeoff. Maybe the two of you could alternate years, or one of you host Christmas while the other takes Thanksgiving? There is no reason you should not both give a little on this and find a schedule that works and is not just all about you you you.
Nope, you aren’t wrong. I’d be pissed. I’d then say fine, let her do it. I’d then stay home and have the sort of thanksgiving I want.
In fact we stopped going to my brothers because his girlfriend made us feel so unwelcome. She has her whole family too,and we get seated by family. It’s weird, strange, and I prefer to just skip the stress completely.
Last year we put up the tree, had simple appetizers and a simple dinner. It was amazing to delete all the stress.
Let her do it and have a PJ day. Watch a family movie, be thankful for the simple things. I’m doesn’t have to be o hard.
In our family we had something called compromise.
Had my side for Christmas Eve, spent Christmas morning at home, just US, me, hubby and kids, then spent Christmas afternoon/evening with the in laws.
Sorry your idea of “loving family” only means doing things your way 
I feel sorry for your husband and kids.
I completely understand how you feel. Do you think you could find a way to compromise? Especially since
it sounds like hubby wants to do this. Rack your brain & see if there might be a way to pull it off so
your do both and just plan on not staying long at your brother-in-law’s girlfriend’s house. Don’t make a big
deal of it w/your hubby just tell him you’ll take 2 cars so he can stay as long as he wants yet you can get
the kids home at a decent time for bed. Wishing you the best of both worlds so you can do it all, be happy
and keep the peace. Enjoy ALL of the traditions. Hang in there and do your best to make it work for you as
well as the family. 
I hear something else… it’s YOUR holiday traditions you miss. I get it, I come from a large Italian family. You are missing that, I miss it too. You would think over time it would get better but I had some tears this afternoon working on our Thanksgiving menu for four instead of 24. I don’t have any advice, I just wanted to let you know I understand…
After your SWH. This is a site to ask questions; not to vent. In fact, a question is required to have a question. You did ask a question. "…am I wrong here. Perhaps you asked this because you had to have a question. Apparently you only wanted answers that agreed with you. Your response in your SWH sounds immature. Just as having holidays done your way and only your way is immature. I suggest that mature adults have learned how to share.
You reduce the stress by being flexible. I suggest it’s not fair to others to insist you’re the only one who can do a holiday dinner correctly. Actually, I see it as rude.
There are many ways to celebrate. Yet you judge your in-laws bease they do thinges differently than you. I urge you to think of the holidays in terms of sharing love. We use getting together as a way of sharing love. Why should you be the only one whose able to make a good dinner and fill the house with love and hapoiness?
I suggest you work thru your angry feelings then get together with your sister-in-law to plan ways you can be involved. (She’s been with your brother-in-law long enough that she fits the role.)
Accept that it’s someone else’s turn to have the pleasure of the holidays in their home. Be kind. Be loving. Build new traditions. Enjoy your relatives in a more relaxed way. Perhaps not enjoying them without the buffer of hosting is a reason to only have dinner at your house? I suggest you think of ways to be accepting of family and their differences.
Your post sounds like you need to be in control. How do you get along with family? Relationships are difficult when control is important to happiness.
Find a way to accept this change. Relax and enjoy being with family. Preparing dinner isn’t the only way to share love. Isn’t love and thankfulness the reason for the holidays?
I know you are feeling attacked, so I hesitate commenting. I get that you feel that the responses are too harsh, but I truly hope you allow yourself to take in some of the main points: the points encouraging you to be more giving/sharing of plans and ideas with others especially your husband and those points encouraging you to appreciate others’ needs for the holidays. These suggestions will give you more peace. We all need reminders sometimes of ways we need to grow. Blessings
Well, you can decide not to host. Or you can decide to do a much lighter spread. Or you can talk to them about how this makes you feel. Or you can all go out to dinner somewhere. Years ago, I was all set for my first married woman Thanksgiving and my uncle’s brand new wife decided to take it from me and the whole family (aside from my mother and sister) were like “well, she lives closer…” That came to bite them in the butt a few years ago when she suddenly decided not to host anymore. They are still welcome here, but choose not to - and that’s their choice. Mine is to host my ILs and be happy. So you can choose to be upset or you can make a celebration that works for you, even if it’s different than it’s always been. Can you travel to see your family instead?
Additional: You sound very angry that you didn’t get all the answers you wanted. You can vent, certainly, but the bottom line is YOU choose how YOU handle your holiday and if you can’t discuss the holiday calmly to us, I rather wonder how you’ve approached this with your family. Is this just about the GF or is it about what you see as “your” holiday and the emotions that come with the time of year in which you lost your father? Maybe start with an apology to your DH and see what you/he can sort out together as a compromise.
oof.
since my little mumsie started to get overwhelmed with the holiday stuff i’ve had the big dinner here, on christmas day. (we quit going anywhere on christmas years ago when we had small kids.) i am totally with you on the work involved in putting on the ritz for holiday celebrating. i’ve always enjoyed it, but boy, it is a LOT of work and stress.
but you do come off as a bit of a DQ, hon. sorry, but you do.
not quite sure what you mean about the BIL/gf situation. are you BOTH having big spreads? or the eats are at your place, but the other festivities at hers?
i mean, if she wants to do it all, why not just let her?
or if your poor husband is ‘soft’ for wanting to keep peace in the family, i guess you could draw a hard line and YOU inform everyone that they’d better not go to the other house and should damn well stay at your and ENJOY.
if the two-house scenario is how it’s going to be, i myself would roll my eyes a little and then go with it. probably call the gf and say ‘since everyone’s coming to your place shortly after the meal, how about we do the coffee and dessert there?’
take the opportunity to lessen your own workload a little.
but either way i think you might want to refocus on loving your husband a little during the season of love instead of beating him up for something that was never his idea to start with.
khairete
suz
I am totally with you on not making a big meal for a dine & dash. I’m a little confused about the situation though. If BIL and his GF are hosting, are they not making a meal at their place? I don’t see why you’d have people over to your home at all on that day. Besides, just as you don’t want to drag your kids about, the others would probably rather not have to come to both houses on the same day too.
Or is it that you’re upset because you don’t get to host the day for a 7th year in a row and you also don’t want to go to BIL’s, so you won’t see the family at all in that case?
Expecting people to always come to you because you don’t want to travel would be unreasonable. What you experienced as a child sounds lovely, and it is nice that you were able to do it for the past six years, but it sounds like you’re going to need to be flexible and allow other members to have a turn too. This is normal when families expand into branches. Your household is but one branch on the tree and taking turns hosting is typical in extended families.
It doesn’t mean you have to attend when it isn’t your turn, but if you make that choice then don’t be cranky about not getting to see the family that year. You have to choose which one of the two things is your priority.
I certainly understand not wanting to travel on Christmas Eve or Day. We started staying home when our kids were little too. We go to sleep at home and usually spend the next day together, just the four of us. We have gone to visit people who were nearby, but we don’t travel long distances.
We normally celebrate with family on another day, usually a Saturday during December or January. Since all of their grandparents are divorced we have 4 family sides, it usually amounts to 2 or 3 Christmas gatherings every year. The kids sure don’t mind more than one celebration! We do not see all sides every year. When I was a kid and holidays were split between my divorced parents, a degree of clock-watching was required, so the sides made sure to work together so that there was not conflict.
So as for “How do you handle the stress of the holidays?” I do it by not making things more complicated than they need to be.
This year, my brother’s fiancee wanted to host Thanksgiving for the first time, in their new home. Every year in the past, either I hosted or my mother did for this side of the family. Now it is someone else’s turn. Although I like hosting and cooking, I look at is as no work for me this year!
From the outside, your situation is very simple to me:
BIL & GF are hosting. You don’t make a meal or have people over. You get to choose whether to attend and enjoy seeing people, or to not attend and enjoy spending the day with just your household. That’s it. Drama free.
We are Italians too… however, you have to learn to compromise, especially as the family gets bigger… In our case, I host Christmas and have been for several years. Now, IF someone else would like to take it over, PLEASE DO… when I was less flexible, I’d probably have been upset if someone wanted to do it, but now, I try and roll with the punches and not be as controlling,which is something I was, oh everything had to be in place, the food had to be just right, the decor had to gorgeous… now, my wine glasses NEVER match as I refuse to buy new ones until the rest are all broken… Our cousins, used to host Thanksgiving, then switched to Christmas Eve and now this year, with short notice said they aren’t hosting Christmas and instead are back to Thanksgiving, in their case, the husband’s cousin (also big Italian family) wants to have Christmas eve at their place… so the cousins are going along with the plan…
You are going to need to compromise… The holidays may mean one thing to you but will mean something else to others…
I too have lost loved ones, as has our cousin who just lost her father in April, so this Christmas will be the first without him… BUT… she still gave up Christmas eve so that someone else could host it…
In a way, good… the family comes over for a couple of hours and then afterward, you get to enjoy the kids… to me, that sounds AWESOME!!! in our case, if things end early, we drive around and look at all the Christmas lights…
also, you’ve hosted now for 6 years… give the girlfriend a chance who may want to make a good impression… maybe even give her some tips…
it’s not as bad as you think it may be … it will work itself out…
show some flexibility and this will teach the kids a good lesson in compromise…
good luck
Of course you can vent here and are welcome; folks have been venting here for a long time. But this is an advice site, where people post not just agreement with a vent but their advice and opinions about the situation. Most of the posts below try to be at least somewhat supportive and recognize your stress, but they also offer views that don’t necessarily just nod in agreement that you’re right and everyone else is wrong.
Most people posting offered you ideas about flexibility and adaptability–two things you seem determined not to consider. Why not? It’s nice that you’ve been willing to host for so long, but your traditions and expectations don’t get to trump everyone else’s, unless you want to celebrate your traditions alone. And if your husband, who apparently has been supportive of your hosting all these years, wants to go to his own brother’s house as a change, or find some other arrangement for everyone, why do your wishes and birth family traditions get to “win” over his wishes this time – after six years of his helping you host? Doesn’t he get a say?
Why not work with the girlfriend to coordinate plans rather than view the holidays as either “yours” or “hers” like it’s a competition? You could have folks over Christmas Eve while she has them over Christmas Day, or the other way around, or you do something for New Year’s. Or you think outside the box of a big meal and do an open house style buffet of Italian finger foods, meats, little desserts, instead of a big sit-down meal. Not your tradition, I know, but traditions are about sharing, and you’ve had six straight years to share your way of doing things. I’m sure you teach your kids to take turns. Now you have a chance to model that for them.
It sounds as if maybe you miss your family and its traditions so much that you define Christmas Eve as being solely about doing what you are used to doing. But others get to define it differently. They’ve come to you for a very long time now; it shouldn’t be such a threat to you that you might have to do something different one year. It isn’t a crack at who you are as a person, it’s only a desire to change things up, and you get to be guest instead of host for once. Can you step back from the emotion and give it a try, for your husband’s sake if nothing else?
By the way: The girlfriend has been in the family longer than you’ve been married, as you say yourself. So there’s no case of her being some new girlfriend trying to make a mark; she’s family, married or not. And I agree that it’s not always great to haul young kids around but your post indicates everyone lives close by, if the idea is for folks to go to two houses on the same day. It’s not a case of hauling kids hours each way…Those are the kinds of considerations that you might see if you can cool off the anger and look at the situation calmly.
Well you’ve already written your SWH so I will try to be as gentle as possible. I can totally relate to your gripes because I am a person who also like things the way I like them, enjoys planning and entertaining, can’t stand last minute 'wrenches" in plans. I need a LOT of lead time to adjust my expectations.
Your question is “Am I wrong here??” and unfortunately the answer is… yes
I think where you are going wrong is with your ‘all or nothing’ attitude. You want to entertain the family and share traditions but only if you can have them for an extended period time… if not, NO GO (right?)
Your reasons make total sense- holidays are hard when you are missing family members, you want to share traditions, and you need to go all out or it just doesn’t feel like the ‘real deal’ to you (I get that totally). But can you imagine your husband explaining to his family “hey guys, we need Christmas Eve to be at our house exclusively because of all GINA’s thoughts, feelings, and opinions about Christmas”… I mean talk about making it all about you! You don’t want it to sound like that. But… it does.
You didn’t ask for practical solution from us, but I think your only choices are 1)give in a little and share the day at the two different places; 2) consider spreading it out over a few more days- a Christmas day event at your house or a “day after”- lots of families do this; or 3) stick with your all-or-nothing and don’t do yours
For the record, I totally feel you. You remind me a lot of me and how I feel about special events and holidays, and plans and expectations. But we also need to be aware of how we present ourselves to others, including our loved ones, and sometimes we have to step outside ourselves a little to see if we are going to come off as unreasonable or inflexible. That’s what led you here, right?
Shannon said it perfectly. And just to throw this in… what about BIL’s girlfriend? What if she also comes from a long line of tradition and LOVES having all the family over and wants to do so at her house… to maintain HER traditions and feelings around the holidays? Hmm?
You need to figure out how to compromise, or to let it go completely. Honestly, if you’re just going to be bitchy about the whole thing, don’t bother doing any of it… b/c everyone will pick up on it and everyone (including yourself) will be miserable. What a way to ruin a holiday.
ETA: As for the “vent”… you asked a question. You didn’t just vent. You asked if you were wrong. And you are.