Holidays with family are great. Spending the night for multiple nights when you live 4 miles away is ridiculous. Especially with little children.
Also, far and away my favorite thread on the board. FIL thread is great as well. Would love if we kept the crazy family stories going all year but maybe the fractional time makes it better?
I can't tell you how much I look forward to sitting on the couch, watching whatever game is on Thanksgiving night, cocktail in hand, and scrolling through the updates from this thread.
The woman is a walking, breathing guilt trip and has to get all her emotional affirmation from her kids and grands because my FIL is the least emotionally accessible person I've ever met. My wife is the only daughter and gets the brunt of it and it sucks
I can see how it could be a enjoyable time if I actually had in-laws that I liked, the thing that would bother me is why am I staying here and not in my own bed when I live 10 minutes away. I’ll gladly stay till midnight and be back at 8 but I wanna sleep in my own bed and wake up on my own schedule.
Family time is awesome and nothing better than enjoying a cocktail on the patio overlooking your children playing with their cousins. it's one of life's great gifts. On the contrary there is nothing worse then awkwardly searching through some else's kitchen for coffee filters at 6:25 AM with a huge hangover trying to scrounge up a breakfast for your toddler. I get the idea of everyone bunkering down for a few days but having to split up kitchens, bathrooms, etc. for no good reason is pretty damn stupid.
I used the purified water that my brother brought to make their baby’s bottles to make coffee this morning.
Heading to the beach for Thanksgiving with my family. My mom is a very difficult woman so I know my wife is massively dreading it, and apparently my mom is already fighting with my uncle who will be there too. Gonna be great!
Not trying to be a sad Stephen in here. But I’m jealous of the people that actually get to see their close family members over the holidays. I don’t think we’ve had a Thanksgiving/Christmas in over 20 years when all my siblings were at my moms house during the same time for the holidays. I miss it. People get busy with life and get older. It sucks
My mom has two sisters. The three of them together have five kids total (I’m one of them). Nearly every Sunday was a family lunch. Christmas and Thanksgiving were just bigger versions of Sunday lunch. It was very much the norm to see everyone nearly every Sunday of each month. Plus gatherings for holidays. All five of us kids are married with kids at this point. It’s harder for all five to be able to coordinate schedules even for holidays at this point. Usually at this point we’re only together with everyone maybe once a year at this point.
I could take or leave family stuff. I can make the best of being at in-laws or something but would be happy sitting at home with my nuclear family as well. I sometimes wish I had a bigger family on my side but then I remember how annoying hanging out with my family can be
Booked a hotel this year instead of staying with my parents, mostly so my wife doesn't murder me and the rest of my family. It will be so much better to be able to get away at the end of the day. I haven't told my parents yet though. Feelings will be hurt.
Welp then.... your excuse is, the baby needs quiet to nurse and sleep properly, and we don't want to subject everybody to the crying and wailing (from you) all night!
We’re not going in for Thanksgiving or Christmas this year. My parents are coming here because my brother is having thanksgiving at their house because all of his in-laws will be there, so my mom and dad didn’t want to mess with that and said they’d rather just come here. Christmas is just too much of a burden on us. 12+ hour drive to get there, then we are an hour in all directions from everyone we have to go and see so we just end up driving everywhere the whole time. We decided if it’s our time we should enjoy it and not spend it in the car. Plus I haven’t spoken or seen my FIL since the incident last Christmas.
This is me. On my dad's side, we aren't really close to anyone due to myriad issues. On my mom's side, I'm the oldest kid and the only boy, so I really don't have any cousins I'm close to at all. I've lost one set of grandparents and the other ones are all but gone anyway... and the only cousins/aunt/uncle on that side we associate with live in TX, so we can't really see them anyway. Most holidays it's just us, my immediate family and my wife's immediate family and it's nice. The way I see it, even though they are family, I don't feel any particular attachment or love for most of my extended family. I'd rather spend the time off with my "chosen" family - wife and kids, friends, in-laws, etc. I like not having to jump through all the hoops and stuff that come with holidays. I just want to eat, drink, watch sports, and veg for a few days.
Same. My mom's side lives all over the country and my dad's side I see once a year at Thanksgiving. I never see them any other time. Kind of seemed dumb to keep going to that as an adult with people I didn't really know because we're "family." Let's stay at home, eat what we want and get drunk.
Have had several arguments, many of them intense, with my wife because my side of the family is drifting apart and I'm kind of emotionally detaching from them given that we moved to the opposite corner of the continental united states. She thinks I'm not doing a good job calling them and checking in on them as my siblings and my parents have a bunch of health and personal issues. I agree that I honestly am not doing a good job and part of it is that they rarely call us anymore which is both sides' fault. She's mostly frustrated because she's had such a shitty relationship with her dad who left her mom when she was five and only popped into her life at random times, along with her brother being REALLY shitty as her mom was dying and not doing much to help step up while frequently criticizing her as a caregiver. Her mother passed away last year and she only has one cousin left outside some very distant relatives so it hurts her seeing how my family isn't as bad but still isn't connecting emotionally.
This is how I am too. Admittedly I probably should be better about some of the stuff but it’s not really engrained in me or whatever. My mom passed when I was 15 and I don’t keep in touch with her side because of some stuff that happened around that time. On my dad’s side a lot of the holidays were with him and my step-mom’s family (my dads parents are Jewish) so I would just skip them or come for a short time until the WT people drove me nuts. Now that I have to attend all the stuff with my GF’s family it gets pretty hectic because I don’t think her or her sister have ever told her parents no so it just feels like there’s constant pressure/stress to make sure we do every little thing and all of that. Going from what I’m used to to this stuff usually gives me crazy anxiety leading up to it.
I will not be going to the in-laws for Thanksgiving due to mine and their continued lack of desire to be in each other’s presence. Christmas this year will be weird with my old man gone. I don’t think I will be posting much in this thread this holiday season.
Was it you that your brother-in-law blew up at a holiday gathering over the basically not getting vaccinated which was a requirement for them to see your young kid?
Hey, you remember! Yes, I blew up. Because he wanted me to say I was wrong about covid being serious. That was last Christmas when we were already back to meeting up with them again. We set a boundary once vaccines became available that we could meet at outdoor locations until either they (almost all my in-laws) or our kid was able to get vaccinated. And we kept our circle small only socializing with like-minded people and only going to a handful of outdoor events during that time (1 football game and 1 concert). My wife was basically getting facebook post shared to her all the time about covid/vaccine conspiracies from some in her family and that has only just recently stopped.
My favorite part was him calling me argumentative because I would not sway from my position. As he stood staunchly not giving an inch.
Small family on my side, just me and my sister. I have 3 first cousin but they are 800 miles away. We've visited them over the years (mostly because of grandparents and aunts/uncles), but they've never really come here. My wife has 5 brothers, and I think in total 10 kids under the age of 10. Yes, it is great when the cousins are together and can play but everyone brings their dogs and it's a total shit show with kids and dogs all over the place. Then you pile on the fact that no one can plan or organize anything but the prevailing thought from the in laws is that everyone has to do the same thing together. I usually just end up outside staring at the pool, pretending to do something, and drinking because I hate the well what are we doing, well we can't do that shit over and over. And no one ever cuts the fireplace off so it's hot as fuck inside. My wife and I jokingly said we were just going to do one holiday at the beach away from everything. We planned a trip (free lodging on beach) this thanksgiving to south florida (where wife is from and parents still have a house that one brother currently lives in) and told everyone our plans months ago. Well the brother who lives there is coming here, her parents are coming here, and two of her other brothers are coming here, when everyone could have just met in florida. In conclusion, we will have a peaceful weekend at the beach this week while everyone bitches about us even though they never communicate and make stupid travel plans.
I'm guessing your wife isn't seeing her family as well this year and it's not just you? I definitely remember your brother-in-law being a huge piece of shit, being given the chance to try to apologize to some degree, and then doubling down. Not sure why I'm so mostly invested in your story but hopefully he gets a fucking wake up lesson.
Nah, my wife is going with my boy. I was invited too but just am not in the headspace to even remotely attempt to deal with it. He is okay for him and his family I guess but why he thinks my house needs to live by his rules is beyond me.
My wife and I are more and more getting into the idea of “found family” as she likes to call it. We will see my family xmas eve this year but we have plans xmas day to go to her friends house after doing Santa and whatnot at home. Our kids get along great, her extended family is a blast. Instead of getting down about family gatherings (or lack thereof) we are looking outside to start new traditions with people who love us just the same but are actually joyful to be around.
Most families just have too much shared history with endless grudges and past slights to ever function normally
My wife and I spent Christmas in Brooklyn last year and it was the best Christmas we have had as a couple. It sucked leaving my mom alone, but she was ok with it ultimately. My wife’s family was the issue. I don’t think we are able to do that this year because of dog reasons, but I hope to continue that tradition in the future.
My SIL and Niece have become very religious in the last year so will be an interesting holiday season. They were around recently and I was out of town and at dinner at my mom’s house my son was eating and they stopped him so they could say Grace first. Apparently he had a very “WTF” expression on his face.
I strongly dislike my own family and wouldn't be bothered in the slightest if I never spent another holiday with them again