Jeepers. I wouldn’t want to have Christmas dinner with people who thought I was a “bottom of the barrel, angry, malicious, liar”.
I think the core of the problem is figuring out the neutral choice: going to Big Functions when the daughter is not invited is “siding” with the son, and staying home because the daughter was not invited is siding with the daughter.
The younger one did something so serious that EVERYONE knows that they did something wrong, and it’s so bad you can’t even share it anonymously with us on the message board?
I’m sorry to say it but, your son and your mother probably are pegging this correctly. Cutting your younger kid out of the family is probably the right thing to do, if what she did was so bad and won’t make ammends for it.
You are willing to forgive her and move past it, but that doesn’t mean you should expect everyone else to. Sounds like one of your kids fucked up really badly and you can’t admit it to us, and I’m sorry about that.
I need to know what she did before I can really advise you.
However, the son, not forgiving and forgetting, is letting her live rent free inside his head. If he is still so angry with her that he can’t be around her, it’s either something very serious/criminal or he is being petty. Did she molest one of his kids? Have sex with his wife? That’s what I’m thinking. If it is one incident it has to be something huge like that.
Your mom is being a bitch. They are your kids and it is your family, they should not be part of this. They have only exacerbated things.
I have to admit, my first thought about the daughter’s offense is that it might be an accusation of sexual abuse. I know that some families will rally around the abuser, and blame the accuser of tearing the family apart, even if the accusations are true.
I’d really have to know what she did before I could make any decision.
No thankfully not even in the ballpark. But I did get good news today. She called to ask me if I would see that he got a letter from her, if she gave it to me. I hadn’t even mentioned a thing about it for months. In addition I had not mentioned my feelings about Christmas either. I am hopeful now. It will be up to him as to how he handles it, and up to her how she words it, But at least I can sleep a little better tonight that there is light at the end of this bleak tunnel.
I hope you’ll come back and let us know how it all turns out over the holidays. We enjoy happy endings. We enjoy trainwrecks too. But hopefully your story is a happy one 
That’s not being an idealist. That’s being selfish, IMHO.
Family drama like this is the downside of close-knit families, IMHO. People’s personal beefs should stay that way. Personal. If the son doesn’t want to see the sister, then people should honor that. If granny doesn’t want sister at her house, then people need to honor that as well. If you want to see your daughter and grandkids, invite them to your house. Forcing people to be in the same room just to keep up appearances during the Christmas season is a guaranteed way to turn family drama into family mess. Ya’ll can still have a good time without forcing sister and brother to put on fake-grins and swallow their feelings. They are entitled to those feelings just as much as you are entitled to yours.
But there is a flip-side to that, as well; if mom doesn’t want to cut daughter out of her life, people need to honor that, but it’s hard. I mean, what if mom stays neutral, and always invites both kids (and grandkids) to everything. Daughter always comes, so son never does. How does the son NOT see that as excluding him, if his mom will only see him on terms he can’t accept? On the other hand, if sometimes the mom invites the son over and explicitly tells the daughter You and Yours Are Not Welcome In My House this day, because your brother will be here, how does the daughter not feel excluded?
How do you suggest she stay neutral here? What does not picking sides look like? What is fair to the kids? To the grandkids?
If by “honor that” you mean “invite them both and not make a stink if he chooses not to come” then I totally agree. If, otoh, you mean “not invite sister because he won’t come if we do,” that’s not exactly keeping their personal beefs personal, ya know? That’s the very definition of dragging everyone else into the middle of your personal shit. And that’s what seems to be going on here.
What’s wrong with the OP saying, “Hey, ya’ll. I’m having Christmas breakfast/lunch/dinner/dessert at my house this year. Everyone is invited, of course, so if you don’t want to see everyone, you don’t have to come. I promise there will be no hard feelings if you don’t. But you are always welcome over here any time you want if you just want to see me. Love you always!”
If granny doesn’t want her bad-ass grandaughter to come to her house, that’s her right. Granny doesn’t have to suffer any and every fool just to keep appearances of family harmony. If she’s stirring up the drama by announcing her disinvitation by email and loud speaker, then yeah, she’s getting into a fight that isn’t hers and making everything worse. But if it’s her house, it’s her party. For all we know, the sister did something to piss her off and she’s worried she won’t be able to contain her temper if she has to look at her sitting across the dinner table. Without knowing exactly what crime the sister committed against the brother or whomever else, everyone may be acting reasonably or unreasonably. We can’t know.
Seems like without knowing all the facts in the case, the best stance is just accepting the fact that people can’t help how they feel and negotiating around this without throwing around more high drama in the mix. The guilt-trippy “Ya’ll are ruining my Christmas dreams!” stuff is exactly why people hate being honest with family.
Because the son will see that as choosing the sister over him, since the mom knows he can’t come if the sister is there. The son will see it as not taking the terrible thing done against him seriously, as handwaving away his own pain and anguish and suffering as unimportant or as an overreaction.
So what? Those feelings are his, not his mother’s, problem. If the son wants to be with family so much, he can go to Granny’s where the sister isn’t going to be there…where everyone’s going to validate him and tell him he’s in the right and then revel in stories about how that other one has always been a bitch that no one liked from the minute she was born. If he wants to see his mother without the sister being around, he can have Christmas breakfast with her, or he can make arrangements to hang out with her after Granny’s party. Hell, why not invite the mother to his house, if he really wants her undivided support and attention?
If the son has a problem with his mother being Switzerland, she can just tell him, “Look. I love both of ya’ll. I respect your feelings about your sister. I want you to respect mine. Now can I put you down for breakfast or what?” He can make his own decision about what he wants to do.
I have a feeling the OP’s allegiance to the daughter isn’t based not on genuine feelings of loyalty and support, but on a bunch of “shoulds”. That is to say, she actually does side with the brother and believes the sister is wrong on this issue and on many others, but she feels like the right thing for a parent to do is to pretend to be as neutral as possible. That’s quite a difficult position to be in. But there are some situations where neutrality isn’t called for. If the OP were a little more forthright, we could be more precise with the advice.
OP says Granny’s “happily visiting with both sides” so I don’t think she’s seething with resentment about some slight to herself. It also states that Granny excludes granddaughter “out of loyalty” to the grandson, and that she’s the one who told everybody and their dog what had happened.
If she chooses to take sides in a fight that doesn’t concern her and not have the granddaughter at her house during family gatherings, that’s indeed her right. But it’s the right of people hearing the story to think she’s being a big ol’ shit-stirring troll.
I totally agree with you about the “I am Switzerland” hosting and invitation to everyone. It’s always been my policy about in-group fighting. But I’ll tell you from experience, the sort of people who start this sort of drama HATE Switzerland. HATE. If you ain’t fer 'em, you must be agin 'em.
If Granny is on speaking terms with the daughter, maybe Granny has told her what the deal is. If I were a granny in this situation, I’d like to think I’d say something like:
“You know I love you, right? Well, as you know I’m having the family over to my house. Brother won’t come if you are there. You know how he is. I’d rather both of you come. But frankly, I’m not into inviting drama or mess in my house. Ain’t nobody got time for that. So I told him that I’d talk to you and ask, out of respect for the family’s sanity, that you not come this year. Now before you balk, just hear me out. You know you were wrong to do what you did, girl. When folks do wrong, there are consequences. Just consider this your consequence. So I’m letting your brother win this one, because I think he deserves it. But I do want to see you and those babies of yours. Are you free on New Years? You all like rum cake, right?”
So it could be that Granny worked this out with Sister in the way that I think the the OP could.
I think there SHOULD be consequences to bad behavior. If the daughter hurt her brother, then why shouldn’t she get not-invited to a family function? It doesn’t have to be permanent. It could be conditioned on a mere apology and a promise to reform. Worse things have happened to a person than to be left out of a Christmas affair. The fallout can be mitigated by just talking it through and assuring the sister that the love is still there for her, as always.
Giving someone what it basically an impossible choice and saying “it’s on you” is not really being neutral, though. If he has very good reason not to ever again want to be in the same room with her again–like she stole thousands of dollars from him or something–then saying “I love both if you and will invite both of you equally” means he never sees his mom. It’s disingenuous for the mom to pretend otherwise.
I’m not defending the OP here. I am just saying that this is not a simple problem, and there isn’t any choice she can make that isn’t going to hurt someone, and that just sucks. You can’t expect her to be able to wave her hands, emotionally detach herself and say “It’s nothing to do with me”.
ETA:
How could it NOT be permanent? There’s nothing so bad my siblings could do to me that I would be too mad to even be civil one year, but be willing to see them the next.
A lot can change in a year. The sister could not only apologize, but have a real “come to Jesus” moment where she admits all responsibility for everything, including global climate change, and makes full amends to everyone she has ever wrong. If she pays the brother back five-fold and promises to never get on his wrong side ever again, his righteous indignation no longer seems that way. Especially after a year has passed.
Or the brother could realize he blew everything out of proportion and realize that Sister is going to be Sister. He can’t change her, but he can change how he feels about her.
Maybe Granny wins the lottery and suddenly everyone in the family is a million dollars richer. The $1000 the sister stole just doesn’t seem like that big of a deal anymore.
I’m not saying they’ll be bosom buddies in a year. But there is absolutely no reason to equate disinvitation from a get-together to being permanently disowned from the family…not as long as there is some tact involved. A person who makes this logical leap deserves to be butthurt. This is just one get-together. The end of the world won’t happen if one person is missing from the family portrait due to her own fuckuppery. In fact, this is the way it should be. Maybe more people would look forward to family gatherings instead of dreading them.
It sure would be nice, though, if the OP would fill in the obvious detail. Because I might be able to easily forgive a sibling who stole $1000 from me out of utter desperation, with full regret afterwards. But I would feel a lot different if it was done out of maliciousness. A year wouldn’t be long enough, even if they did apologize.
I don’t think there is a rule that says that brother can’t see the mom when no one else is around. He can go over to the house when the sister isn’t. Or the mother can go over to his house. As long as he’s not being neglected or short-shrifted, it’s not his business if she decides to keep playing nice with the sister.
Many families struggle with this. Many people sitting in prison right now have a sibling that absolutely despises them for what they have done. Yet these folks are not abandoned by their parents. They still receive letters and care packages and visits from them. Even serial murderers get this treatment. What this tells me is that parental love knows no bounds. No amount of someone else’s butthurt can make it go away.
I don’t think parents are obligated to be so devoted. But a person should be able take sides in a spat and still wish to maintain a functional relationship with both parties involved. (Within reason, of course).
Since as an utterly anonymous poster you continue to be unnecessarily coy with specifics of the offense that would better help people frame the issue re giving advice I can only assume she falsely accused him of some crime or extremely grave moral offense (ie theft, incest, cheating on his wife or similar behavior).
If it is in that serious a context there needs to be a reckoning of some kind before she is allowed back into the family. An apology is a start. The flipside is that if (as you describe it) she is an emotionally or mentally damaged individual herself, he might want to take that into context in getting over it. If she has a diminished empathetic or moral capacity or is just bipolar or delusional there’s a limit to what you can expect to get out of her.
I think after hearing a wide variety of responses, all very helpful for me, I have kind of come to a conclusion. Of course I love every one mentioned in my dilemma. I can’t help but feel grief, sadness, anger, guilt and anxiety, considering the emotional toll this is taking on me. I have offered unconditional support to my son, and have made it crystal clear to my daughter that she must make amends. This, not just for my sake, or for peaceful family functions, or even for her brother’s sake ultimately, because he can go on to a certain extent without that reparation in relationship. For me, as her mother, I want the best for her and that means confronting her demons, accepting responsibility for her wrong doing, making amends and moving on, never repeating the same mess that led her to the destructive place that has caused the rest of us so much pain. Until she decides to take that step, we will all (even her), be living in a “broken” family. I can’t conjure up feelings of repentance and reconciliation for her, nor feelings of coping with her wrong doing for him. All I can really do is set my own boundaries, accept that it hurts, and hope for resolution. In the meantime I will try to problem solve in ways that will make me happier and at peace. I think the idea of getting together with the kids separately is probably for now, as good as it gets. Maybe I will have to take some occasions away from extended family functions where I will not be able to enjoy myself, from time to time, for the sake of my own wellbeing.
I haven’t revealed the nature of the offence, because I wasn’t looking for advice really as it pertains to the judgment of her offense. In fact, I hoped for the opposite. More philosophically, I wanted to grasp the concept of “shunning”, as it relates here. Who gets to judge the relationship issues between two family members? As a group, exactly what is the rule of thumb in order to decide arbitrarily who is in and who is out? Does that change based on popularity? Who decides and when to repeal the blacklisting? If it’s at "joe’s and he decides “bill” shouldn’t be invited, then do we take a vote, or is Bill out of luck perhaps forever, who knows? Or is it up to “Sue” to decide she will invite both and then others won’t come possibly. It is hopelessly complicated and it’s arbitrariness bothers me. I tend to feel the nuclear family should deal with their own conflicts as a family. I think there is a problem when people are involved in issues that don’t involve them and shouldn’t have been broadcasted. In the end it has made it more difficult for us. All of us. And it sets a prescident for extended family breakdown in the future. I guess, as the mom, I will have to keep supporting and encouraging. As the daughter, find a little space for myself to alleviate the anger I have toward my mother. For myself, to give myself permission to feel, cry and hope…and then move on. I raised my kids in love, but the truth is young adulthood with its immaturity, and snares gets messy. I can only hope that the investment I made in them will pay off in the end.