Thank you! My goal for Christmas day is not to utter a single word to another human being the whole day. I will talk to the trout: for some reason, I always say, “sorry about that brother” as I release a caught trout back to the stream and I will talk to my dog, mostly because I desperately need to know “who’s a good girl?” The hard part will be the Chinese takeout order.
There’s apps for that…
My in-laws live overseas (in China) so my wife only sees them once a year. I haven’t seen them in nine years, but I’m certain that if and when I do visit them, I’ll be very comfortable. They lived with us for five years, including our daughter’s first two years. My mother-in-law in particular and I get along famously, inspite of the fact that I speak very little Chinese and she speaks no English at all. When I’ve visited them in China, I’m in the kitchen chopping vegetables two hours after getting off the plane.
My wife on the other hand feels very uncomfortable around my sisters in particular. There’s fault on both sides. It’s gotten worse over the years. So now I take our daughter to my parents place at Christmas and my wife goes off on a holiday with other Chinese people who don’t celebrate Christmas. My mother’s not thrilled but it’s better than the bickering that is inevitable otherwise.
When my parents come to visit us, there’s no problem.
I got along with my FIL quite well as long as my MIL didn’t hover around him. He confided a lot of family secrets to me and made me swear never to repeat them aloud or my MIL would go all WWIII because those secrets “don’t fit in with her fairy tale way of life.”
My MIL is a very nice, very polite woman but yeah, she has a fairy-tale world view where nothing bad ever happens or, if something bad does happen, one glosses it over and reshapes the story so the story becomes truth. For this reason you can’t trust her with any kind of truth. My SILs are a bit better but they too will do the same if need be.
I get along with her but at an arm’s distance.
In contrast my husband was my mother’s long-lost son. Shortly after we married he was laid off and became my mother’s primary caregiver for the next 5 years. When my mother was in the early stages of ALZ she loved running errands with him. They joked and teased each other. Frankly I was pretty jealous at times because she NEVER was like that to me.
As I have posted multiple times, my in-laws are great, my wife’s are a pain in the ass!
A realist. Hey, enjoy what you have. It sounds like a lot of fun so long as it’s only for special events, and not all the time.
I’m going to answer anyway. But for readability, maybe I’ll start a new post.
Post 1, Advice:
It’s not the same as being there, but have you considered setting up a long skype call with each side of the family? Or even a short call? (Or Facetime, or Google Hangouts, or whatever technology works for you.) My family does holiday phone calls to the people who are remote, and we hold up the phone and all yell greetings to each other. But something like skype is better. Yuo can hold up the laptop and sweep it around the room and everyone can smile and wave, and there’s just more of a sense of being together when you can all see each other’s faces.
And then the call ends and you can all relax. 
Post 2, what’s up?:
I don’t know what the dynamic is with your wife, but I have this weird irrational territorial thing with my MIL. She’s really nice, and has always been kind to me. And I do my best to be kind to her. But there’s stress when we are together. And I really think it’s some hindbrain “who is the dominant female in this group” thing, that I simply can’t quash. I do my best to keep it under control – it’s clearly my problem. But it makes me uncomfortable when I have to spend more than a few hours with my MIL.
I get along fine with his sibs, despite their being odd. And I got along better than he did with the father who abandoned him (now deceased). And I didn’t like the uncle who was like a father to him, but then, neither did anyone else. At the funeral, my husband said “let’s talk about his good qualities” in the eulogy. (And of course, he did have good qualities. And he and I made a cautious peace and enjoyed sharing horticultural stuff.) As far as I can tell, he is comfortable with my relatives, except in the ways that any two particular people might clash. (And the SIL who was the most clashy with him and with me has since divorced my brother, so we don’t see her much.)
Anyhow, I like family gatherings. And I always invite my MIL to stuff at our house. And I go to stuff at her house, and generally enjoy myself. But I feel like there are weird irrational dynamics among family, and it’s helpful to acknowledge them and try to deal with them. And if something like that makes your wife extremely uncomfortable, then it’s best if she doesn’t have to go every year – glad to hear you are staying home this year.
Up until the house burnt down in August, I had a serious territorial thing going in my kitchen with almost everybody other than certain friends who visited enough to understand … back when I still lived in Norfolk VA, we had friends of my husband visit, 2 of his childhood friends and their mother [one had just been transferred to a submarine stationed there and his brother who was a target sailor…I mean stationed on a surface ship:D] and she decided to cook and left the stovetop on, set down an antique platter that had been in my family for over 150 years and it shattered. I got no apology, no offer to try and replace it, just a shrug and a walk out of the kitchen. So I refused to let people I didn’t trust cook in my kitchen. IF you can demonstrate through assisting that you know how to work in a kitchen and not abuse the equipment then I am willing to let you take more than a scullery role.
I actually find it easier just to cook for people than to turn them loose in my kitchen, I can cook portions for anything from 1 person to 200 people <shrug> I enjoy the act of cooking and find it relaxing, moreso than turning the kitchen over to someone and sitting on my ass while they do all the work. I tend to ask if I can help in the kitchen if I am visiting someone anyways.
[and why yes, we do have a set of Navy recipe cards =)]
Out of curiosity, what reason did you provide for forgoing all of your family’s holiday gatherings?
I thought about this thread immediately after my inlaws just spoiled star wars for me despite being begged not to share spoilers. Right now, I am not very comfortable with them at all.
When my M in L who I thought the world of passed we decided to continue to celebrate family occasions together as well as meet up for coffee. For this day and age we are close, meeting up at my place, everyone bringing a pot of food so there will be some good eating.
More comfortable than with my own family believe it or not. However my stepson’s g/f…can’t stand her. Although not family, she’s always around so little difference imo, they might as well be married. I would go into detail but I’ll just get my blood pressure up and no reason to do that.
Your wife is Japanese, right? Did she go over to the States as an adult? e.g., grew up in Japan?
Her reactions sound really typical Japanese, especially for a woman in her 40s. Obviously, each person is different and no one exactly fits the mold in all areas, but sometimes it can be helpful to look at social customs and how that affects people. Note that I know more Japanese (including my ex-wife) who don’t match this Clift’s Note version of customs than who do, some of it may be useful. If not, you get what you paid for. 
Japan was a traditional, highly patriarchal society with strong family ties. Daughters were expected to leave their own homes and become part of their husbands’ families. They had a giri or duty to the family and were expected to fit in, keep the peace and serve their new elders.
Women who married the oldest sons would actually move in with the in-laws and raise their kids in the multi-generational household.
They were expected to kowtow to the MIL and never complain, they needed to gaman or endure whatever hardships they had, and many mothers-in-law took out their stresses on the bride, treating them as badly as they had been treated by their mother-in-law.
The luckier woman married younger brothers and were able to set up their own households, but were expected to visit during New Year’s, the big holiday in Japan, as well as other times. During these visits, they would be expected to display enryo or modest reserve, constantly wearing a social mask.
As an example of this, when I was in Japan in '84, I went out to dinner with a friend and his fiancee, we were talking, joking and having a good time when my friend suddenly got mad at her. Apparently she had committed the sin of not paying attention to my glass and it had gotten empty. He scolded her for letting her guard down and not fulfilling her duties to their guest.
I’m sure you can imagine who tiring that would be for three days. Of course, I’m sure that she wouldn’t actually be waiting on your family, but I wonder if the internal tension wouldn’t still be there.
Women in Japan are often much more territorial about kitchens and feel much worse about invading other people’s turf.
Which actually makes it much harder for your wife to not want to go.
A Japanese woman could feel quite guilty about her own discomfort.
While this may seem borderline paranoia to Americans, it’s actually par for the course for Japanese. Coming from a society where directness is explicitly discouraged, people actively read the tea leaves for signs of deeper meaning.
Not including someone on an email list is .simply. .not. .done. They are much more careful about these things, and when discovered, then the person makes a much bigger show of apologies.
This is also part of the Japanese group thing.
Now, all of this may not apply at all to your wife. That’s the problem with overly simplistic explanations. However, there may be a cultural basis for part of the discomfort.
On years that you do go, can you arrange “down time” for her? Afternoon trips with just the two of you so she doesn’t have to be faced with all the stress?
My wife’s family do not get along with each other, let alone outsiders like me.
She came over as a high school exchange student…and then just stayed here.
Thanks for the cultural perspective; that was enlightening. Having been married for many years now I’m familiar with her likes/dislikes/concerns, and often times they are at odds with my own sensibilities. You’re right that not all aspects of a person’s personality are derived from their culture, but so many times when I read about some aspect of Japanese culture, I think to myself, oh man that’s totally her. Especially the “reading the tea leaves” thing, which she does with frustrating frequency; I can tell her exactly what I’m thinking, and she’ll do some sort of mental calculus and end up with a totally different idea of what’s in my head. And of course your post helps me to understand why my brother’s email address omission (and lack of ostentatious (actually, any) apology for it) might be causing her such consternation.
A fine idea, and it actually came up during our most recent visit; she said that on future trips we should rent a car so we’d have the freedom to disappear for a bit on our own, even if just to Starbucks for a cuppa joe. I suppose we’ll end up doing that.
That we were still whipped after our (very recent) trip to Japan. My parents are old and tire easily, so they can easily understand/accept exhaustion as a reason for staying put. 
OK, that makes sense. The reason I asked is that Japanese culture become so much stronger if the person remains in Japan during the formative college years. However, had she come over as a child then you wouldn’t expect to see as much of this culture.
My theory is that if a Japanese person goes to the States for both high school and college, they can never really be “true” Japanese again. I’ve talked about this with countless Japanese people and no one has disagreed with me yet. Of course, that could be because it’s not polite to openly disagree, so you never know.
Had she come over as an adult, there is a greater chance that she would have just gaman or endured the discomfort. However, that isn’t necessarily the case as my 50-something Japanese friend, in Japan, discovered when his wife started refusing to go to his family at New Years.
There are also differences in the regions where people come from. The old capital, Kyoto is much more subtle than Tokyo which is less direct than Osaka, for example. In Tokyo then there are differences between the shitamachi area with the traditional working and merchant class and the more “sophisticated” parts of Tokyo.
Where is your wife from?
As Americans, we simply don’t get the group mentality and the need to fit in as much. Sacrifice for the group just isn’t stressed as much.
As I mentioned before, when people are actively discouraged from being direct, you have to do the mental math to try to decipher what is really meant.
No one does apologies better than Japanese, and consequently our lack of them really bothers them.
The car rental is huge. The freedom of not having to depend on others really makes a big difference. I used to visit my sister but I had a really hard time putting up with my BIL. Having my own car there made it much easier to put up with him because I knew I could get out of the house if I needed to.
Osaka. So I suppose by Japanese standards she’s relatively direct, even though to me she often seems to not be very direct.
I’m aware of this issue. She’s a US citizen now, and I tell her she’s as much an American as my mom is (Mom is a US citizen born/raised in England), but she (my wife) doesn’t feel like it because she looks different and her English is only 99% flawless. I suppose this might account for at least a small portion of her “interloper” feeling when she hangs out with my extended family (a bunch of white-bread Midwesterners).