Okay, so mr. avabeth and I had a bit of a disagreement (i.e. fight) about the holidays last night. We were supposed to go visit my parents this coming weekend for Thanksgiving since his stupid job will keep us in town for Thanksgiving and Christmas. However, due to his stupid job, we’re not going.
So, I’m not seeing my family in my home state at all for the rest of the year (we live eight hours away). I’m not happy about this.
Then Saturday night, his mother asks what our plans are for Christmas. Now, we are spending Thanksgiving at his parents’, and had planned to spend Christmas Day, keeping Christmas Eve to ourselves. It’s our first Christmas as a married couple, and we wanted to have part of the holiday to ourselves.
I love my MIL dearly, but apparently, because my FIL’s mother and aunt aren’t spending Christmas Day at his sister’s, as usual, they will only spend Christmas with the family on Christmas Eve. So now we’re expected to go to his parents on Christmas Eve. Which means we’ll show up for dinner, and NOT make the 8 PM service at church, meaning I will take mr. avabeth to the midnight service, regardless of whether he wants to go or not.
When I broached the subject of staying home on Christmas Day to have part of the holidays to ourselves, well, we can’t do that either, because his family opens gifts. And they just don’t open them on Christmas Eve.
So of course, I suggested that perhaps his grandmother and great-aunt could come over Christmas Day, and all of us spend Christmas Eve at our respective homes. That got me a lovely “My mother isn’t going to change her plans around for you!”. (Which did get me an apology on the phone this morning for snapping at me…). I also suggested that we have his parents on Christmas Day for the afternoon dinner, which also was met with a no because ‘we don’t have enough seats’. Now, we do have a small apartment, but we do have enough room for the four of us in the living room.
What I don’t understand is that his parents get us for BOTH major holidays this year. Am I being a brat to want part of Christmas alone with our new family? And do we just not count until we have kids? In other words, we can do whatever we’re told on the holidays because it’s only the two of us and we don’t matter because we don’t have kids to wait for Santa yet.
How do you handle this as a married or long-term couple? I don’t want this to be a point of contention for years to come, but I also want to establish some sort of tradition for us NOW so that when we do have kids, we aren’t dragging them all over the place on Christmas to meet everyone else’s demands. We want our kids to spend Christmas at home with us, instead of driving all over kingdom come.
Any suggestions? Tell me how you handle this issue.
Ava