Dear Carolyn: For many years my spouse and I celebrated most holidays with my parents, my brother, and his wife. These holidays were delightful. Excellent wine, adventurous menus, carefully curated playlists, long, lounging dinners with great conversations.
My brother and his wife, somewhat late in life, now have three kids. I love my niece and nephews, but they have significantly changed the holiday dynamic, and I miss having more relaxed, sophisticated holidays. I have tried to come up with compromises over the years, but all of them have been rejected.
I invited all the adults to adults-only holiday dinners after the kids’ bedtimes at my home, I suggested that my parents invite my and my brother’s households to their home on alternate holidays, I suggested that we set up a fun Thanksgiving-themed “camp” in my parents’ basement and hire a sitter to watch the kids downstairs while the adults enjoy the holiday upstairs. (I was willing to pay for tents and the sitter.)
This year I suggested having an adults-only Christmas celebration on Christmas Eve. My parents weren’t interested because they needed to get ready for Christmas Day, and my brother said it was unreasonable to expect them to get a sitter for this event.
I’m at a loss. My parents are getting older, and I fear we will not have another peaceful holiday in their lifetimes. The kids are good kids and I don’t mind spending time with them, but I feel like all the holidays have been hijacked. Our only choices seem to be to stay home by ourselves or join a child-centered holiday. Is there another way to get my family to work with me on this? — Longing for a Quiet Holiday
Longing for a Quiet Holiday: No, there isn’t.
Because you’ve tried, and because if either your parents or your brother wanted that, then they would have said yes to one of your suggestions and found a way to make it work.
Hear the “no.” Things change. Life changes. Holiday traditions that define perfection are overtaken by events that shape new traditions.
These changes and overtakings can involve some really hard goodbyes.
They can also involve goodbyes with asymmetrical effects. You are suffering from the loss of the sophisticated adult holiday, but you can’t assume your parents want another “peaceful holiday in their lifetimes.” The inclusion of grandkids and all their chaos may be exactly what they want. And your brother and sister-in-law may have a third reaction entirely: They may see your point and even fantasize about anything leisurely and curated, but also regard that as just crazy talk because they! have! kids! and understand it’s going to be a decade at least before they start thinking that way again. It’s what they signed up for.
While we’re on the subject, allow me to praise these parents lavishly for, apparently, not getting offended that you’ve tried every conceivable scheme to boot their kids off Christmas. I get what you’re after, I do. But parents often describe their attachment to their children as having their hearts walking around outside their bodies — so proposals to stash their hearts in the basement tend not to be so objectively received. They “work with” you already a lot more generously than you realize.
Another situational reality: Kids don’t stay small. Your relief is coming, just on its own schedule, not yours. Accepting that instead of fight-fight-fighting it sounds like the wisest adaptation of all.
