Every year my hubby and I have to go to like 4 different houses for both thanksgiving and christmas. I don't mind my close family (sisters and parents). I don't much care for my extended family.
But with my husband's family, I feel like I have to TRUDGE through this big swamp of small talk, uncomfortable silences, weird food, materialism, crazy relatives and CHILDREN!!!
I have nothing in common with his family and some of them are insanely religious, or just stuck up bitch-tards. His dad is a chore becuase his sense of humor is so terrible. He finds everything funny and makes TERRIBLE jokes. His mom is a washed up hippy who is going through her second divorce. His brother is a tool and the wife is a ditzy, know-it-all. Then they have a 2 year old who is annoying as all hell.
I just DON'T want to spend time with these people but I'm required to because they are "family."
Does anyone else dread the "family time" during the holidays?
Not really, believe it or not. I actually like visiting with my family and with DH's family. I don't really like his bratty niece and nephew, but I find it fascinating to watch them in action: it's like a wild animal nature documentary.
Your situation sounds sucky though...YIKES!
I gave up on hallmark holidays with the extended family years ago. I am not sentimental, and I refuse to spend time with people who are rude to me, make me feel unwelcome or uncomfortable. Full stop. I won't do it for anything, not even under the guise of "they're family!" Hogwash.
I think life is very short and very precious, and you shouldn't waste a single moment doing something out of duty when you could spend it being happy. MHO.
I agree with Jo however, none of that applies to me personally.
I actually enjoy getting together with my family. I enjoy being around them - for the most part.
My friend said to me once she was happy that her DH's parents were dead and her mother lives hundreds of miles away. She doesn't have to worry about spending time with them.
Sad.
I don't mind spending time with my husband's family cause frankly his family is about the ONLY family I have.
We have been envited to spend Turkey day with his niece and hubby and the new Twins & soon to be 3 yr old son Aiden.
Of course we will be bringing Aiden his Birthday present
( which I still have not bought) And of course the conversation will be about the twins and about Aiden. But I will be spending my time with the ever faithful 4 legged new love named Nilla.
So, I won't mind the visit at all.
What I dread is having to spend any time with my bitch of a mother.
She lays in a nursing home bed 24/7 and does not have the strength to feed herself. Thus, she is forced to be on tubal feeding.
But yet she has the strength to yell at me and threaten my life.
No thank you, I despise having to spend any time with her at all.
And I would love to take Jo up on her idea, if it was not for
my ½ of my inheritence that I feel that I am entitled to for the years of verbal and physical abuse I was subjected to by that vile woman!
And since Big brother keeps a tally of when I visit, and since he is P.O.A. I have to mind my P's & Q's and put up with her bullshit.
The thought of even buying her anything for Hanukkah is making me ill. But I know I will have to cause like I said, Big Brother is always watching,
Jo Wrote:I gave up on hallmark holidays with the extended family years ago. I am not sentimental, and I refuse to spend time with people who are rude to me, make me feel unwelcome or uncomfortable. Full stop. I won't do it for anything, not even under the guise of "they're family!" Hogwash.
I think life is very short and very precious, and you shouldn't waste a single moment doing something out of duty when you could spend it being happy. MHO.
Totally agree. DHs Brother and SIL have made me out to be, well, the worst person on earth. I
refuse to participate in "Family" gatherings if they are there. I'll sit home alone before I will subject myself to their BS. DH says I need to make more of an effort. Well fuck that. I made my efforts...lots of them over the years, only to be put down, ignored, stabbed in the back and ridiculed. Every gathering I attended in the past, I left feeling awful about myself.
No more.
Ours isn't bad -- his parents are great, in fact! Normally, I would totally be looking forward to it, but since I can't eat any of the good holiday foods because of my wisdom teeth thingie, it's not going to be fun being around all that great food I can't have. Pass the pudding cup, no I don't mind that you are eating pecan pie in front of me, go right ahead with the steak, I'll be happy with this tomato soup.
Me Me Me! I'm dreading it. Especially this year. Since my cousin's GF had her kid in March, that's all anybody can talk about. It's all baby, baby baby. That's fine and dandy talking about for a little bit, but when it's 100% of the conversation for the whole day. It's a little much. You try to steer the conversation away from the kid, either my uncle or my cousin's gf makes sure the convo goes right back to the kid. I don't like kids, tell me how he's doing, but I really don't care about that really messy diaper or puke you cleaned up two Tuesdays ago. The only reason we go is because of my Grandmother, if it weren't for her, my mom and I wouldn't even make the trip.
Yep, you can guess that the Nintendo DS is going with, and I'll be sure to take the headphones.
I look forward to spending time with my family but it does stress me out. I've noticed over the past 6 months that my acid reflux is MUCH worse when I spend time with them. I don't know why, because I do enjoy them, but something about the experience is not good for my stomach.
Since my family is about the only family we deal with, it isn't too bad usually.
After his parents divorced (the same year that DH and I met), we haven't ever really done holidays on his side of the family. We did a Thanksgiving meal once or twice at his mom's. But she cooked a whole bird for 3-4 of us. Whoosh! Leftovers. He has 3 sisters but only talks to two. And of the two, only one lives in the state. Last year state sister called to invite us to Thanksgiving, but we had made plans with friends earlier. This year she invited us while we were down to my mother's, but again, we have plans.
My side of the family is fine if it is just with my mom, but some extended family get-togethers can be stressful. Especially stuff on my dad's side of the family. Dad has been gone for 14 years or so, but his family has always been the hard one to deal with for me since I am "just a girl", not a favored child anyway because I was "born early", and never followed lifescript. (meh, I am the oldest and found ways to get around stuff) Oddly, not so bad since my "golden" cousin got married a few years ago and had his little girls. I adore his wife and the girls are pretty fun.
I know lots of people who use Thanksgiving as a time to hang out with friends. That is what we did last year and had a blast.
PrairieGirl Wrote:Ours isn't bad -- his parents are great, in fact! Normally, I would totally be looking forward to it, but since I can't eat any of the good holiday foods because of my wisdom teeth thingie, it's not going to be fun being around all that great food I can't have. Pass the pudding cup, no I don't mind that you are eating pecan pie in front of me, go right ahead with the steak, I'll be happy with this tomato soup.
Poor thing. There are ways that it can be worked around so you can at least get some of the flavors.
Butternut squash soup with ginger? Maybe roasted garlic and tomato soup (creamed)?
Can you do stuff as soft as mashed potatoes? see if you can add a little more cream or milk to them to make them the right consistancy for you and have gravy on them. It would be more filling than just soup and give you the meaty flavor.
As for the pie, can't help with the pecan pie, but a local dairy here makes a killer pumpkin ice cream. And our speciality market does a really tasty pumpkin cheesecake that didn't have much in the way of crust.
Sorry, that is all my ideas I have.
Thanks Gingerzing! Yes, I can have mashed potatoes, and I'm going to bring a cheesecake, too! I won't be able to eat the pecan pie and heavenly home-made pound cake, but I'm going to enjoy that cheesecake!
jmk3482 Wrote:But with my husband's family, I feel like I have to TRUDGE through this big swamp of small talk, uncomfortable silences, weird food, materialism, crazy relatives and CHILDREN!!!
I have nothing in common with his family and some of them are insanely religious, or just stuck up bitch-tards.
You hit the nail on the head. I CAN'T FUCKING STAND my husband's family. I don't do small talk, and since none of them EVER talk about anything other than the weather, pets, kids, home remodel projects, gardening, and back to the weather again, it makes me want to tear my hair out. Most of them are hardcore right wing greedy Republicans who let Faux News do all the thinking for them, and who would vote for fucking Hitler as long as he promised to keep their taxes down and put the burden on the middle classes.
A few of them are religious looneys so everyone has to hold hands and bow their heads at the table and pretend to pray to a myth just because the religious freaks in the room need to be appeased (what about the atheists in the room?). And the looneys also have a couple of annoying little kids, a girl they completely ignore who has shut herself off to outside stimuli, and a boy they totally dote on because males are closer to god or some such religious bullshit.
DH's mother made it clear from day one she hates me, she told him not to marry me, she has said horrible things about me because of my name (!), because of the fact that I came from a Jewish family background instead of a Christian one, and that I'm a total atheist (so is DH, but they don't talk), and because I refuse to provide her with DNA trophy grandkids. She already has three from her other son, but nothing is ever enough with her. I cannot stand her, there's more to her, but it's too much to list here.
His sister is the one who stormed off in the restaurant last April screaming at me to "change the subject!!!" because I was talking about how her mother's (DH's step-mother) husband (husband #4 or #5) attacked me for no reason and I couldn't figure out why. When DH tried to talk to her about the incident after he got back from deployment 3 months later, she freaked out and had considered the subject closed. So he told her how I was so upset because I thought she was my closest friend in my life right now, and her reply was that she never told me to think of her as a close friend. So FUCK HER. I have NO desire to ever set eyes on her again. There's more details to this story, but it's long.
So I totally believe in Jo's philosophy, and in fact DH and I had an argument about it yesterday. I told him life is too short to spend it with people who make you miserable so I will not do it anymore, and he was angry that I won't allow myself to be unhappy for him, like a duty. No, goddamn it, NO!
Now DH is going on deployment again (yes, after being back for a couple of months), this time for 6-7 months. We'll do Thanksgiving here at the house alone (under the guise of we need our alone time before he goes away the next day), and then he'll be gone for xmas, so I'm going to hang out at home alone and watch TV and eat whatever I can find the day before (I can't cook). Since his dad and family are just a couple of miles away, this will be a little tricky. Next year will be harder to avoid everyone. But I have to do it to keep my sanity.
As I spent last Christmas holidays with Jo and Brad Pitt, I have to say that I agree with her philosophy. I don't mind my family, but given the oppotunity to do something fun I will take it.
This year I am away from home again, this time for work, so I don't need to worry about it.
DH and I have given up holidays with extended family. Between the bickering over where we are supposed to be when and my totally dysfunctional side (Will Mom be sober? Probably not. Will my fundie aunt and uncle say something totally offensive? Probably. Will my cousin and his babymama and their three brats make things unbearable? Definitely!), we decided we would rather spend that time together. We stay home, which luckily is 1,000 miles away, and cook our own meals, watch holiday movies, and go look at holiday lights. We do go visit friends and selected family between Thanksgiving and Christmas/Chanukah, but there is less pressure since the emotional attachment to "the holidays" isn't dictating our whereabouts.
I don't really spend the holidays with extended family. I rarely see any of them except for certain events like funerals. For thanksgiving, I spend time with my parents, sister and BIL, and niece. This is pretty much it since my grandmother and cousin passed away. For Xmas, it's the same thing except we usually invite an old family friend and our neighbors two doors down to come for Xmas Eve. Sometimes I even invite two of my closest friends.
I quite frankly like this better than having to socialize with everyone else. Truth be told, I never spent a lot of time around my extended family, and in a lot of ways, they are strangers to me. It would make the holidays really awkward rather than relaxed and enjoyable just the way they are.
I both look forward to and dread holidays with the family. I love my family to death and there are a few members of my extended family that i get along with fabulously. Some of the others i can talk to, but its just general BS and then move on to the next person. I think i would look more forward to it if they were all gathered because they WANTED to be, not out of some sense of obligation. The vast majority of these people i see twice a year, Thanksgiving, and Christmas Eve. the other 363 days(364 if its leap year) out of the year i do not see, or hear from these people. Since i divorced my ex i almost feel like they look down on me some what because they think she was so great(granted they dont know everything that happened, i havent told my family that she was a lying, cheating piece of trash yet, waiting until the house is done being dealt with to drop that bomb).
I am not particularly close to my family. There aren't any feuds or anything like that. We just have very little in common, other than some genes. The family gatherings are pretty dull. We sit in a ring around the room, eat, talk a little. That's pretty much it for the day. My husband is amazed that there is no alcohol. I often schedule a short vacation during holiday times to avoid the whole event.
OMG I hate hate HATE this time of year because of this. I do enjoy spending time with my mom and step dad (and it took many years to come to this point). My dad and I kind of have a tense relationship. My brother and I no longer speak due to a falling out two years ago. My step-siblings are *okay,* but I don't really have a lot in common with them.
As for DH's side of the family--well I am NOT spending my Thanksgiving with his control-freak mother, though I am sure there will be a perfunctory xmas visit. His family has been very rude to me from day one. They are a bunch of fundie religious nuts, and I guess I'm not "Christian-y" enough to suit them. Whatever. The only one who is somewhat nice to me is DH's grandmom.
So yeah holiday's aren't my favorite time of year. Usually I try to work and skip the whole thing.
Nope, no drama. Just me and the cat watching Christmas specials and relaxing....