Anne & Trevor
There has been a strong Christmas tradition on both sides of our families for years, but now Trevor and I do our own thing, which is quite untraditional. I have 3 kids from my first marriage, who are now working or at uni and none of them live at home now.
At home now I just have the two littlies I've had with Trevor, plus his older teenagers, who only stay for the school holidays.
My older kids aren't that keen on Trevor's boys, they just don't get on. Plus my parents are divorced and there is no way they will ever be pleasant to each other under the one roof. To add to all this, I can't stand Trevor's older brother Andy, who is a real boozer and never helps out with anything.
All he does is cause problems, but Trevor feels a real obligation to him as Andy had a rough time with their parents when he was a kid. I guess Trevor feels guilty that he is doing well and his brother seems to be still suffering.
If they were all home here for Christmas the house would be bursting and the whole thing would be uncontrollable, with everyone wanting something different.
I decided that I wanted to protect our two little ones from all this grown up garbage, and just have a quiet Christmas at home with them.
In previous years Trevor had felt that we should still have them all over for Christmas, regardless of what they did last year, as he feels such a strong obligation towards his brother and his older boys.
The problem is that Trevor doesn't have to do any of the work for feeding them, keeping them all happy and protecting the little ones from all the toxic behaviour from those people.
So I came up with a plan that Trevor, I and our two little ones will go away camping by the beach for the next 2 Christmases, just to try and break the cycle of dependence, of having them all expect to come to our place every year. I raised this with Trevor and he was ok to talk about it, as the last Christmas was especially bad and really affected our youngest daughter. In talking to him I realized that he was ok with the idea and in fact was keen to go away for Christmas. He just needed some help with figuring out how to say no to his family.
It was fine as we told them all that we - Trevor, me and the girls - as a family had agreed that we wanted to do something different for Christmas, and this was to take ourselves off camping.
We announced to them all in August that we were going away, to give them plenty of time to adjust while the event was still a long way off. We stuck to our guns, and Trevor did really well in being firm and sticking with the plan that it would just be him, me and our two girls.
While not specifically saying it we did allow the relatives to think that this would be a one off, in order spread the change process over time. Happily this year, being the third, things are fine and his brother has asked where are we going away to this Christmas, and not expecting to be invited to come with us.
It might take a couple more Christmases before we feel comfortable about staying home, but for now it is working out well. The girls have a lovely time camping at the beach, and Trevor and I are much happier. Especially me.