My son will never have the Christmas memories that I have. I'm not complaining, because there are some memories I'd rather forget! Sure, there were some good ones, like hiding in Grandma's basement on Christmas Eve while we waited for Santa's arrival. We knew if we sat around upstairs in the living room he'd never come.
But then there's the memories of our parents screaming at each other, right before leaving to go to Grandma's on Christmas Eve. EVERY year, they screamed, threw things at each other, and most times they began the divorce process after these holiday fights. We'd usually go to Grandma's house without our dad. He'd stay home and pack.
I can't complain about our presents, because we always got something. My mom's very materialistic and she would buy all kinds of meaningless, useless crap that would end up in the garbage eventually. (old habits die hard--you should see the junk she bought this year...)
It was the atmosphere. We always had to sit quietly in our bedrooms while my parents either continued their Christmas Eve fight into Christmas day, or they did their own thing in complete silence.
My son's Christmas is a completely different affair. Since we have ex spouses and family of ex spouses, we had a lot of coordinating to do. All three of our kids had at least four destinations on Christmas day, having breakfast here or there, lunch here or there, and dinner in two different places. Opening presents was an all day thing because they had to go from one place to another to do that. Why couldn't it all be at one place, like at our house? That would be too easy.
And to muddy up the water, Steve's ex (Sgt Iron Pants) had to make Christmas all about her by having a "Congratulations Dinner" instead of Christmas dinner--because I guess she either got engaged or married. We're not sure. Her dad wasn't invited to her house, so we invited him to ours. Talk about weird. I made Christmas dinner for Sgt Iron Pant's dad. Some friends of mine came over for dessert, and I just introduced him as George.
What a family we have.
