Figuring out where to spend the holidays is a challenge at my house. My wife and I have always lived far from our parents and siblings, who are all in the mid-west within a few hours drive of each other. Because they live so near each other, and because we live so far away, it's impossible to resist the temptation to try to see ALL of them whenever we return. This has resulted in some nutty and un-fun holiday scheduling. My own favorite was the year we woke up at my parents house Christmas morning, had a rushed breakfast and gift exchange, then drove 5+ hours to get to her folks house in time for their mid-afternoon feast. Thank heavens we only did that once. Faced with running out on her own family on Christmas morning the following year (never mind the drive), my wife was forced admit that this wasn't a very good solution.
Since then we have experimented with various permutations on the theme, none of them particularly satisfying. Someone always feels like they are getting the short end of the stick. In fact, a lot of the time, everyone feels like they are getting the short end of the stick. If the success of a compromise is measured by how unhappy everyone is with it, then we have been very good at compromising.
My best holiday memories are from the years we have celebrated at OUR house: going to sleep and waking up in my own comfortable bed, wearing my own comfortable (read ratty) jammies and house robe, enjoying a couple of lazy, unrushed days with the people I love most (and perhaps best of all, no excruciating 1000 mile cross country drive in the dead of winter).
The last time we went back for Christmas was 2007 (we've been back several times since then, but not for Christmas). That lovely year we got snowed in for three days at a hotel in a small town in western Kansas, but that's another story. This story is about Christmas 2010, which is shaping up to be another successful compromise. In other words, no one is very happy about it. I won't bore you with the details. That's not the point. The point is, why do we continue to torture ourselves? I know adults much younger than I am who decided, once they got married, that if anyone wanted to see them at Christmas, they could darn well come and visit. This seems to have worked very well for them, and it seems like a FANTASTIC idea to me. Imagine never having to negotiate who to see when. Imagine never having to worry about the car breaking down a million miles from anywhere, with a wind chill factor well below 0. Imagine always getting to spend Christmas at your house!
There is light at the end of the tunnel, though. We are already on the once-every-three-years-Christmas-in-the-midwest schedule. By 2013 at least one, possibly both, of my wife's nephews will be married and starting their own Christmas negotiations, er, traditions. And in a moment of weakness my wife actually admitted that she was kind of sad we wouldn't be at home for Christmas this year. Maybe, just maybe, this can be the last Negotiated Christmas. Maybe, after this year, we can enjoy an uninterrupted string of Christmases at Home, stretching into past and future like a strand of colorful lights on a wire. Until, of course, my own sons get married and decide that, if we want to see them at Christmas, we'll darn well have to go and visit. That would be just my luck.
