When my youngest daughter left for college, I was so excited for her adventure and her success. The next day I wondered what I was going to do with myself for the next 40 years. Most little girls born in the 50’s or 60’s usually know what they are to do. Get married, have kids and then the narrative ends. No one prepares us for the kids leaving home. I started collecting cats…..
Often girls also receive no instruction about the important things to expect after marriage…..like how do you merge the holidays. The options seem to be to give up on your family traditions and find peace with the husbands mother’s traditions, keep your family traditions and force the husband to disappoint his mother or wait until kids arrive and stand firm that you are making your own traditions and let the chips fall where they may.
Then your kids grow up, get married have children and there could be more grandparents than there are dining room chairs. NOW what. It’s possible to buy a day planner and schedule Christmas…everyone is kind of in the mood from Thanksgiving to New Years. That can work, I’ve heard.
But what I have found is you must release attachments about how Christmas is supposed to be. Learning to set aside “but they”…. I’ve always believed there was something special in the air about Christmas but I’ve learned that “we” have made Christmas what it is to us.
…….and I didn’t even want to touch on the religion aspect. Believe it or not, not everyone celebrates the same story about Baby Jesus.
Happy Holidays….
Ninasusan 
Nailed it. Once again.
I have a lot of friends who end up resentful at Christmas. Well honestly they are resentful for a lot of other holidays too because they can’t stand the thought that another family, once your kids have a significant other, should count too. I guess they’ve forgotten what it was like for them when they were newly significant.
I love Christmas. But for me, it’s not just a day, it’s a whole season and it doesn’t matter if i see my kids on wed. or Thurs. or a week from Wed. As long as I get to see them. One way or another. This year was the another part. But that’s a whole other story.
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Exactly!
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“Often girls also receive no instruction…” What I have learned is that people cannot teach that which they do not know themselves. Our clueless forebears pass on their cluelessness to us. Such is the human folly. We unavoidably make it up as we go. Letting go and having a sense of humor are about all that make things manageable sometimes, as you have wisely figured out.
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