You're right. I can't quite grasp your viewpoint. From my childhood, all I can remember is my grandmother's HUGE family getting together for all holidays. It's something engrained in me. Not something I can easily leave behind.

Already, my oldest son doesn't spend Thanksgiving with his extended family. Now Christmas is on it's way out, too. It didn't use to be this way. My DIL and I would get excited right after Thanksgiving planning Christmas. I don't understand the change. All I can see is them isolating themselves from my son's family of origin and I don't know why. They won't discuss anything except what THEY want. Anything else is "drama."

Maybe my DIL wanted to make tamales, but she also said that anything I wanted to do was okay with her. Oh, yeah?? Then why all this hassling back and forth? It's not the food and it's not the time. There's something else under all of this.

I guess I just feel like my back is against the wall. I can see myself being totally alone really soon. My husband has a really bad time with holidays and would rather forget them. There's absolutely NO support for me or my feelings from him. If I try to plan something just for him and me, I KNOW as sure as I'm sitting here we'll wind up in some horrible fight just like we did this last Thanksgiving. I still haven't recovered from it. Either I'm going to do something for myself or I'm going to sleep through the whole thing. I just don't care anymore.