It started with Christmas #1, which was a family gathering with Diana’s paternal extended family the weekend before Christmas. Christmas #2 was a dinner gathering with Diana’s immediate family on Christmas Eve. Christmas #3 was Christmas morning spent with us and our two sons, and then Christmas #4 was that evening spent with Diana’s maternal extended family. Even though #3 and #4 were on the same day the feeling of that day really made it feel like two.
All of these events felt different for our family. Christmas #1 had a lot of children. Ollie was one of almost half a dozen children around his age. Many of Diana’s cousins have children and there’s a desire by many of the people there to play with and hang out with the kids, probably because many of the adult at the gathering are adult or grandparents themselves. This makes it an event where Ollie can have quality time with kids his own age. Because there’s so many children around, this is an early afternoon event.
Christmas #2 is a shorter drive and was at Diana’s mother’s house (the drive to Christmas #1 and #3 was almost an hour). This was a much smaller crowd compared to the almost forty people at Christmas #1. It was just eight people: Diana’s parents, her two brothers, me and her and our boys. This is when we did a lot of the gift giving and had more intimate time as a smaller family unit. As the grandchildren and nephews to my brothers-in-law, our children got a lot of attention. The smaller crowd made the event more intimate, and quieter.
Christmas #3 started with thunder of Ollie’s feet in the morning. The night before Diana and I had set out a stack of presents and I rushed down ahead of Ollie in the morning to turn on the Christmas tree lights for full effect. Ollie could barely contain his excitement as he went down the stairs. We had a relaxed morning in our pajamas slowly unwrapping presents. Ollie likes to take his time with presents. He will open a present, and then want to open and play with it until he opens another gift.
Then we had Christmas #4 which was the during the evening. Ollie and Ethan were the only kids at this part so the design of it, food, time, and set-up was more adult-orientated. This was logical as this side of the family had not been inundated with grandchildren and nieces and nephews. At this point, Ollie was pretty tired, exhausted from the excitement from the previous Christmases and getting up early every day for the past month to open the door on his Lego Advent Calendar. At least half-way through December he stopped getting up before 6:00 AM to open the little next door, or at least getting me up before 6:00 AM.
It’s not always going to be like this. Like most families at some point, the extended family Christmases may get dropped off and as immediately families become extended families themselves the number of Christmases may become fewer or are replaced with others. All of this is exciting but confusing for Ollie, and Ethan doesn’t have a concept of what is going on, so it’s all a bit much for him. However, it’s meaningful for people to spend time with him, so I’m willing to put in the effort.
Holiday with children is like how trips with children aren’t vacations. It’s a lot of work, much of it Diana takes the lead with. Now that Ollie is old enough to show appreciation for all of the work it is more rewarding, and even though I was exhausted and sick on Christmas morning, it was magical and wonderful to see Ollie’s reaction when he saw the Christmas tree lit up with presents underneath.
I’m still trying to figure out what I want Christmas to be for myself and for my children. A lot of my work now is supporting Diana’s vision, which is fine, since I don’t have one myself. I feel like I’m still recovering from the multiple Christmases, thankful the for the times, and the respite before school gets back in session to get healthy, catch up on sleep and focus on time with my family.
Multiple Christmases are a reality for many people, and there’s no instruction manual or guidelines about how to handle all of this. Because of the size of some of these events and all of the other things swirling around this time of year, and for us the fact that we have little ones to watch over, sometimes it’s hard to connect with other family members during these events. This is hard to accept because we put pressure on ourselves to make these moments meaningful and that can’t always happen.
Sometimes I leave these Christmases with the feeling that I should make an effort to spend more time with these people during other times of the year, and not just wait for these multiple Christmases to nurture these relationships. Part of the reality that I'm struggling with is that lately I've noticed that I'm struggling more and more handling social situations with large groups of people. This may have to do with parenting or some other things going on in my life...hmm...something to unpack later.
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