Dear John
Christmas was always going to be easy wasn’t it? As a cocky 19 year old you were never going follow in the foot steps of your parents. Almost two decades before you became a parent you’d made up your mind that as soon as you had children there was no way you were going anywhere at Christmas. Any family members who wanted to see you would come to your house, end of, no discussion.
It was easy to make that kind of arrogant, I’ll-educated declaration when you didn’t have kids. It was even easier to make that kind of declaration after drinking a couple of bottles of lemon-flavoured Hooch and a pint of Stella in a dreary small-town pub.
Thankfully you’ve developed a more diplomatic approach to family politics over the years. Equally importantly, you’ve also developed a more discerning taste in booze.
There was a blindingly obvious failing in your argument. If you were never going to visit anyone else at Christmas then you would always be playing the host and would spend the festive season running around after your guests. This, dear boy, is considerably harder than visiting other family and friends and letting them clear up after you.
The other mistakes you made were to move 100 miles away from your own family and to marry a Scot whose parents live even further away. As you rapidly discovered, this leaves you two sets of grandparents hundreds of miles apart who don’t get to see their grandchildren very often and, surprise surprise, want to see them at Christmas. Oh, yeah, the grandparents are also very happy to play host and look after the kids.
This is before you even consider the wishes of your own children. Could it be they don’t want to spend the entire Christmas and new year break with you and their mother (don’t they get to see enough of you?).
It goes without saying the 19 year old you was a bit of an idiot. I’m glad to see you quickly realised your position was untenable and that you have happily visited your wider family since becoming a father. I’m equally glad that you haven’t been near Hooch or Stella for some considerable time. As you’re only too aware the hangover from both drinks is a total bitch. Imagine the hangover from two sets of grandparents who you’ve refused to visit on the grounds of some dubious, half-baked principle. Doesn’t bear thinking about does it?
Yours sincerely
John
