My mom comes to us this Christmas instead of us going to her. It's a new development, which is good.
Christmas has been a bit shaky at our place the passed 7 years. It started being shaky in the year my father died.
My father had MS and his condition went bad real quick in 2000. He never made it to Christmas.
All the years before 2000 it was tradition that my grandparents came on Christmas day. My mom would cook way too much. My grandpa told us to pray with our hands lowered to chest height. Funny memories. After dinner, which lasted from 12.00pm to 2.00pm, we would go outside to see some Christmas markets and such. It was as simple as that.
First my grandpa died, I belief in 1995, but that was no show stopper concerning Christmas. Then in 2000 my dad died and my grandma was suffering from Alzheimer. The first Christmas without dad, we spent in a holiday chalet far away from home. My mother hadn't been away from home with Christmas for as long as I remember. It was a lot of fun, and it took some pressure from the missing of my dad. Still, my mum told us she didn't like being away from home with Christmas.
The following years were distressful. My mum wanted to cook way too much. My brother wanted to go to the Christmas session in the village and I wanted to watch Christmas films while my mum wanted to spend a quiet Christmas day with us. It was just the three of us, and after 2.00pm, the two of us. I could feel the tension hanging in the air, and it caused a Christmas defect in my Christmas feeling. That was when I started to dread Christmas; the obligations I couldn't really live up to.
Previous year it started to change. I moved out of the house (kinda) and had a boyfriend. My brother, who had a girlfriend, wouldn't be there with Christmas. Me and my boyfriend decided to spend the Christmas with my ma, since she would be alone and my bf's boyfriend didn't really care. We tried to drag her along to Maastricht for some Christmas sight-seeing, but she didn't want to. Bullocks!
This year my mum has a manfriend (ah, c'mon, you can't call it a boyfriend!!!) and my brother won't be inlands this year again. We had to change something, battle the Christmas demons, so I decided to invite her and her manfriend to our house. We just have to figure out what we will do. We didn't quite plan anything yet, but I've got good hopes things will start to look better from now on. No more Novembers filled with dreading Decembers.
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