What it's like to navigate Christmas as a grandparent
Jade Lawless: Adult children may break away from their parents’ traditions.
For Co Limerick-based grandmother-of-three Debra, the dream is to have her adult children and her grandchildren at the dinner table on Christmas Day.
“My husband is like a child around Christmas. He loves all the festive traditions and wants everyone to have a good time. We’re both from big families, and family is everything to us.
“We’re trying to create the same mood and feeling about Christmas that we had as children. We want to pass down the traditions, that nostalgia.”
Her grandchildren are toddlers. “We always silently hope they’ll come to us for Christmas dinner, but we don’t want to be demanding. There’s a kind of protocol: We don’t want to be asking too soon, ‘What are you doing for Christmas?’
“We want to be sensitive. Their partners have needs as well, but then not every family wants the same.”
At Christmas, Debra and her husband build a sense of family for their grandchildren. “We want them to experience all their aunts and uncles together.
“We want them to know their cousins, be friends with them, grow up together.
“It’s about building memories: ‘Remember going to Nana’s?’ My husband dresses up as Santa and scares the bejesus out of them.”
But it can be stressful, “keeping all the balls in the air”, between the cooking and catering, and trying to be sensitive to the various personalities and situations gathered around her table.
“I’m in a sweat, working flat out from when they come to when they go: The cooking starts the night before.
“Also, you have to be careful not to favour one grandchild over another. Some are quieter, some more engaging; you must be careful not to have one on your lap more than another.
“And not all of my children have children, so you have to be sensitive to them, that they don’t feel ‘it’s all about the children’.”
Add to this that all the ‘married-ins’ don’t get on equally well with each other, and you see why Debra feels she has to be ultra-sensitive. But neither she nor her husband would want it any other way. “It is pressure, but we look at each other and say, ‘Isn’t this brilliant?’ And the grandchildren: Oh, their excitement! The magic of watching their faces, so believing and trusting of everything.”
An emotional time
Psychologist Jade Lawless says Christmas is an emotional time of year apart from family dynamics. “It tends to throw up lots of feelings and memories, lots of thoughts of people gone past,” says the chair of the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (IACP).
The challenge for grandparents is in managing their own needs and wants about where Christmas Day happens, when adult children are developing new, different traditions.
“These changing traditions can be hard to adjust to. You’re used to doing things a certain way. Adult children with in-laws may want to start traditions outside the original family home, and when they go to the ‘other side’ of the family, there can be feelings of loss for grandparents, a feeling of not being included, of not being at the centre anymore.”.
Grandparents should allow themselves to feel sad, says Lawless. She recommends taking a ‘helicopter’ view and seeing others’ perspective. “Come up above: See it from all angles. Rather than focusing on, ‘I’m being overlooked’, realise you’ve got an adult child who has competing obligations and needs. Try to hold that bigger picture — they need space to do what’s important for them, too — rather than seeing it as, ‘They don’t value me’.”
To share feelings of loss with an adult child is delicate. “It’s important to feel you can say something if it’s weighing heavily on you. But instead of, ‘You never want to spend Christmas Day with me’, or, ‘You never put me first’, use ‘I’ statements: ‘I feel really sad I’m not going to have dinner with you, but I hope we can both get to enjoy our day’. Talk about your emotions rather than what the other person’s doing.”
Find time beyond Christmas Day to be with your adult child — maybe share a common interest. “Attend a carol-singing event together, or negotiate a virtual get-together for gift-giving or dinner.”
The flip side of not seeing children or grandchildren on December 25 is hosting Christmas dinner for a family that is rapidly expanding. “Family getting bigger every year causes a different kind of pressure: Financially, in terms of gift-giving and providing food for all. And if you’re the hostess, there’s no chance to put your feet up.”
Lawless urges grandparents to be confident in their own voice in communicating that they want to do this, but would like some help. “You’re conveying, ‘I love having you, but I’d also love a little help, so who’s going to wash up, or can everybody bring a dish?’”
Who will host Christmas?
Psychotherapist Anne McCormack says the ‘where-will-we-be-for-Christmas’ conversation can be tricky. “Grandparents can feel there’s uncertainty around who’s in charge of making the arrangements. They may want to invite family, including grandchildren, but may not feel empowered to do so.
“Younger children may want to be in their own house for Santa. And if an invitation to the grandparents’ house involves a journey for young parents, grandparents may not want to impose this on them. At the same time, they’d like to see their grandchildren on that special day.”
McCormack says it helps to think of Christmas as a period of weeks, rather than one day. “It’s nice to see grandchildren on different days. It takes the pressure off the number of people turning up, the amount of food to be cooked.”
If there are tensions between some family members, that can be difficult for grandparents. “A grandparent may have three adult children who get on very well, but one might not get on well with the partner of another. Or having different political views can create tension.”
To remove this pressure, McCormack suggests grandparents tell their adult children they will host an afternoon over the Christmas holidays just for the grandchildren. “If grandparents feel up to doing that, it’s one way to navigate tensions. Parents drop off and collect the children at arranged times. It mightn’t work on Christmas Day, but it could at new year.”
And how about grandparents — very committed to minding grandchildren during the year — who now find themselves excluded from the Christmas plans for the grandchildren?
McCormack believes it is important to bring this up gently with the parents. It may be a simple communication issue. “Perhaps the adult children feel they’ve imposed enough on Nana and Granddad over the last few months and want to give them a break over Christmas. Or young, busy parents may feel they’d benefit greatly from spending Christmas just with their children, with nobody else present.
“Neither of these scenarios is a rejection of the grandparents. It’s important they don’t interpret it as rejection.”
Grandparents do not have control over what adult children do and Christmas does not always fulfil expectations. “Let go of unrealistic expectations,” says Lawless. “We feel these big events should be perfect. In reality, they’re often chaotic and sometimes let us down.”
Even if you will not see your grandchildren as much as you would like, you still have control over finding joy in the time you do spend with them, no matter how limited, “whether it’s a phonecall on Christmas morning or meeting them on Christmas Eve or St Stephen’s Day”.
And, says Lawless, you can also introduce a different kind of Christmas tradition, with yourself as the main ingredient. This is about connecting with yourself. “Maybe you’ll read a book, watch a film, or cheer on the sea swimmers. You can make Christmas Day a self-care day for you.”
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