More Christmas Family Annoyances

OK... I think everybody has this issue if they've been married and have hosted a holiday. It's the dreaded INLAW factor.

Everybody likes to come over to our house for holidays. We don't have a particularly large or fancy house, but people like to hang out here. Why???? Probably because I'm a fairly decent cook and they can just sit on their rear-ends? Perhaps.

Make no mistake, hosting a holiday is a tremendous amount of work. I don't think people really think of all that it entails unless they've done it themselves. The preparations, cleaning, shopping, etc., is enough to push anybody into the looney bin. Of course all of this is done in conjunction with working outside the home and dealing with the kids.

I have to admit that some of the in-laws are very thoughtful and helpful. They will offer to bring a side dish and offer to help clean up the kitchen. Of course, these are female in-laws. I might add that I'm still waiting for a male relative to offer to contribute more to the Christmas holiday dinner than lounging on our sofa drinking beer and farting. And no, showing up at my door step with a six-pack does not count as a "contribution."

I think that next year the men should be in charge of planning, cooking, and cleanup of the Christmas dinner while we women all sit in front of the big screen watching the estrogen channel crying during yet another viewing of "It's a Wonderful Life."

I'm getting off track. The inequality of the workload between the sexes and the holidays is for another rant. I'm talking about the people who show up year after year expecting everything but contributing nothing. Like everything is done especially for them and the world revolves around THEM. Worse yet, they'll show up late for dinner, and in the meantime the mashed potatoes have grown cold and the gravy has solidified. Everybody else who has shown up on time has sacraficed a hot meal just because somebody doesn't have the common courtesy to call to inform us hosts of their late arrival. Nice.

I always say, "Serve the meal on time without the late arrivals -- it's their own damn fault they're late. Give them a plate of left-overs. Why should everybody else suffer eating cold food because of their lateness and inconsideration of others?"

Then it gets political.

Grandma starts in with how we all should be cutting "Joey" some slack because of the rough year he's had. Needless to say the "rough year" is all because Joey is a piece of shit who can't hold a job for more than two months because he finds it more interesting visiting bars until 2:00 am each morning.

Grandma then gets into Joey's financial woes, and again, holds the entire family psychologically hostage pleading for everybody to allow Joey to be the centre of the universe by trying to convince us all why we should hold up everybody's Christmas dinner just for him. Nobody has the courage to address that Grandma has given Joey $5,000 the last couple of months to make ends meet while the other grandchildren who manage to keep themselves out of bars and hold steady jobs (in addition to showing up for Christmas dinner on time showing their hosts common courtesy and respect) go completely unacknowledged.

The outcome is this: there is a huge family fight, dinner grows cold, nobody eats the cold dinner, hostess cries and goes into bedroom, grandma storms off, and Joey waltzes in smelling of alcohol completely unphased by any of this at 9:30 pm wanting to know "what's going on?"