We?re skipping Christmas with our relatives and I don?t feel bad for one second
Three hours. That?s how long it took for my niece and nephew to open all their gifts the last time we spent the holidays with extended family. Their parents were recently separated, and their dad (my brother-in-law) was trying to prove his love for his kids by gifting them thousands of dollars? worth of toys. It was stressful, awkward and deeply uncomfortable for many reasons.
There we were, crammed into the living room: my mother-in-law, father-in-law, and brother-in-law; his kids (ages four and five); and then my husband, me and our two-year-old. I was pregnant with our second, and dearly unhappy with the whole scene. We watched as these two children, rocked by separation, went from one outlandish present to the next while their stressed-out dad yelled at them, and my in-laws commented on every toy and every new item of clothing. Meanwhile, our little guy was done opening all of his packages within about 20 minutes?we have always been modest about Christmas presents. And although I understand that we all have different budgets and ideas of what gift-giving entails, I worried that our frugality made us seem uncaring.
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