Mommies Magazine

Step-Christmas

Posted on 16. Sep, 2007 by Shayna in Family

Christmas has always been my favorite holiday. It’s great because it’s celebrating a wonderful occasion and it always brings my family together. It’s such a cold time of year (where I live) but the Christmas season always warms me up.

Little did I know what a step-family might do to this wonderful holiday. It was a beautiful winter and I was still consumed by my 1 month-old baby so I was kind of in my own world. I was busy spending my days cuddling and napping and cheering for Thomas as he started hitting huge milestones! (okay not really milestones but back then the things he was doing seemed amazing). I mean he started to smile sometimes, he even rolled over when he was just one month old, I was having a great time.

That is until it was time to make plans for Christmas Day. All seven of the kids (me included) had two sets of parents and two sets of grandparents that we had to try and divide our time between and try to coordinate with each other at the same time. That meant someone was going to end up feeling bad on Christmas. There was no way we could all coordinate the times when we would eat or open presents or whatever else we were going to do. It was impossible. And believe me, we tried but realized the effort was getting us nowhere.

It was hard too because my mom and my step-dad wanted us to celebrate as a family but it wasn’t really working out that way. I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that the kids were so old when our parents got married. It’s not like we grew up together and had time to bond. It was more like we were just stuffed into a house and expected to become family. Not just by our parents but by our own expectations as well. But it didn’t work out that way. When we did do things together and try to get to know one another it usually felt awkward.

There were a few times when things felt a little more comfortable but most of the time it felt unnatural. But that’s the thing, we didn’t have just a natural family. And nomatter how nice we are, or how much we care about each other when we’re a step-family there’s just something there that feels a little different.

So Christmas was good, don’t get me wrong. We all celebrated in one way or another and we got to see a lot of family but it didn’t live up to our “one big happy family” expectations.