Christmas with my family was always a big affair when I was a kid. The family in question was my mother's, so this was my maternal grandparents and related aunts, uncles and cousins. My grandmother cooked a huge dinner, and we behaved as I suppose a family should.

Then grandma jumped off the mortal coil, and she was the glue that held us together. Now everything has gone downhill - selfish aunts and uncles and their selfish brat spawn leaving early or not coming at all, and too absorbed in their own bullshit to pay much attention to my aging grandfather or the rest of us, god forbid.

The lowest point was about 2 years ago when my mother broke down into tears in a back room after dinner. Since then, I'm not real keen on doing Christmas with the family, and honestly there's maybe one or two of them I still give a rat's ass about (no offense to any rats to you may know).

It seems like when you're a kid, Christmas is this bright glowing thing in your mind, a nexus of happiness. Then you grow up, and you become miserable during Christmas for all the usual reasons, and you realize all the adults in your life when you were a kid were miserable on Christmas too.

Sorry to rant on your LJ.