For divorced and blended families, celebrating holidays can be anything but a celebration or a holiday.
It begins with a three-dimensional chess game, who-will-spend-what-holiday-with-whom. But the travails of non-traditional families during the calendar’s most tradition-laden time don’t end there.
Even gifts and menus can become salvos in long-running battles. Beloved holiday decorations and traditions become painful reminders of what was and may never be again. And family gatherings may hold confrontations with family or ex-family members.
Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas and New Year’s put financial obligations, visitation rights, strained relationships and religious beliefs on a collision course, experts said. Add to that the expectations that are inflated by perfect holiday images.
“You name it, and it’s right there in that six-week period,” said Jim Pierce, who runs a Los Angeles-area chapter of the Stepfamilies Association of America.
From now through New Year’s, attendance at the group’s twice-monthly meetings typically jumps by 50 percent to 75 percent, he said.
“The holidays are a petri dish for old aggravations,” he said. “Jealousy and irritants just fester.”
But with imagination, fortitude and flexibility, blended families can share in the tidings of comfort and joy, he said.
The key is what Robert Berton, director of United Fathers of America, based in Van Nuys, Calif., calls “child-centered” approaches.
“A lot of times, parents are too bitter to come up with these answers, but they’re really not too hard,” said Berton, whose group offers legal and emotional advice.
It might mean making the conscious decision not to change a thing after a family has split.
“Sometimes, people say, `Until it doesn’t work, we’ll have Christmas dinner together,’ ” said Pamela Britton White, an Eagle Rock, Calif. divorce mediator.
But this approach may cause more grief than cheer if children or a spouse harbor expectations for reconciliation, she said.
On other occasions, a clean break is the only answer.
Nancy Delillio and the father of their three sons once orchestrated a treasured tradition in their Los Angeles home each Christmas morning: a fleeting visit from Santa.
“We’d get the kids up and poise them at the top of the stairs and they’d see him come in and take a bite of the cookies, so they’d really believe,” recalled Delillio, who has moved to San Diego.
But when they divorced in 1990 after 10 years of marriage, Delillio’s ex-husband won the right to have the children during Christmas the first year they were apart, leaving Delillio with only Christmas Eve to exchange presents.
She awoke to an empty house strewn with gift wrap.
“I felt like my arm was cut off, like something really important was missing. It was horrible.”
Now the director of the San Diego-based Divorce Education Center, she advises other divorced parents against making the mistake she did if they won’t see their children on an important holiday.
“I tell people, `Make plans well in advance so you know where you’re going and how it’s going to be,’ ” said Delillio, whose for-profit organization holds monthly seminars in Chatsworth, Calif. “You don’t want to wake up and go, `Oh, now what do I do today?’ “
Remarried, she still avoids waking up at home when she and her new husband do not have custody of her sons-now 6, 7 and 8-for Christmas. Last year they spent the night with her new in-laws in Van Nuys.
“It felt like a vacation,” she said.
Even when Delillio does have the children for the holidays, she doesn’t observe the traditions she did with her first husband. Last year she packed away the treasured Christmas decorations they had bought on trips together.
“We made our own ornaments so we have some new things that are just our own unit,” she said.
For blended families, a fresh start doesn’t always make sense. Jettisoning traditions in which a stepchild or new spouse takes pleasure can stir resentments.
She advises blended families before their first holiday together to list three things that make the occasion special. The holiday should include as many as possible.
Jim Pierce recalls the fuss kicked up by his son from a previous marriage during his first Christmas with Pierce’s second and current wife, Irene, who is Hispanic.
“I’m not eating that stuff,” said Jason, then 4, when he was served a plate of Mexican holiday fare, including tamales.
When Pierce explained that the boy, now 16, merely missed his traditional turkey and stuffing, his in-laws were mystified.
Pierce, of Cerritos, Calif., a graphic designer, recalls their asking, “Why would you want turkey on Christmas?”
In a twist that makes the family’s holiday special, the meal is now a turkey-and-tamale affair.
Presents are another holiday pleasure that can be twisted into weapons, especially when divorced parents use them to vie for the children’s affection.
Betty Green, a Shadow Hills, Calif., research assistant, believes she and her husband, William, fell into this trap initially while shopping for their four sons from previous marriages. The couple, who usually followed a strict pay-as-you-go policy, racked up credit card debts that took months to pay off so they could lavish the sons, now grown, with gifts.
“A year or two of that and you say, `Wait a minute! This is outrageous! Who am I competing with?’ ” said Green, whose husband is a retired Xerox scientist. “We just decided not to outdo the other parent.”
The couple also realized the practice slighted their own daughter, Lauri, now 14. Now they try to give her “a little more of the lion’s share because she has just one set of parents instead of two,” Green said.
Families with conflicts sometimes find relief by emphasizing a previously neglected holiday. Pierce, for instance, always had pulled out the stops on Christmas Day. But his second wife’s family put the emphasis on Christmas Eve, so he and Jason followed suit.
The arrangement allows Jason and Irene’s son from a previous marriage, John Michael, to spend Christmas Day with their other parents.
The Greens ended up taking a less-conventional route. With one of the parents “reluctant to share” the boys, the family postponed the entire holiday by a day so that the children could spend it together. For nearly 10 years, Christmas fell on Dec. 26 in their household.
But the Greens didn’t impose the switch; they asked the children what they would need to make the compromise work for them. They responded that they wanted to be able to open one major gift on Dec. 25.
“They want something to show their friends,” Green said.
Aside from making peace over the holidays, it was a valuable lesson, he said.
“I think the major thing we learned was to get the kids involved,” she said.
