Christmas Day Experiment

The simplest way to explain my idea about how to spend this Christmas Day will be best illustrated by telling you how I spent Christmas Day 2012. I woke up around 6:30am as my body is programmed to think its work everyday. I got up and dropped onto the sofa and put on the latest Call Of Duty multiplayer which I'd had for over a month but which many would just be receiving on this Xmas morning. The idea being that I can level up faster as I know the maps better.  Around 8:30am my ex wife would ring to say that they are all up and I could speak to my step children and my (then) 4 year old son. This moment makes Christmas Day bearable. I talk and listen and end with "well have a great day and I'll see you tomorrow". This makes me feel comforted for the rest of Christmas Day. 

So by 11am I turned  off the PS3 and went to my mums house where my sister, who is in her twenties now, lives. With my sister still getting up and ready for the day and my mother having to prepare dinner for all the guests, I kinda just sit around. My Christmas will be tomorrow on Boxing Day when I have my son. 

The dinner guests arrived and are all from my mums husbands side of the family and they talk amongst themselves and are polite to me as always. I felt a little out of place amongst this other family as my mum fought with the kitchen. This usually lasts through dinner right up until teatime when one of my brothers arrives with his family and therefore, my family. The day was almost done and so I rose and left, unsure of whether I'd stayed the correct amount of time or not. Maybe the feeling of pity at not being with my kids is only imagined as I sit alone, but it's still felt. But in myself, I'm fine. 

SO!, this Christmas, with my sister now married and not living at my mums AND not turning up there until the afternoon, I plan to stay at home until the afternoon too. This way I can play on the PS3 for longer, watch a film or two at my leisure and roll up to meet family at tea time. BUT will missing Christmas dinner at my mums ruin Christmas for me or her? 

My view is that she can concentrate on her in laws fully and then three out of four of her kids turn up to reinvigorate the afternoon. I think its a good idea. But will I get to lunch time and eat sausage and chips for example feeling pathetic? How about if I make the effort to get a Christmas dinner for one? Would that make it sad too? 

I believe I'm committed to the idea but open to it being shit. 

With families married off here and there, visiting all factions of families proves difficult. All my family gets together on Boxing Day and I have my son too which makes it properly Christmas to me. 

So in my mind December 25th is mostly a day in which I can treat myself mostly. You must remember I don't drink alcohol and if anything that's a good thing as it would always annoy me that with all the driving, I would never get a damn drink anyway.