AS the month of December advances you hear it more often ... "are you going home for Christmas?" Or... "you'll be spending Christmas with your family?" It is the time of year when couples quarrel over where to spend the day at the centre of the season of good will ... "are we going to your family or mine this year?" It's the time of year when children are never consulted about how they will spend the big day.
It's a year long phenomenon, this guilty agonising over about "visits home", which Christmas highlights. What is puzzling is: What home or family do people have in mind?
Surely once you have left home, your home is where you now live. At times you may choose to visit your mother's and father's home but it is not wise to continue to see their home as your home. Many young adults remain over attached to their original home, going back too frequently and not putting their energies into establishing solid foundations for their own base.
In theory, single adults no longer need parenting. Once you have flown the nest, the old family should move into the background. At times you may need advice and support but that is a far cry from being parented.
The family is a social unit where parents, the family architects, create a structure for the continuance of their own personal and couple development and for the raising of children. Once children reach adulthood it is not wise for dependence on the family unit to continue. Indeed, when the latter happens the family structure has out lived its usefulness and is acting only as a deterrent to the maturing of the young adults who remain under its umbrella.
Parents of adult offspring who refuse to leave home must ask themselves if they have fallen short on their parenting. Have they taught their children to be self reliant and independent. Parents may also be too `stuck' on their adult offspring at a time when they should be moving on to enhance their own relationship and their emotional and social development.
The Christmas obligation to return "home" can weigh heavily on the shoulders of exfamily members. Even though sons and daughters are married with their own children they still feel duty bound to go back to the old family home.
An announcement that "we're planning to spend Christmas in our own home this year" can provoke rage, hostility, sarcasm, sulking, even emotional withdrawal. "You're tired of us," may be the response. "Christmas won't be the same. You're spoiling it for everyone."
Parents living their own lives may certainly be disappointed when this happens. However, they should encourage their sons or daughters in establishing their own way of spending Christmas. With good heart they can look forward to a different kind of contact over Christmas.
THIS is the time of the comforting illusion that the old family was perfect. It's a myth that many strive manfully to maintain, despite the fact that every family is dysfunctional to some degree.
It is the compassionate acknowledgement of this fact that provides the safe ground for the mature development of all members of families. Young parents need to ask themselves where they would truly like to spend Christmas and when children are old enough they also deserve to be consulted. Leaving your own hearth out of a misplaced sense of duty does not auger well for a loving Christmas.
Some people, single or couples, may prefer a Christmas with friends who are more accepting and loving, friends who value them more than parents or brothers or sisters. Blood may be thicker than water, but love is thicker than obligation and transcends blood and water.
OF COURSE, you may genuinely want to spend Christmas in your old home with your parents. It is wonderful when love has continued to deepen between adult off spring and parents and the relationship is adult - adult in nature and, on visiting, there is no regression to childish dependence and behaviour.
Decisions on how to spend Christmas need to come from the heart and not from obligation. If you feel uncomfortable and threatened by an extended visit to your parents' home, then it seems only caring not to expose either yourself, your partner or children to such an environment.
It might be far more productive to make a short visit during which you are less likely to be sucked back into old hurts and current entanglements.
Let the decision about Christmas come from the heart - when it does you and those around you are more likely to have a peaceful and loving Christmas. Home is where the heart resides.
