Over the holidays whilst preparing Christmas lunch for my family I thought about
the agreements that I had mediated the past year, a lot of them involving where
children should spend Christmas.
There have been so many permutations, alternate holiday years and then the
question is who has the first Christmas with the children – odd and even years? But
then the question can be is Christmas one or two days? or some families who are
from the continent consider the 24th December is the most important day. I have
agreed a split Christmas day, but then who serves the Christmas meal? The other
issues that have to be considered is transport to and from the Christmas venue,
introducing new partners and what everyone wants to eat..Not even taking into
account where the stockings are opened, the presents being bought, one from each
parent, joint presents....These issues continue well into adult hood and sometimes
parents feel able to spend the day together which is marvellous but we may then
draw up a list of boundaries that will be need to be respected. I haven’t even
touched on the involvement of grandparents...I now have a list in my files of all the
possibilities and I draw on this if necessary.
So the next time someone calls me and says ‘we just want you to mediate about
Christmas it’s quite straightforward and won’t take long’... I will pull out my 4 page
list of previous agreements...
I hope you all had a peaceful and harmonious Christmas.
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