Christmas is supposed to feel good. It’s a lot of work, but it shouldn’t feel like pushing a huge rock up a steep hill.

See what the woman in this story wants to change about her difficult Christmas.

AITA for wanting to change how we do Christmas Day because it’s become exhausting for my household?

I am married, have a teenage son from a previous relationship and my wife has a teenage son as well. For the last several years, Christmas has started to feel less like a holiday and more like something to endure, and I’m struggling with whether wanting to change it makes me selfish.

Our current routine is this: on Christmas morning, my wife, her son, and I wake up very early (this year we were up at 6:00am) and drive about an hour to my sister’s house to open presents with my immediate family.

It’s an arduous ordeal instead of a jolly one.

There’s a strong expectation to be there first thing in the morning. When I’ve tried to push back on that even slightly, it’s been met with hostility, and I’ve been made to feel selfish or uncaring for not wanting to be there at the crack of dawn.

After breakfast and presents, we leave early afternoon and drive another 60–90 minutes to spend the rest of Christmas Day with my wife’s extended family, then drive another hour home late at night. By the time we get home, everyone is completely wiped.

The thing that makes this harder is that for my family, Christmas Day itself is otherwise very low-effort. They celebrate with my brother-in-law’s family on Christmas Eve. On Christmas Day, they don’t go anywhere else and no one comes over.

For them, waking up early to open presents is easy because the rest of the day is wide open. For us, it’s the start of a very long day with multiple drives and obligations.

Over time, this structure has taken a real toll on my wife, who has lost much of the joy she used to feel around Christmas. Watching that has been really difficult for me.

But cutting it altogether wouldn’t be good either.

One important detail is that we’ve always given my son a lot of freedom to choose where he spends his time, especially as he’s gotten older. We don’t force a strict schedule.

If we weren’t present on Christmas morning, I’m fairly certain he would still choose to spend that morning with my family because that’s where the tradition is familiar to him. That autonomy is something we’ve always supported, even though it complicates things emotionally.

I’ve suggested alternatives like coming later in the day, splitting celebrations across Christmas and the day after, or alternating which family we spend Christmas Day with each year.

Any suggestion of changing the Christmas morning tradition is treated as a personal attack on my mom and the family.

Mom is super attached to this tradition.

She’s very rigid in her allegiance to tradition, and challenging it is framed as me not valuing family or not caring enough.

I love my family and don’t want to hurt anyone. At the same time, I don’t think it’s fair that my household absorbs all the exhaustion year after year, especially when we’re not trying to stop anyone else from celebrating how they want.

I just want to find a way to make the day more sustainable and enjoyable for everyone involved.

So, AITA for wanting to change how we do Christmas, even if it upsets people who are very attached to the tradition?

Here is what folks are saying.

Doormat indeed. Who cares what they think!

They shouldn’t be.

LOL see how that works out.

This is the only way they will get it.

You need to be direct and short.

It’s not like you’re Ebeneezer.

If you liked that post, check out this story about a guy who was forced to sleep on the couch at his wife’s family’s house, so he went to a hotel instead.