What you don't understand is where everything's leading.

Dealing with some weird family drama over Xmas that makes me not want to spend the holidays with my family at all.  Basically, at Thanksgiving my folks asked about what time to get together for Christmas Day.  Kimberly said her family was getting together at noon, so later in the day would work better for her to join us.  My mom said something about planning around dinner with everyone bringing appetizers.  Cool.

This week, she sends an email to my brother and me about Christmas - confirming appetizers, talked about a gift exchange and that they wanted to get together at noon.

So... I wrote back and said food and presents sound great but in order for it to work for us, it would need to be later in the day and hoped that would work for everyone.

She responded that the latest they wanted to start was 2:00 so we could plan to get there by 3 to open presents.

Like, what?

For the past 10 years, holidays have revolved completely around my brother's schedule due to drama he has with my niece and nephew's mom.  Her schedule seems to change every year so we all adjust for them.  Now that he's remarried and his wife's (my sister-in-law) parents are divorced, it adds an extra layer of when she's with her immediate and extended family.  And again, our holidays have always been tied to their schedule.  I'm extremely fortunate that Marie is flexible around the holidays (on account of her not being super close to her family and her usually having to work weekends), so she's almost entirely worked around the schedule with no problems.

But the one time I ask if things can be pushed off a few hours it basically gets ignored.  I didn't respond because email didn't seem like the best way to address it.

The night of the email my folks were going to take Nate (and my brother's kids) out for dinner.  Plans fell through for his kids, so they asked if Nate and I could join them.  I was terse after they asked if I was "okay" with the Christmas plans and simply said "I don't know" and changed the subject.

Yesterday, she sends another email about how she feels that she and my dad have been "more than good" to Kimberly and that because we have more people on our side immediate family than she does in hers and that my youngest nephew is "too little" to have to wait all day.

WTF.

Separately, my dad called yesterday morning because we had made plans (the four of us, him, my mom, me and Nate) a few weeks back to go cut down Christmas trees together) and due to the bad weather, we decided to skip it and do our own thing.  He brought up Christmas and I, completely out of character, told him how I felt.  He apologized and said he understood my point of view.  I asked what time they wanted things to end for Christmas and he said probably 7:30 or 8:00.  Which, like, doesn't exactly put pressure on us being there at 3:00 if there'd still be several hours to be together if we came later.

I find it insulting to think that my parents have any say over how and how long Kimberly celebrates with her family.  The implication that she's somehow selfish for not dropping everything to be with us is, well, shitty.  If the goal was truly togetherness for the holidays, they'd be a lot more flexible for everyone.  Right now, it feels like they don't even really want her there.  And at the same time, they're hosting so they get to choose how they want to celebrate.

I know I need to talk to her about it and just tell her how I feel without tiptoeing around her feelings  I've always had a really solid relationship with both of my parents and they are usually completely reasonable (and nice! and loving!) but this one just threw me for a loop.