Saratoga News

Speak Out!

BRANCHING FAMILY TREE MAKES THE HOLIDAYS A CHALLENGE

By Sue Fagalde Lick

Christmas gets pretty complicated for families these days. In my parents' youth, when divorce was rare and the whole family lived in the Santa Clara Valley, everybody could actually get together at one house. My mother tells of eating on huge makeshift tables with all of her aunts, uncles and cousins at Grandma Souza's house. But now, with all of our ex-spouses and stepchildren, it's difficult to puzzle out who will be where and when.

For divorced parents, who gets the kids for Christmas is a sticky question, one that our family and many others face every year. From age 7 to his late teens, our youngest son spent part of every Christmas vacation on an airplane. At first, he lived with his mother in Texas and flew to California to be with us. Later he moved in with his father and me and flew to Texas for Christmas with his mom. Either way, this little guy with the big suitcase hit the airport the day after school got out and had to spend every Christmas missing one of his parents.

Now that he's an adult, his mother comes to California, and we have begun spending part of the holidays mingling all the former and current families together. Luckily, we get along well, but it's still pretty interesting having my parents exchange son-in-law stories with my husband's ex-wife's family.

The ones who make out in this deal are the small children, who are just glad to see everybody and don't care who's married to whom. The gift possibilities grow exponentially with each divorce and remarriage.

But gifts aren't everything. Somebody always gets left out of the celebration. If our son-in-law's daughter by his ex-wife spends Christmas with us, we're delighted, but then she is not with her mother or her mother's family. If my stepchildren's mother comes from Texas to see the kids at Christmas, she is not with her new family in Austin. Meanwhile, my brother is with his wife's family in Merced, and my uncle's kids are spread over three states.

Lately, it's so confusing trying to figure out how to buy gifts and celebrate with everyone that I've been threatening to go to Las Vegas for Christmas and forget about family. But that wouldn't work either; there's another branch of the Licks there.

So I'll stay home and enjoy having so many different people to love and be loved by. It could be worse.

Family can be defined as the people you love, no matter how they're related to you. Happy holidays to all our readers from the Saratoga News family.

Sue Fagalde Lick is editor of the Saratoga News.