Host is freaking about 'perfect' Christmas

First of all, I do get the desire to make things super special and I've gone a bit overboard at times for my son until he had to tell me he didn't care about all that and just wanted to spend holidays together.

Yet...tonight I'm barred from the front of the house as I assume he's doing some very ornate and special decorating for the holidays.

Once the siblings and I grew up and left our home, the mother would always try to make the holiday gatherings perfection, then end up losing it. My sister told me once of a Christmas Eve extended family dinner where our mother was fretting and kept asking her if she had enough food, did she forget anything, was anything missing. After continued questioning, our sister finally said "I don't know, maybe some sausages." The mother went into a frenzy. "Sausages? Sausages? Where am I going to get sausages on Christmas Eve? Why didn't you tell me this earlier? What do I do now?" and there was no calming her.

I like this story a lot. It's the non-abusive side of the insanity I grew up with. But as long as your host is trying to make things special -- without losing it, of course -- perhaps you can see some underlying reasons for wanting a perfect holiday which, unless I'm misunderstanding, sounds a lot like an appreciation for what you (and he) didn't get and a desire to right past wrongs. And underneath that, it sounds like he loves you.

I never had someone love me before. We don't know what to do. He's being nice and that's weird but he says he wants us to be happy but

This is confusing.

Iain

It's okay to be confused. It was/is hard for several in the SF system to accept love or even someone being nice. They didn't understand why someone would be nice to them. Most accept it as genuine now even if warily, others still question my motives.

It takes trust to accept and more trust if you've been hurt before... Trust takes time.

Trust also doesn't have to be all or nothing. Trusting a little bit can help see if it is real.

hi. i just want to say not sure if this relates but i will feel this need for certain things to get done each night to make sure my kids and i get to spend this certain time together. and sometimes it's hard cause i sometimes go through phases where i wonder if it is enough. and then later realize i will never get it perfect and that i should find a way to relax.
something i am doing occasionally now is to add movie time to our activities as it's still us together but not necessary a big difficult to do thing, and yeah sometimes being together is the better thing, not how perfect things are (like setting up and playing elaborate game vs just being there sometimes and open to them). but that can be a difficult thing to realize sometimes. And sometimes it's still better to play the 2 hr game, or set up the Xmas to be perfect, but I think it is also asking self what feels right? Like does the Xmas stuff fun to do, or just a big stress?
So for me i realized that it was this unrealistic guilt i'd feel sometimes. And been able to be more in the moment. Also I ask myself if we miss a goal I am going for, is it okay? And I have been realizing that it usually is,
but then i have to process some feelings of sadness around it/ and fears. So I think yeah there is an underlying reason to have to make Christmas perfect. Or to have to do something, and there is usually an easier more relaxed way to do things that still makes people happy, if one can only get through the issues behind it.