Brenna stared at the suitcase as though it had personally betrayed her. \u201cYou\u2019re seriously leaving?\u201d I told her yes, and then explained the part she had apparently never considered: my house was not available as a free holiday venue while I was gone. I had already told Trevor the eighteen guests would need another arrangement. I had not purchased the groceries, prepared bedrooms, borrowed chairs, or agreed to watch anyone\u2019s children. The only Christmas plans I had made were my own.<\/p>\n
Her anger arrived quickly. She said Trevor\u2019s family had already booked flights and expected to stay with me. I opened the group chat screenshot and placed the tablet between us. \u201cYou knew I would say no if you asked early, so you waited until Elias was excited.\u201d Brenna\u2019s face changed when she saw her own words. There was nothing left to misunderstand.<\/p>\n
I hugged Elias, promised we would have our own Christmas afternoon together after I returned, and climbed into the rideshare.<\/p>\n
Three days later, Brenna called from a rented vacation house. Trevor\u2019s relatives had divided the cooking, childcare, cleaning, and grocery bill among themselves.<\/p>\n
Apparently, Christmas still happened.<\/p>\n
It simply required everyone to do the work they had spent nine years calling \u201cGrandma\u2019s tradition.\u201d<\/p>\n
For the first time in years, I woke up Christmas morning with nowhere I was required to be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Brenna stared at the suitcase as though it had personally betrayed her. \u201cYou\u2019re seriously leaving?\u201d I told her yes, and then explained the part she had apparently never considered: my house was not available as a free holiday venue while I was gone. I had already told Trevor the eighteen guests would need another arrangement. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5281,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ternalnews.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ternalnews.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ternalnews.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ternalnews.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ternalnews.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6488"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ternalnews.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6488\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6489,"href":"https:\/\/ternalnews.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6488\/revisions\/6489"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ternalnews.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ternalnews.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ternalnews.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ternalnews.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}