35-year-old deliberately works on Christmas Day to avoid spending Christmas with his cruel father: 'I can finally have a Christmas that feels good and relaxed.'

Author image for Emmy Pratt
Emmy Pratt • Writer and Editor
Dec 19, 2025 8:00 PM EST

Sometimes it's better to choose your peace over making everyone else happy.

There's a great deal of expectation on adult children to spend Christmas with their families, especially if they don't live in the same area. After all, if you only see your mom once or twice a year, you're probably seeing her at Christmastime. That is all well and good if you have a good relationship with your parents, but many adult children try to avoid them for very good reasons. You can't believe everything a boomer says about their child being lazy and entitled without getting the other side of the story. Maybe their adult child actually is lazy and entitled, but in 99% of cases, an adult child is not going to cut off their parents for seemingly no reason. If a parent and a child have a bad relationship for years and years and years, and neither of them can work to heal it, it's only natural for them to grow apart once the child no longer depends on the adult for survival. Parents don't always handle it well when their child confronts them about their shortcomings, because there will always be an imbalance of power between an adult and the adult who changed their diapers 30-odd years ago. 

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  • The man in this story is fed up with his dad's constant criticisms of him and his lifestyle. He decided to go to work on Christmas Day to avoid celebrating with his family, and they are not pleased with his decision. 

  • Dispatcher of warehouse scanning packed goods
    via Getty Images (Unsplash+)

    Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.

  • Am I the bad guy for purposely working Christmas Day to avoid Christmas with family?

    For years my family has lived distantly. My parents. still together but my brother and I living far away.
    via u/trilobot
  • For the first time in over a decade where within 3 hours of each other by car (as opposed to 6 hours by plane) and my parents are coming up to the town my brother and I live in for Christmas.
    via u/trilobot
  • Last Christmas I joined my parent's for a few days, and it was constant bickering with my father. He's unyielding in every aspect including waking me up at 6:00 in the morning to make
    via u/trilobot
  • me move my car because I drove in forwards instead of backing in and it "looks untidy". No kidding here. I also have Tourette's, I was diagnosed 20 years ago. I move around and make
    via u/trilobot
  • noises and I have zero control over it. Christmas Eve Dinner he snapped "Stop it!" every time I ticked and my mum had to talk me out of driving 3 hours home that night. Even my attempt to ask him to read the
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  • wikipedia page on (he's a fucking professor of geology he's capable of learning) just grew tension. I was working in academia and education for some years which he was proud
    via u/trilobot
  • of, but I hated it and was getting depressed so I left it and am currently working a menial job until I figure out my next steps (pretty determined to follow a dream of goldsmithing/metalworking
    via u/trilobot
  • /watch and clock repair - been talking to schools for it recently). I know for a fact he's absolutely livid about this and I am wishing to avoid any and all conversation about it which will inevitably come up. It's
    via u/trilobot
  • Shallow focus photo of person sewing
    via Kenny Eliason

    Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.

  • all he talks about with me as we share nothing else in common. I know he'll get judgmental and I'll either have to endure it, or stand up for myself and cause a fight.
    via u/trilobot
  • I've decided to work Christmas at my job purposely to avoid spending it with them. I will miss the fun but that pattern of sniping and tension goes back decades and I always
    via u/trilobot
  • find myself exhausted around that man, and sad after for feeling like I don't have a dad, just a Hall Monitor for a father.
    via u/trilobot
  • My brother learned of this and blew his lid. Telling me I'm being selfish and ruining Christmas and, I shall quote, "All your woke friends have put it in your head that family is the enemy. Is this about your sexuality and
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  • dad not accepting it? Just don't bring it up and if he bitches just smile and nod until it's over." citing that he's almost 70 and too old to change (my goal isn't to change him, my goal is to not feel like trash on Christmas Day).
    via u/trilobot
  • My mum, in gentler words, expressed the same - worrying that the grandkids (my niece and nephew) will wonder where I am.
    via u/trilobot
  • I'm 35 years old, I can make my own damned decisions. Christmas for the past 20 years has been an emotional chore and each time it's heavier and heavier. I've had enough of it. I posit a 3 year
    via u/trilobot
  • old and a 6 year old who never met me prior to last year will be more focused on presents than their sad uncle.
    via u/trilobot
  • Young girl opening a large red gift box
    via Pablo Merchán Montes (Unsplash+)

    Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.

  • I can't help but notice that many people in my life - my brother, my mother, apparently a few aunts and uncles, if my brother is to be believed, all think I'm the Asshole here and that it's
    via u/trilobot
  • my duty to just endure my father's constant belittling of me "for the sake of family unity". To them, they think I'm destroying the first full family Christmas since the
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  • grandkids were born. But I feel they're refusing to understand my position of feeling more and more like a stranger in my own family. Always the disappointment. Always being barked at by my father with an iron rod
    via u/trilobot
  • up his ass. I just want them to have a good time without me and I can finally have a Christmas that feels good and relaxed. My GF on the other hand says "Fuck 'em you don't
    via u/trilobot
  • owe them anything your dad's being a dick."
    via u/trilobot
  • anonny42357 Honestly, this sounds exactly like my narcissistic father. Now, as an adult, I just tell him, "gee, I don't know how to do that" any time he asks me to do anything, no matter what he asks, because he's just going to criticize me or re-do it himself, or ask some ancient friend to redo it for him. Gee, I don't a how to vacuum. Gee, I don't know how to organize the recyclables. Gee, I don't know how to recover your email password. Her, I don't know how to create you custom Google spread
    via u/anonny42357
  • OP trilobot >How can people not believe that legitimate, documented, and studied medical conditions exist I wish I knew. He has a lot of rigid beliefs that are nonsensical. He panics if the phone rings more than twice before he answers it, but won't answer on the first ring because it's "too soon". He panics if the drapes are drawn after sunup because the "neighbors will think we're sleeping". And? How would that harm us? Their drapes are also drawn...their judgement is irrelevant. But not to hi
    via u/trilobot
  • Frejian To quote a wise lady, "Fuck 'em you don't owe them anything your dad's being a dick."
    via u/Frejian
  • OP trilobot Haha she loves you now lol She's a wonderful and wise woman. I feel beyond lucky to know her.
    via u/trilobot
  • HappyLucyD Your girlfriend is not biased. She is correct. You don't think she deals with feelings of guilt? My therapist recommended a book for me on growing up in an abusive home. It started out talking about the shame that we feel. I had to stop reading, because it suddenly hit me that a lot of what I feel is that, rather than true guilt. Once you put aside the shame over things that THEY did, it's amazing how little "guilt" you feel. Your father made you the "identified problem" in your famil
    via u/HappyLucyD
  • OP trilobot Maybe not the best my GF is in another province and I'll be working but at least it'll be less stressful.
    via u/trilobot
  • cryssyx3 I got into a fight with my dad one Christmas when I was a teenager. I put the tape on the presents in the wrong direction. I did it long ways, logically.
    via u/cryssyx3
  • OP trilobot This resonates with me. He's get proper angry if my brother and I tore the presents open as opposed to carefully peeling back the tap to "save the wrapper for later". Absolutely ridiculous. There's a story from his side of the family, stereotypical lived- through-the-blitz Scots, of a box of chocolates that was carefully regifted for years. My mum ended up with it shortly after their wedding in 1982 and kept it like a NORMAL PERSON only to find 15 year old chocolate gone completely t
    via u/trilobot
  • Ecstatic-Highway-246 Sorry, Dad, I'm not tidy enough to come to you house... ever.
    via u/Ecstatic-Highway-246
  • OP trilobot I'm literally not. If I shave daily I get a bad rash, so I only shave every three days. 33% chance he says I look slovenly and need to shave.
    via u/trilobot
  • Cleantech2020 Your mum should have protected you from his abuse. Seems like she is an enabler. I would seriously for LC with all of them and NC with your dad.
    via u/Cleantech2020
  • OP trilobot In some ways she in an enabler. But she's a victim of it too. I was visiting her a couple weeks ago, and dad was away for the entire day, wouldn't be home until late. It was maybe 10:00 am and she went to go hang the clothes on the line. Keep in mind this is Canada so it was already near freezing out. We have a dryer. Dad is a professor (just retired this year) who started at 60k in 1982, and retired making nearly 200k a year. They can afford to use their dryer, which they own. But d
    via u/trilobot
  • cryssyx3 seems out dads are different brands of the same crazy! I'd be horrified to be (re) gifted old ass dust chocolate. good idea about the clock though apparently when my dad's mom died, she had several (5? 10?) bags of old flour. my father sorts his trash into "stuff he can burn" and "stuff he cannot burn" and the stuff he can burn is stuffed into the nonrunning cars in his driveway. bags and bags and bags.... he also saves his styrofoam coffee cups from gas stations and plastic spoons, spe
    via u/cryssyx3
  • OP trilobot Different brands indeed!..he throws everything away! Absolutely hates "stuff". He literally asked my brother and I this week if we wanted to take 200 or so photos from the phot albums that he wants to get ride of. Photo albums of our childhood, and he didn't even ask mum! I'm certain he'd be genuinely shocked she'd want to keep them. All he sees is "clutter". My mum gets very mad at him and banned him from the kitchen when she's cooking (which he doesn't obey) because he literally pu
    via u/trilobot
  • Mistress_Kittens Online time together is better than no time together, and certainly sounds better than being physically near your insufferable dad! In due time, I'm sure you'll have many happy Christmases together with her, free from unnecessary commentary on your life choices. Wishing you the best!
    via u/Mistress_Kittens
  • OP trilobot Thank you :) I hope we do, too. As I've gotten older I've realized all I want in life is simplicity. A job that pays the bills and lets me work with my hands, and a home. A home is more about who's there than where it is and I'd like my home to be with her. 6 years strong now :)
    via u/trilobot

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nephews christmas family drama employee brother working bad parenting niece girlfriend uncle Grandpa Father
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