I am 74 and my husband is 81. We were both widowed and married each other. We have been together 16 years and married for 14 of them.

Do what I did after years of holiday cooking. Say, “I quit!”

Make restaurant reservations, have food catered or cook only for your immediate family.

Let me also say that I love to cook!

Even so, it gets tiresome when we cook year after year for large crowds of family and friends.

Here is your answer:

https://www.honeybaked.com/stores/1302

Honey Baked Ham Store in Edwardsville. They have delicious spiral cut hams and turkeys, wonderful side dishes, rolls, etc. Their ham bones and pea soup mix is great to bring home too.

Go pick up dinner and that's that. I quit cooking a few years ago, and before that, went the Honey Ham route or brought home a Qdoba Taco bar which everyone loved.

I have used Bob Evans and its great. With my crock pots and my daughters everything gets put in 2 hrs before time set to eat. We serve buffet style with the crockpots keeping everything hot. I make pineapple stuffing for an orphaned nephew, sweetpotato casserole and a jello mold DH loves. All can be done the day before. I had a friend who bought large Dixie paper plates and put them on charges that matched. Really looked nice. You can buy plastic utensils that look like real silverware. Glassware the same thing.

The only thing you need to clean up are the dirty crocks.

I think I did one holiday dinner once and never again. I am 74.

If he wants to hire a catering company to cook and clean up, let him do it. Or y’all go out to a nice restaurant.

Later-in-life marriages and blended families with adult children can be fraught with issues. Since he married in you in his 60s his kids were probably out of the house so there is no shared common history and memories made between you and them that are sentimental and binding. This is how is was and still is in my husband's blended family. There's not a lot that can be done about it except to define and defend healthy boundaries so that you don't feel dissed and burn out.

I know people who purposely go on vacation away from their families during the holidays so they don't have to sit at home and stew on it. Maybe planning something like going on a cruise over the holidays would be sort of a refreshing change. Celebrating with strangers might be more enjoyable than with indifferent steppies.Doing your own thing on your own terms may surprise his kids into appreciating and respecting you both more. Even if it doesn't, a vacation would be kinda nice.

If you no longer have the energy to cook these meals, his adult kids should provide them. My MIL 73, decided to stop hosting because all the commotion stresses out FIL, 79. So now SIL and I do them. This is the natural order of things. Ten years ago I was the younger adult who just showed up to a holiday meal, but it’s my turn to do them now!

A holiday dinner for just you and husband ordered already cooked from a supermarket seems a whole lot more pleasurable for you and him. For him to insist that you continue cooking for his family seems selfish in the extreme. So what if he’s disappointed? After he has shopped, cooked for three days and cleaned the house both before and after, not to mention all the dishes washed. he might see things differently.

Tell him that.

Have you tried telling them that you are very tired and can’t cook , however their father would like to see them ?

Have you ever tried to assign dishes for them to bring, so you aren’t doing the cooking ?

You could also say you are too tired to cook a large meal and just have them come for (store bought ) dessert . This is what I resorted to the last few Christmas’s my parents were alive. I cooked for just for my husband, my kids and my parents. Some others came later just for dessert .

YOU have a right to rest. Spend your energy on caring for yourself and your husband.
If the adult children don't want to do it or don't want to invite you to their outings, so be it.
Rest and take care of yourself and your husband.