Thank you all. This is very frustrating. Phoenix - your words are interesting and frustrating at the same time. When you say we could plan Christmas and not have him in charge of planning - that feels like we would be bailing him out. Sister is heavy into enabling him. She feels we are 'down on him' because he is poor. He is poor because he has put drinking ahead of many many things in his life. She also feels he has/had no choice in the alcoholism because our Dad was an alcoholic, but got himself clean and sober and stayed that way. If we did go ahead with planning without him, I'm sure we would be bombarded with nasty letters, emails and phone calls. This has happened before.