It’s the holiday season, still, and as much as I love to spend time with my family I am looking forward to some quiet time. Next year I’m planning on following Angelina Jolie’s lead – just make a phone call, don’t visit.

A source tells the National Enquirer that Jolie called her father (Jon Voight) while spending Christmas in New Orleans with partner Brad Pitt and their four children. The friend reveals, “It was a short call, but it meant the world to both of them. It was something for them to build on, and Jon couldn’t say enough good things about the way his daughter is conducting her life.”

San Francisco Chronicle

There’s another story that says Angelina wrote her father a letter rather than rang. We don’t really know the extent of the split – Does he get an annual Christmas card with a picture of the family? Does he get an annual phone call with a quick update before she shoves a kid that can’t talk onto the phone?

Angelina and father Jon Voight haven’t been close since he gave a June 2002 interview discussing her ‘serious mental problems’, but this last November he praised her in interviews, saying he is always thinking of “Brad and the kids. I’m sending my love that way.”

Angelina perhaps plans to adopt another child in 2008, having got over her fear of motherhood.

‘They put him in my arms and I stared at him and I started crying and he smiled,’ she tells Hollywood TV.

‘I hadn’t held children before in my life. I was always considered so dark and I thought maybe I shouldn’t be someone’s mom because I’m not so sure about myself.’

Now Magazine

I think every mother fears that she won’t be a good mother. While Angelina seems to come under a lot of criticism for her parenting, I don’t think she has any huge flaws in her parenting style. The worst criticism you could aim at her is that she moves them around a lot. Of course, when they turn into hormonal teenagers and start researching their mother’s past, she’s going to have a hard time explaining that kiss with her brother, having sex with knives, and riding a motorcycle without a helmet.

Picture note by Celebitchy: Images are obviously old ones of Angelina and Jon Voight together.

Boy the Jolie/Voight/Haven clan sure like to bring up old anger at least once every few months. It seems to be a seasonal ritual with them. While Angelina doesn’t talk about her father Jon Voight very much, John Voight sure does a lot of talking about Angelina. And why not? She’s a big star and he hasn’t done much of anything lately. If he wants to get into the papers, I can’t imagine a better way to do it that by talking about all their old issues and old hurt and how life sucks for him because Angelina and brother James Haven just can’t get over the fact that their dad was a complete jerk to them growing up. It really annoys me when someone treats someone else like crap, and then gets mad at the person for not getting over being treated like crap. Kind of like, “I should be able to do whatever the hell I want to you, and you should just deal with it and not make me feel badly as a result.” It’s from the Jon Voight school of psychology.

“After son James Haven’s accusations of ‘mental abuse’ in a recent magazine article, Jon Voight is speaking out. The 68-year-old actor, who is also Angelina Jolie’s dad, tells Usmagazine.com in a statement:

“‘I find it very heartbreaking that my children want to paint a bad guy portrait of me. I feel it comes from their inability to let go of years of programmed anger from their mother, who understandably felt quite hurt when we divorced. In all truth, I tried to give him and their mother continuous love and support and large sums of money. God knows, for years I’ve tried to mend this relationship. Perhaps the trauma of their mother’s passing has made it worse.’

“In November’s Marie Claire, Haven says he dedicates himself to helping abandoned women and children due to his own scarred experience as a child. Of his famous father, Haven says, ‘I don’t want to constantly berate my father — I wish him well, and I hope he finds peace — but he put my mom through years of mental abuse.’

“Despite the affront, Voight continues to hope for a relationship with Haven, and Jolie. He tells Us, ‘I continuously send them my heart and love and am always available to them for whatever they may need from me.’”

[From Us Weekly]

Yep, you continuously send them your heart and love, unless whatever they need from you is to take some lasting, permanent responsibility for your behavior and truly do what it takes to make amends. But as long as what they want from you is facile and superficial, you’re totally there for them. And if you can talk to a bunch of gossip magazines about how mean your kids are to you in your old age, all the better, right? Remember that time when Voight (apparently intentionally) referred to Zahara as Shakira to the press? Very grownup and mature, it sounds like you’re a great person and would make a fabulous grandfather Jon Voight. I think Angelina is probably moving on, focusing on making a happy family, and doing whatever it takes to make sure they don’t have to deal with you like she did. So it sounds like the problem is more that your kids don’t need you, and that bugs you.