The holidays are such an important time of year. It’s a time for love, laughter, and family. So many people are unfortunate in that they don’t have a family, and I know the holidays can be tough. I’m so thankful to be married and have to “worry” about whose house we’ll be going to for each holiday.
Before Mathew and I got married, we took an engagement “counseling” type course for Christian couples. We talked about roles and responsibilities, finances, and of course, thought-provoking questions like how you’ll divide your time for the holidays.
Last year was a fluke. I had Thanksgiving with my family because it was going to be my last holiday with my family as an un-married woman. Mathew and I had decided that for our first year of marriage, we’d spend Christmas just the two of us, and then start the New Year fresh and divide our time then.
That didn’t quite work out.
Mathew’s mom was so sad that we didn’t want to spend Christmas with them that we ended up going over, and did Skype with my family. It wasn’t what we expected, but we dealt with it.
This year, it’s different.
The plan: Mathew and I will be spending Thanksgiving with his family and we’ll alternate and spend Christmas with my family. Then next year we’ll swap and do Thanksgiving with my family, and then Christmas with his. This plan works for us, and ultimately isn’t best for everyone, but it’s best for us. It definitely may be tough on our families, but we can’t please everyone and we refuse to travel incredibly far to accommodate everyone for every single holiday. We like this plan and we’re sticking to it.
So my question to you is…how do you do the holidays with your spouse or significant other? Do you swap like we do, or do you do something entirely different?
We will be swapping, one year here in California with my family, one year back east near Boston with his family. We just haven’t broke the news to DH’s mom yet – lol.
I like your plan! Unfortunately for us (ha!), our families are all in town so we end up having to split time with both our families on Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. It’s sooo much running around and it gets to be so stressful :/ Now that we have the baby though we’re not interested in all the craziness so we’re going to see about having everyone to OUR house for at least Christmas Day. I’m already dreading the making of the plans with both sides though. ha
haha this is the best idea. Have both fams come to one place to visit the baby. This is what we did and it works well (for relatively small families haha)
Unfortunately, my husband and I are going through a rough patch…and we have only been married 2 years. His family is so rude to me that I refuse to go to their house for the holidays and he refuses to go to mine…he is fine with this arrangement, but I am not. I am hurt and want more than anything for it to change. Oh well, Hope you have a great Thanksgiving & a Merry Christmas! 🙂
lovinglifeinthefablane.blogspot.com
We struggle through this every single year – partially because we have big families and partially because he works on a farm so he doesn’t really get holidays off. We lucked out last year that Christmas just happened to fall on a weekend that he had off! So what we usually do is I go by my grandparents for Thanksgiving during the day, then we see my parents together in the afternoon, then do some stuff with his family together at night. Christmas is similar, but at least we’re able to spread that out over a few days – dinner with my immediate family on Christmas eve then gift opening with his parents, then making the rounds at our grandparents’ houses on Christmas day once he’s done with work. His schedule definitely is not holiday friendly, but we’ve learned to be flexible 🙂
Hahaha im literally posting about this tomorrow!!! 🙂
-Karla @ forevernewlywedded
I guess I am somewhat lucky that I am super close with my fam, and they live pretty close, and his family is far and he could care less if/when they get together. So we get to spend it with my family all the time. I do with he were closer with his family, but I don’t force the issue
We’re crazy. We see everyone. Every holiday. For Thanksgiving, we spend Wednesday morning with my maternal grandparents + extended family in Plano (Dallas suburb), then drive to Fort Worth for dinner Wednesday night with Jeff’s family, then wake up Thursday morning and do breakfast in Fort Worth, then drive an hour to Plano for Thanksgiving dinner #1 at 11:00am with my paternal grandparents + extended family, then back to Fort Worth for #2 at 1:00pm with Jeff’s family (we arrive a little late), then we drive an hour to McKinney (different Dallas subrub) for #3 at 6:00pm with my maternal grandparents, spend the night there, go see everyone again on Friday, and drive home to Houston on Saturday.
For Christmas, we drive to McKinney a couple days ahead of time, do Christmas Eve lunch with my paternal grandparents in Plano, Christmas Eve dinner with my maternal grandparents in McKinney, Christmas morning & brunch back in Plano, then we drive 4.5 hours to Houston to make it in time for Christmas dinner with Jeff’s family in Houston. Then we spend the night with them and drive back to our house in Humble on the 26th.
We’re both the first grandchild to get married on most sides of our families, so if we skipped anything we’d be the ones to ruin the “EVERYONE is there!” holidays. My mom has four brothers who all have families and kids who make an effort to be at the maternal grandparents side events, and my dad has two siblings who both have grown kids and everyone makes it to all the paternal grandparents side events, and Jeff’s family is smaller – but they still really want to see us. So we were left with the choice of having crazy holidays or ruining someone’s perfect Christmas/Thanksgiving. And we chose crazy. Haha. I’m sure it’ll change when we have kids, but this is our third year of doing the crazy thing and it actually works for us for now!
Before we were married we did split up, it just seemed right for us to be with our own families. Now that we are our own family, it’s a bit trickier.When it comes to Thanksgiving his mom gets up very early so always does a lunch, his grandparents always have “dinner” around 2 & then my side eats about 6. Christmas is a harder, both our families to Christmas Eve celebrations so we missed half of each last year so we could make an appearance to both. Once we have kids I have no clue how we will handle traveling, I may just say, “you want to spend the holidays with us, come over to our house” lol.
When Brett was alive we did what I like to call “Tour de Texas” where we make sure and hit up all the different families/gatherings if at all possible because as you said it is the time of the year for love!!!!! He hated every single minute of it and I forced him to put a smile on his face for the car ride but as soon as we would get close to our destination he would be happy and enjoy the time we got to spend with everyone. Now that he is gone, I’ll still be doing the “Tour de Texas” with my littles and make sure my family & his family gets enough quality time with all 3 of us 🙂 This year is going to be different (awful/horrible/hard) but life moves on and we will trudge through.
We decided that we would split Christmas and always celebrate thanksgiving with my family. Thanksgiving (and all holidays) aren’t all that “big” with my husband’s family. This year is technically his parents “Year” but since we just saw them all in August for our wedding and we are in the process of buying a home and can’t afford to fly out West we are staying home, and then going to see them sometime in February. I wish they lived closer and flights were less expensive, but its a 1500 mile journey that costs a fortune. This is our situation for now, but once we have kids it will def. change, I will hope that his parents come out here once and a while for a holiday instead… we will see!
this is a WONDERFUL question. it’s so hard. last year our was bad. we went to 4 different places on christmas day and we were exhausted and fighting. I think your plan sounds like a good one!
We see both sides every holiday every year because neither of us are willing to give up our family time. For Thanksgiving we host all of his family and my parents and brother that are in town early in the day and then my family drives 3 hours to KC to see all of my other siblings/nieces and nephews/grandparents/etc later in the day. We do something similar for Christmas – We host the meal for his family and my local family Christmas Eve, go to church together that evening, celebrate just the two of us in our own home Christmas morning (which is important to me and will be even more important when we have kids of our own) and then drive up to KC to see extended family. It helps that David’s not super close to any extended family (and his grandparents have all passed away, unfortunately) but it’s still a little crazy. It’s worth it for us, though, and it will be our 3rd year hosting and we both really enjoy it!
We’ve been married for just two years so far–but currently our tradition is to spend the actual day of each holiday with my mom’s side of the family, and get together with my Dad’s side of the family on a different day close to the holiday to celebrate. My poor husband doesn’t see his family for holidays because we live an 18 hour drive away from them at the moment. I’m pretty sure that our traditions will be switched up as we live in different places, but this works good for us for now!
Our holidays are usually spent with each other. Since we’re military and constantly moving, we never go home just for the holidays unless we’re moving and a holiday falls into our schedule. My parents aren’t big on Thanksgiving or Christmas… or any holiday really except Chinese New Year so it’s been easy for us.
Usually we split them up pretty well. Christmas Eve with hubby’s family and Christmas Day with my family. Thanksgiving we split in half – early afternoon with his fam and evening with mine. Whew.
However, we just recently moved out of state, and I have family here. So the holidays are about to get interesting!
Brian and I try to split the holidays in half. We are lucky our families live only 40 minutes from one another. Thanksgiving morning we take a hike with Brian’s family then head to my parents for dinner. Since my family celebrates the Feast of the 7 Fish on Christmas Eve we spend it with them then sleep over. We do X-mas morning with them and then the rest of the day with his family. Easter is usually spent with Brian’s family.
My husband and I usually swap holiday’s the same way. It is a little harder for my family because by bday is 2 days before Christmas so sometimes they get a little sad missing me for both my bday and Christmas. Our families are pretty close so sometimes we do holiday’s together and that makes it so much easier and less stressful.
My sister and her husband swap both. Thanksgiving alternates every year. Christmas, they split in two. One family has Christmas Eve, one family has Christmas afternoon.
Me, I just hang out :)) but when I was living in Florida with a boy, he got Thanksgiving and I got Christmas. Both were important to us because his family didn’t do big Christmases like mine did.
As for me and Blond John … who knows? Until it’s time to cross that bridge, I jump ship and go with my family 🙂
Our families live very close together, so it’s very easy on us. We spend Thanksgiving Day with my family, the Friday after Thanksgiving with his family…Christmas Eve with his family and Christmas Day with my family! This way we don’t have to worry about saving room to eat at both places and we can really enjoying spending time with both families. 🙂
Southern Glamourista
I’d make Christmas eve alone time that way you can spend Christmas morning/afternoon with your family. Then make Christmas Day night spend it all alone.
🙂
You’ll find something that works but if you’d prefer to spend the WHOLE day alone then I’d pick christmas eve to spend with your family. 🙂
This is always so tricky:) We used to drive around and hit every.single.family.party. which was EXHAUSTING. So, we had to pick and choose and divide our time. We spend Christmas Eve with his family and Christmas Day with mine. It’s tough, but it makes for a much less stressful holiday
We do Thanksgiving with my family only because we host it. If we had a house, I would say we could totally invite his along, but in our tiny apt, the 8 people sitting at the table is all I can handle.
On Christmas Eve, we go to his family’s. It’s also his moms bday so that works out best. Christmas day is done at our apt with my family coming over and us hosting. I like it this way, since then Emma can open her gifts at home and not have to worry about going anywhere afterwards.
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We actually end up celebrating with both families for both holidays since we all live within a 30 mile radius. My family gets Thanksgiving day, his gets the day after. We do Christmas on Christmas Eve with his family & Christmas Night we head to my parents. So far it works great! However, even with them all being close the first couple of years were VERY stressful for me!
Luckily our families live within half an hour of each other, so travel’s not bad.
On Thanksgiving we usually do lunch at my family’s and dinner at his. Christmas is a little different because my youngest sister has had split custody between her mom and dad (my stepdad) so whatever day they have her is the day we do Christmas with my family. This year it’s Christmas day and we’ll be at my in-laws on Christmas Eve. We do our own family thing Christmas morning. I’m kind of excited to see how it’ll change as Quinn gets older.
Hi Stephanie! You’ve got a great plan all figured out!! It makes it hard when your families are far apart. I’m lucky because we only have about 45 mins between out two families. I always do Christmas Eve dinner and Christmas morning with my family, then we go to his family on Christmas day for afternoon lunch. So far it’s worked perfectly!
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