Family Matters
Life&Gwen
member
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
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Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Tone down Christmas.....
How do you tell your parents/in laws to tone down the holidays without hurting their feelings? I grew up in a great family, we gave each other one gift each from each person, meaning everyone got about 5-6 presents, and it was always something each person thought you'd really like. Christmas was never "over the top," we'd take turns opening gifts so everyone can enjoy it alongside you, you can share in the delight of a thoughtful gift, etc. My DH's parents do SO MUCH Christmas that it makes me uncomfortable. As in, probably 5,000 of stuff per child (they have three), and they have two DILs. We would be so happy with like 2-3 gifts, and giving them a gift or two each. Then enjoying a nice dinner and hanging out around the house, catching up and watching movies. How to tell them? We're adults, with jobs and mortgages and pets, and we're all late 20s, early 30s, paying our own ways through life. They're recently divorced and we're 99% sure that Christmas puts them in annual credit card debt. How to tell them we'd be happier with a Christmas that's more focused on time together and less focused on material things?
Re: Tone down Christmas.....
They are better off taking the money for those gifts and presenting it to you and your H in the form of a savings bond for the kiddoes.
We never had this kind of thing as kids; we'd ask for maybe a dozen things and we'd get 2 or 3 of those items. The rest were things like pajamas and robes, slippers and clothes for school. Even than it was maybe 8 gifts each and 6 of them were items like the clothes and robes..
And aunts and uncles gave us one gift each. Usually something from our Santa lists.
I have the same problem, only it's my family - mainly my parents - that goes overboard during the holidays. My H's family does not, in fact, they make you feel guilty if you even spend $5 on a present for them, which drives me a bit crazy because it's the complete opposite of what I'm used to - don't make me feel bad or sad on Christmas because I gave you a little something - just smile and say thank you. I don't give gifts to people expecting anything in return, nor do I spend a ton of money, I just enjoy giving a little something to people that are in my life. And believe me, I do not spend a lot of money, in fact, sometimes I just bake a ton of cookies and put them in decorated tins to give to people.
But back to my own family - they are already in serious debt and spend money they do not have, which also drives me crazy. It got to the point with me where I would get stressed out over the holidays because I started to feel like I had to keep up with everyone, and as a result got myself into quite a bit of debt (which I have since gotten out of). The first time my H ever spent Christmas with my family, he actually felt uncomfortable at the amount of gifts they gave to him and it's because he's not used to it at all. And as the years have gone on and he's gotten to know my family better and knows how much debt they are in, it makes him feel really bad. Every year, we try to tell them - don't spend a lot of money. It falls on deaf ears. So basically, we've resigned ourselves to the fact that this is how they are, this is how they are going to be, we cannot expect them to change their holiday tradition and we should just accept what they give us, smile and say thank you. Actually, this year wasn't so bad - they kept it small for us. It's not that I don't appreciate what my parents do either, I just hate seeing them go into crazy debt over it.