Holidays
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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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Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
We want a simple thanksgiving and christmas, HELP!
Se here's the deal, DH and I have been running around with our heads cut off every thanksgiving, christmas-eve and christmas to see all our family. He has step grandparents, his dad and step mom AND his mom and step dad. I have my grandma and my parents. We want to make things simple for the holidays and only see one side of the family for each holiday but I can't seem to find the perfect solution since his dad/step mom/step grandparents/mom/step dad don't celebrate easter. So easter automatically goes to me and my family. How can I make it fair so that he doesn't feel like we're always going to my family?
Re: We want a simple thanksgiving and christmas, HELP!
What holidays are important to which set? Who will be together? You can do what some people do in this situation and assign odd to yours and even to his. Then set each holiday within that year to a certain group. Odd years yours family, your parents.
It just really depends. Easter isn't important for my family so it goes to them. Now that there are kids involved, I like to spend Christmas with mine. Since we don't live too far from each, we can do half and half for some.
Sit down and figure out what the both of you want to do first. Remember it is your holiday too and you can spend it however you please. If you don't run all over town to visit family, you don't have to. You can go on vacation or you can sit at home all day too.
Everything does not have to be done on Christmas Eve or Christmas. You can celebrate with some family the weekend before or on New YEar's eve. Maybe you can try hosting a family dinner at your house one weekend in december and have that be your family celebration. Remember you don't have to celebrate on the 24th or the 25th.
You will have to accept that family will be disappointed if you don't visit and that is ok. They are allowed to be upset and you guys are allowed to spend time to yourselves too.
Oh and I there are too many holidays in the year toworry about Easter.
I hope that your family doesn't ONLY get Easter! It's not fair that they never get Christmas and Thanksgiving just because his family is so split.
Honestly, it's his family that chose to divorce and re-marry, and also choose not to celebrate together. I think they need to understand that you cannot go to four different homes over the holiday. Pick one family and stick with them for the day (unless they are VERY close geographically). Unless he was raised by his grandparents, I would assume that his parents would get first priority. He can always see his grandparents on the weekend between Christmas and NYE.
Another idea - have a celebration at your home. Pick Thanksgiving (or Easter, or Christmas or Christmas eve) and invite everyone. If they come to your place - great! The more the merrier! If not - they were invited, and they can't complain that you never spend holidays with them.
I would also suggest you pick a day that you DO NOT travel. Maybe that is Christmas, maybe that is Christmas eve, but take one day that is "yours" and not to spend with family. Your families are just going to have to accept your decision.
Practice saying "I know it's disappointing, but we are not going to four different homes on Thanksgiving. We will see you......(insert alternative day here). Love you."
T-giving: My mom and s-dad go to my s-dad's parents. DH and I are invited, but we go to IL's every year. My s-dad's parents have a big G2G every year and IL's don't have much family here (SIL, DH, Me, our kids).
Christmas Eve: We go to IL's. They've ALWAYS celebrated on Christmas Eve.
Christmas Day: My family. My mom and s-dad host Christmas Day so we go there early afternoon.
This is what works for us, do what works for you.
I completely agree! You and DH need to come to a compromise together and then let the families know. It has to be a joint decision. DH's family usually does their large get together on either Christmas Eve or the Saturday before Christmas, so it is very easy to plan our holidays. So we spend Christmas day with my family. On Thanksgiving, we go to my parents first (because my family consists of less than 10 people including us), then we spend the rest of the day / evening with DH's large family (about 50 people). DH's family doesn't do anything for Easter so we spend Easter with my family.
We do the flip-flop holiday thing. We follow the same 'schedule' that my sister and BIL set up years and years ago. Unfortunately is hasn't worked out amazingly well but that's life. We did Thanksgiving with my parents and Christmas with his dad, one year, and then moved out of state for two holiday seasons, now we're back but my sister and BIL just had a baby and BIL promise 'baby's first christmas' to his mom so the schedule got flopped this year.
Both our families agree that it is just important to spend time with family, no matter if it's a Tuesday or a holiday. I think as a couple you have to learn to enjoy holidays with your SO as well. Having two years away from family was tough, but it taught us to appreciate the simple things and our own little holiday traditions. I feel sort of bad for my sister since they've been married for 6 years, now have a little one and have never had a holiday at their own house.
Just make sure you do what you and your DH want.
WTH? I hope your sister was on board with this. Especially since she carried that baby for 9 months and gave birth. It seems as if she married a mama's boy.
We set a new rule with the arrival of our son. All holidays are at our house - our door is open and a meal is always prepared.
- running around isn't fun for us nor would our stress be conveyed as fun to our child,
- i'm not dealing with fights about where to go, who gets what, yadda yadda
- i like hosting, entertaining and cooking
There are some holidays that we do at other peoples but the major ones are in our home. For Christmas, we may go over to my mom's the night before ... but we are not running around on holidays.
This works for our family dynamic since my brother does not have children and DH's family is all over the country.