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This will be our first holiday season as a married couple as well. The great thing is that I am Jewish and he is Catholic so they only holiday we really need to figure out is Thanksgiving and we have already taken care of that! I told my parents if they made deep fried turkey for Thanksgiving we would celebrate at their house first this year and then DH's parents next year. They were happy to make it :) We will be going to the in-laws from 12pm-3pm to play their traditional game of Horse and hang out, then going to my parents after and having dinner there.
Christmas will obviously be with his family and Hanukkah will be with mine. His brother always throws a New Years Party so we will be there, but my family is invited and they came last year.
This is honestly my biggest fear of married life. As it stands now, I've lived with FI for a full year, and holidays are the worst! One or both of us normally get our feelings hurt when the other doesn't want to visit family. It's even harder because my parents are divorced. It worked out well until I met FI, and added a third family to the schedule.
This is the first year I will not be with my dad's side for Thanksgiving, but I'm happy I had the courage to just choose and say "They'll live". We'll be with my mother and his mother on Thanksgiving, but Christmas is still up in the air.
We are blessed to have our families right next door to each other. We'll be going to his mom's house for early dinner at 3pm and late dinner at my p's around 7pm. Last year, I didn't save enough room for my family's dinner, but this year I'm gonna try to pace myself!
Luckily, FI's family is in Japan/Hawaii, so I don't have to worry about missing my family functions. FI's brother is coming up from LA to spend thanksgiving with us though, which is nice for FI. We're picking him up from the airport today, actually :)
@nachos - I didnt even think of that for you guys, thats awesome! Are your parents good friends since they have lived next door to each other for so long? At least you didnt have to worry about the awkward meet the parents (or parents meeting each other!)
Mr.D is English...so they don't celebrate Thanksgiving. US immigragration won't let him leave the country yet (he can leave..but he can't come back) so we'll be here at christmas as well.
@naangel55 - it's beyond ideal! My dad and his mom stand in the backyard talking over the fence when they take their doggies out and they say it's like a sitcom! They've known each other for years so we never had to worry about the "mom, this is Mrs. So-and-so".
This year we are staying at our house for thanksgiving and his brother is coming over, but for christmas we will visit both families. It's weird not being there for thanksgiving this year, but we just bought a new house and it's fun to do it here together!
We're staying here in CA for my family's Thanksgiving, and we're going to DC for Christmas and New Year's. His parents are divorced and both remarried, so we're staying with his mom and stepdad, but will spend some time with his dad and his wife. Whew!
Last year it was reversed, and next year will be even more confusing because we'll be living in Portland away from everyone.
This is one thing I'm still really having a hard time with. This is our first year spending the holidays together. Since our parents live about 2 hours apart it is not really ideal to go to both sets of families on one holiday. It was really hard to decide what to do since with both of our families, the big Christmas celebration is on Christmas Eve. The biggest problem was deciding where to go then. We finally decided to spend Thanksgiving with my family, Christmas Eve with his and then spend Christmas day with my family. Next year we will do the opposite. That way, we don't have to completely give up Christmas eve with either of our families.
We are very lucky in that my parents and FMIL all live in the same city, so it's always been easy for us to negotiate the day (e.g. breakfast with FMIL, lunch with my family - FFIL isn't really a part of our lives to this extent). We have also spent two Christmases overseas - one snowboarding in Japan, and one when we were living in the UK when my sisters joined us. I consider FH to be my family (and have ever since our first Xmas together) so I would never choose my parents and siblings over him on a holiday, much as I love them. I'm glad we've set up a system whereby we don't feel obligated to spend the day with particular people or in a particular way - I think it will stand us in good stead in the future. I have friends who are still trying to negotiate this stuff and the longer you leave it the harder it seems to be to change traditions without upsetting someone!
We're lucky because we are from the same hometown (although my mom has moved, she's still within the same county). The problem? His family has TWO get togethers on Christmas Eve and TWO on Christmas Day. We have to skip one on Christmas day to spend time with my family, but yeesh. It's kind of overkill. For the last 4 years we've been alternating as best we can - both Christmas Eve gatherings with his extended families, mornings split between both of our immediate families, lunch with one set of his extended family and then back with my immediate family for dinner. We'll keep this up until we have kids when it will be our priority to form our own Christmas traditions with them, which means we'll stay in our city until Christmas afternoon and then head down.
Once immigration settles...
We're alternating Christmas. One in Canada, one at home in the US. Canadian Thanksgiving is in October so I think I've found a loophole. The years we don't spend Christmas in Canada we can spend Canadian thanksgiving there :) Woo hoo!
My FI is totally on board with me flying home a couple times a year! Due to his career, he'll probably only join me for the major holidays.
Usually FH's family celebrates Thanksgiving on Friday and Christmas on Christmas Eve because his mom usually works on the holidays. (She's a nurse.) So usually we spend one day with his fam and one with mine. This year his mom isn't working on Thanksgiving so she invited my family over to their house! Not sure how Christmas will pan out...
well this year we're doing thanksgiving with his family, but most are in the caribbean on a cruise for his cousin's wedding so they are doing thanksgiving on next saturday.... and we're going home for christmas..
side note my sister is bringing home a date for thanksgiving!! it's her first time ever and it sucks that i had to miss it :(... hopefully everything goes well and we'll both have our beaus home on christmas!!
We always do Christmas at my grandma's house, then go visit wish the hubby's parents at one of his aunt's houses later in the day. It's weird because they make a HUGE deal out of Easter, but not really as much with Thanksgiving or Christmas, so we are still trying to get things figured out.
Our parents live close enough that it's easy to split the holidays between them. We're especially fortunate that our families traditionally have the holiday meals at different times of the day - my guy's mom puts "supper" on around 1pm and my mom does "dinner" around 6pm. The only trick is pacing ourselves.
We're in Chicago with Mr. Parfait's family for Thanksgiving and in Florida with my family for Christmas. I think it's awesome, because I still get to spend my favorite holiday with my parents! But if we switch it up next year, I'll be so sad. : T
This is the worst part about being married. I hate splitting holidays. :( Our families live within 20 minutes of each other so we usually try to go to both. Or one side will take Christmas Eve and the other will do Christmas. But this year, his family wants to go to Tahoe for Christmas. It'll be my first year away from my family on Christmas. I'll admit I'm a little upset about it. I hope I can get over it soon and enjoy the time away.
Well, I celebrate all the Korean holidays with his family, and then am creative about Christmas with my family. Since 2005 I've been home twice for Christmas, my mum has come to Korea once, and this year I'm going to Hong Kong to be with my sister. The rest of the holidays like Easter, Canadian Thanksgiving, Canada Day, I spend with my coworkers. They're kind of my family here anyway. Today we got American Thanksgiving dinner from the US army base and some of the American guys with kids brought their children in so they could try turkey for the first time in their lives. Thesedays I try and focus on the spirit of the holiday rather than dwelling on who I am spending it with.
We're not married yet but we've been struggling with this for years. It was easier when my parents were out of state - either we'd be getting on a plane to spend the holidays with them or we weren't. Now everyone is in the same state and it's so hard to decide when to go to whose house.
I don't have anything to do with my family, so this makes it a lot easier for us. We had thanksgiving at our house for his family, and we'll do a huge family christmas at his cousin's house, and then his parents will come back to our house at Christmas.
For Turkey Day we drove an hour away to my Grandma's house spent the night Wednesday night had a early dinner with my family at about 1230... It was nice we spent the night before because I didn't feel like we shorted my family on time when we left at 2:30. We then drove another hour in a new direction to his cousin's house to have dinner with his family about 5:30.. Christmas will either be very similar (my family in the morning his in the afternoon) or spending Christmas eve and that night at his cousin's and shooting to my family early Christmas morning... The verdict is still out on that...
I'll admit it: the holidays suck. We've been together for 5.5 years now, so we've been trying to see each other on holidays throughout, but we've also hit a snag.
His parents got divorced about 3 years ago, and there's still lots of animosity. They've both since remarried (his dad to a woman, and his mom to a woman, too, so that adds a whole 'nother level of complexity) and they refuse to be in the same room. Also in the last 5.5 years, my parents split up. When we first started dating, we had to split it between the two families. Now we're lucky enough to have four <end sarcasm>.
This year, since we're now engaged, we made a venn diagram. Each parent was on an opposite corner, and we analyzed the overlaps, both in terms of distance driven and possible levels of guilt trips. We've mapped out the next two years for Thanksgiving and Christmas: his mom and my dad for T-giving, my mom and his dad for Christmas day (this year), and swapping it for next year (both in terms of who gets dinner vs. dessert and who gets which holiday).
Once we have kids, all bets are off: they're coming to us. Can't handle being with your former spouse on a holiday? Too bad. That's your option if you want to see us. I hate having to do that, but this is absolutely ridiculous.
It's hard! We try to go around and visit everyone and spend a little time with everyone and extended family and all that. But it's usually chaos! I can't wait until after we're married and can invite everyone to our house so we don't have to come to them!!!
Holidays haven't been a big issue for us, with the possible exception of Christmas. I don't celebrate Thanksgiving or Easter, so the BF just goes to his parents' house (in the same city we live in) for part of those days while I chill at home.
Last year was the first time we spent Christmas together. My job is really busy in December, and it was just too much of a hassle for me to travel to see my family (300 miles away). I spent the whole day with my BF's family and had a ton of fun. Of course I missed my family, but it was just so much fun to do something new and different for Christmas.
This year, we are pulling our first double Christmas -- spending the morning here with his family, and then getting on a plane at 2:30 p.m. to fly to Philly and spend the evening and weekend with mine. It's a little crazy, but I know it'll be fun and will make my parents happy. :-)
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This will be our first set of holidays as a married couple. Last year when we were engaged we still split up to be with our families and then met up later in the day to be together and visit each other's families.
This year we will be doing Thanksgiving at his mom's. I'm excited for the first major holiday that we get to wake up together and celebrate the whole day. However, it will definitely be sad not being with my whole family and all the grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins etc. We will be going to visit my family on Friday, so we are lucky everyone is relatively close.
What are you and your SO's holiday plans with family? Was it bittersweet the first time you weren't with your family?