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We are! We have hosted Thanksgiving a couple times before, so we just made an "official" announcement this year that we'll be hosting Thanksgiving from now on. Whoever can make it to our house is welcome, but we won't be travelling anymore. Actually, we'll be celebrating Thanskgiving this year with our best friends because no family could make it up. My parents, my oldest sister, and my nephew will be coming up the day after Thanksgiving, though, so it all works out.
We've also decided not to travel for Christmas anymore. We told our parents that Christmas is "our holiday" and we'd rather just keep it the two of us (well... three of us, I guess :) from now on. Everyone has been very understanding. We just told our families that we'd love to see them at other times during the year, but Christmas is just for our "new" family now. We both just feel like now, with a baby on the way, it's time to establish our own holidays and traditions.
That is excellent, Mrs. Spring and congratulations on your pregnancy.
Just a quick follow up question, if you are comfortable answering, how receptive did you find your families to be to your announcements about no longer traveling to see them during the holidays?
Our initial plan was to take turns, i.e. do Thanksgiving with his parents one year & the next with mine, same with Christmas. But, the husband asked me which one I would rather do & I would rather spend Thanksgiving with his & Christmas with mine, so even though this is what we did last year, we are following suite this year.
When we get a house, I think it will be a few years till I'm ready to host Thanksgiving or Christmas. BUT, I will invite everyone over for a holiday dinner parties the first year we move in!
I voted "other" because we try hard to visit both parents' houses at Christmas.
For Thanksgiving, we always stay home and usually it's just the two of us. We live pretty far away from both our parents, and there's just no way we could travel for both holidays. We're very open to having parents stay with us at Thanksgiving, but they don't want to travel, either.
For Christmas, because our parents live in the same state, but four away apart, we try to visit them both. We've been doing this for four years, so usually, we'll go to his family's house for the days leading up to Christmas (usually three days, if we can get the time off work), and then we'll go to my mom's for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. We do it this way because my family makes a HUGE deal out of Christmas, and everyone gathers at my mom's house for lots of food and parties and visitors. Whereas his family doesn't really do anything (it's kind of weird, actually).
This year is an exception, though. We both have practically no time off work because we used all our vacation days for the wedding, so we're just visiting his parents for a few days and calling it a day.
Hopefully next year, we'll go back to our normal schedule.
I voted "other" too. Christmas is easy. His family does a big Christmas eve - that means Christmas Day with my parents.
Thanksgiving's a little harder. This is the 1st year we'll be spending it together. His family goes down to his aunt's house in NJ, where my family does my parents house. Luckily my Mom told me that she's been there & doesn't want us to start the tradition of schlepping back & forth for the next 20 years. I'll pop into my parents for a quick Hi on the way to NJ on Thursday.
Once we have a house all to ourselves I'll def do the holidays. We just don't have the room right now.
This is the first year, but I invited his whole family (cousins, aunts, etc) over and we'll see how it goes before I decide if it's going to be a tradition or not! :P
We're doing it the same as last year, so marriage really hasn't changed anything on this front. We visit both of our families - my side of relatives gets together in a big group and hangs out all day (40 people!) and my husband's mom's side gets together for dinner later in the evening, about 1.5 hours away, so we manage to make both work.
I'm the oldest grandchild so there are still WAY more people capable of handling Thanksgiving hosting and hopefully I won't have to do it for a very, very very long time.
@ FallBrideKate - Thank you! :) Our families were very understanding and respectful of our wishes... eventually. The main thing is just to show a united front on this issue. My in-laws live a plane ride away, so while they were disappointed we wouldn't be going there for Thanksgiving, they were excited that we'll be spending a week with them next spring, instead.
My parents live pretty close, so it was very important that we had a game plan and stuck to it. When my parents started suggesting they come up to visit "around" Christmas, I made it explicitly clear that we needed Christmas Eve day, Christmas day, and the day after Christmas to ourselves. I told them we couldn't visit with them during those days, if they decided to come up. After that, they changed their plans, and now they're coming up after Thanksgiving and for the weekend before Christmas (Dec. 18-21). For us, it was just a matter of being firm on our plans; once they understood that we really wanted Christmas to ourselves, they were very understanding and changed their plans to match.
i'm not a newly wed yet, but we've been living together for a while now so we have our holidays pretty set. so far it's been pretty easy since we live close to both of our parents, and i'm stuck on traditions so i'd much rather go to them than start my own right now. for thanksgiving, my family does a huge brunch and we don't do a big thing for dinner, so we go to his family for dinner. chanukah is 8 nights, so that's simple enough to get to both of our families one of those nights. and for a lot of the jewish holidays our families are flexible and will celebrate on a different night than the actual holiday, so we can go to each house. it's a lot of eating!
This is our first married holiday season, so we're trying to work it out. We're going to his family's place for Thanksgiving this year. We'll alternate and do my family party next year.
As for Christmas, we were having trouble deciding and neither of us wanted to completely miss out on our family traditions. We'll be spending Christmas Eve with his family and then driving (about 4.5 hours) to my family Christmas party on Christmas Day. It sounded like a good compromise when we decided on it, but I am starting to regret all that driving. I kind of wish we could just stay home and host our families, but we don't really have room for that in our apartment. I'm hopeful that once we have a house, we can host at our place. Especially after we have kids, I don't want to be doing all that driving!
For a couple years now we've alternated Thanksgiving and Christmas. For example, this year is Christmas with his but Thanksgiving with mine. His family usually also gets Easter because we don't celebrate that then Chinese New Year with mine. With his parents moving away now I think Easter will just be us and his brother.
We haven't talked about it too indepth but I think once we have kids it'll have to be every third year for each side for holidays. We want to be able to have Christmas at home but we wouldn't want to miss too many Christmas with our family and niece and nephews either.
I would love to the first year with our baby and Christmas at our home to host Christmas one year. We'll see how receptive our respective families will be to travel to US! =) I have a feeling his eldest brother & SIL won't be because they are very selfish people...oh well...it will be their loss!
We decided that when it's just the two of us, we'll trade off. When there are kids (grandkids) we'll suggest that they come to us, or we meet somewhere, so everyone is traveling. I have a feeling that my parents will be the most difficult but if they're unwilling to help make it work, then they'll have to settle for every other year.
Because our parents live in the same county, we all celebrate Thanksgiving together, either at his parents house or at my parents house.
However, his parents are about to move up to North GA (we live in Atlanta, and my parents live in South FL) in the next year or so...so we'll have to readjust the tradition when the time comes.
In the meantime I prefer Thanksgiving at my parents house because my mom is a better cook :)
FH's family is 600 miles away, while mine is in town. When we are both able to get off enough time to go visit his family, we do. This doesn't happen very often.
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With Thanksgiving a few days away, I am curious as to how the Newlywed Bees are handling the holidays and more specifically, whose house do you go to for the holidays and how do you decide?
I see that cute Target ad with the wife so excited to host a Holiday gathering with her family and I find myself wishing that we could host one of the holiday events, but unable to do so because of established holiday traditions.
Are there Bees out there who are establishing their own holiday traditions? Are you mixing them in with your parents' traditions? If so, how is it working out?