Splitting Holidays

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BlueEyedLady

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My fiance and I have finally gotten to the point where we had to work out an arraignment for holidays. We are from different cities and both have close ties to our families. We’ve decided that no matter how inconvenient we will always have to split the Christmas season. A few days with one family and then a 6 hour drive for a few days with the other. Easter and Thanksgiving will be alternated each year. This year my family gets Easter and his got Thanksgiving. Next year we switch. We both really enjoy both families and are happy with the agreement. Our families are not. I think its just the usual growing pains of having a child become a member of another family and have other obligations, but we both feel a bit guilty.

This year his family doesn’t understand why we would want to spend Easter with my secular family when it means so much to them, and next year my mom will be hurt that her atheist daughter is giving up the chance to dye and hide eggs with my nieces and nephews to spend the day with people who celebrate it very religiously. Thanksgiving was the same thing. My family was hurt that I was traveling to see his family instead of them, and next year his will be sad that he’s having his first Thanksgiving without them.

I know that all of this is normal and that we’re trying to be fair to everyone. (And of course we’ll adjust if someone has a new baby or gets cancer or something.) I just wondered if some older and wiser married couples had advice on how to make this easier on everyone and what we can say to protect feelings.

We are both the only members of our families to live in a different area than they do, and we’re also the only ones in either family to marry someone not from the same areas as our families of origin, so everyone is pretty new to this.
 
I really feel for you! I’m an only, with divorced parents. My husband’s mom passed away many years ago, and so at some points we had invitations, and expectations from no fewer than four different factions of the family! After one Thanksgiving, where we visited and ate with three different groups, and spent more time in the car than with family, we decided enough was enough. We alternate years, and sometimes host for Thanksgiving, and generally host for Christmas. We are the religious people, so our secular family visits us and understands that during holy days we have church obligations. 🙂

The first year of splitting holidays will be the toughest, and probably where you will get the most pushback. After that, in my experience, it gets easier. All you can really do is assure them all that you love them, that you miss them when you don’t see them, but that you want to spend time with both sides of the family. 🙂

Be careful if/when you start having kids-- that was when we decided not to travel on holidays, and to invite others to see us rather than dragging our children to different places each year. We make an effort to spend non-holiday time with family, so one particular day isn’t as tough, since they see us often enough. (I hope!) Now that they’re older, I don’t mind traveling to visit the people who have wee ones of their own. It’s our turn to be more flexible when we can. 😛
 
Coming from a divorced family, I had to make a constant circut of visits for every holiday and birthday. Frankly, I’m sick of it. For Christmas, we choose a day during the season to celebrate with each family. It doesn’t have to be Christmas day. My mother gave me life so she gets Thanksgiving. (lucky her) Easter is spend mostly in my own church and I choose whose invitationt to accept based on what is for supper. My family is close and we see each other constantly. It doesn’t have to be a battle for a certain day of the year.
 
I think you are doing as much as you can possibly do to be fair, and no one is going to be 100% happy. When you have kids, you will have to establish even more boundaries because traveling with a baby or toddlers is a peculiar form of torture that is more effective than waterboarding.

They’ll get used to it, and then kids will come along.

🤷
 
More effective than waterboarding, :rotfl::crying:

You will never make everyone happy so just make sure you do what you can to make each other happy, and that will not always be easy. Good Luck and God Bless!
 
I advise you to start a tradition of staying home for at least two out of every three holidays even if you don’t have children yet. (An exception would be if you live so close that you can do home and a token family visit on the same day.)

You do not need to give any reason to family other than that you want to “do” the holiday yourself. (So learn to cook those holiday dishes and then in succeeding years you can say that you have to stay home because your husband prefers your turkey --in your oven-- over any other he has tasted and that you prefer his holiday brunches over any other you have tasted.;))

Get involved with your Church. There are all kinds of activities on holidays/holy days that might require your presence.

With children it is much preferable to have holidays at home. That doesn’t mean you don’t make the occasional visit on a holiday but those should be the exception rather than the rule.
 
SMHW said:
I advise you to start a tradition of staying home for at least two out of every three holidays even if you don’t have children yet. (An exception would be if you live so close that you can do home and a token family visit on the same day.)

You do not need to give any reason to family other than that you want to “do” the holiday yourself. (So learn to cook those holiday dishes and then in succeeding years you can say that you have to stay home because your husband prefers your turkey --in your oven-- over any other he has tasted and that you prefer his holiday brunches over any other you have tasted.;))

Get involved with your Church. There are all kinds of activities on holidays/holy days that might require your presence.

With children it is much preferable to have holidays at home. That doesn’t mean you don’t make the occasional visit on a holiday but those should be the exception rather than the rule.
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That sounds awful and lonely. I’m a 7 hour drive from my family, so when I get time off for holidays I want to see them. We’re a 5 hour drive from his family, and our families are about 6 from each other. Holidays wouldn’t be the same without seeing our families.

Besides, my kids will deserve to spend holidays with grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc. And we’d miss everyone too. Especially my nieces and nephews.

And we aren’t religious.
 
I’ll stick in with my original post, that it is most important that you and you husband agree to your schedule and are happy with it, some additional thoughts now that the kids are eating dinner.

When you tell your family the plan each year you need to tell yours and he should tell his, that helps them to know that you two are in agreement.

When it comes time to end the visit you need to be the one who starts the goodbyes at your family and he with his. (for 9 years I was always the time keeper everywhere and this has caused problems with MIL)

Those are my tips and now a note,

1st I didn’t see that you weren’t religious until after I posted God Bless. :o

2nd When you read these comments know that we all carry with us our families as we post, for example:

My in laws who live 7 minutes from us couldn’t be bothered to see their grandson on his b-day the past 2 years. or We spent a lot of time with my family on holidays early in our marriage because my brother was killed 6 months after we were married, my in laws told me this past summer in our last (and I do mean last as in no more) discussion about how much they think we hate them, that I should have explained that to them, because they didn’t realize that I would want extra time with them and my other siblings because of this.🤷

Sometimes people try really hard to be unhappy and feel slighted, I hope your and his families are not like this, it doesn’t sound like they are, just keep the idea that everyone has family “stuff” in mind when they post! 🙂
 
My advice is to make your own traditions for your new family. Spend time with extended family if it works for you and you want to, but don’t be afraid to stay home sometimes, or invite them to your place. Once you have kids, you will find that you just can’t be as “fair” as you once were (and really, you should not take “fairness” so far that it makes your holidays stressful!) Traveling with little ones or while 8 months pregnant is…not very fun. Plus, you will want probably your children to wake up in their own beds on Christmas morning, hunt for Easter Eggs in their own living room, etc.

Making new holiday traditions is one of those tricky “things” you have/get to do when you start your own family and that can be. It can be difficult, because maybe you’ve always known Christmas Eve to be at Aunt Susan’s house, or your husband’s parents are used to having the whole family present at Thanksgiving Dinner and can’t imagine their son not being present for the first time. Maybe your family likes to open gifts on Christmas Eve, but your in-laws open on Christmas morning. It’s an adjustment period for all involved. Ultimately, you are starting your own new family and you get to determine how to celebrate holidays.

All the best!
 
All the traveling may seem fine now, I just recommend leaving room for change as the years go by.

Personally we can’t stand bouncing around everywhere on the holidays, some people love it. We did it for a few years after kids, then no more. Like another poster said, unless we live close enough to do a same-day token visit we’re not going.

That’s just us and we enjoy creating our own traditions with our kids.
 
I actually think you’ve come up with a reasonable arrangement. expect things to change over the years though. We started out with a plan of alternating like yours and now we have “assigned” holidays to each family - i.e., his family gets Thanksgiving, mine get Christmas Day. Of course even that has changed this past year with illness and the kids getting older and moving away themselves. :eek: That sounds so old!! 😃

All you can say is that you are trying your best to be available to each family. Hopefully your parents (both sets) will understand if you appeal to their memories of being engaged/newlyweds. Even when you live in the same town, you can only attend one Thanksgiving dinner, one Christmas morning, one Easter Mass, etc.
 
BlueEyedLady said:
That sounds awful and lonely. I’m a 7 hour drive from my family, so when I get time off for holidays I want to see them. We’re a 5 hour drive from his family, and our families are about 6 from each other. Holidays wouldn’t be the same without seeing our families.

Besides, my kids will deserve to spend holidays with grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc. And we’d miss everyone too. Especially my nieces and nephews.

And we aren’t religious.
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Sorry. I missed the non-religious part too.

I know it sounds lonely not to be with family on holidays. But once you marry you WILL be with family. --your new family. And as a previous poster said, this is not a matter of “fairness” to your extended family so much as it is a matter of honoring the bond between you and your husband-to-be. This bond will supersede your relationship with your parents and siblings and his relationhip with his parents and siblings.

But there is one thing you need to establish very quickly. You can visit one family at a time at most. Your family is allowed to be sad that you aren’t with them for a particular holiday. But they are never allowed to play the “we don’t understand” card. Same thing for his family. Of course they understand. They just don’t like it and they would prefer that others were inconvenienced rather than themselves. You need protect your husband from manipulative acts by your parents (even if it is unpleasant for you) and he needs to protect you from manipulative acts by his family.

I wish you much happiness in your upcoming marriage.
 
If you can come up with a fail-proof holiday plan that makes everyone happy…please let me know ASAP! 😃

Holidays are the biggest issue I have with my Fiance. It’s a nightmare every single year because he’s an only child from divorced parents and I come from a small family that can’t grasp the idea that I have to split holidays. Not to mention both Fiance and I work jobs that are rotating schedules and can include holidays.

Usually someone gets their feelings hurt. My solution? We need to move into a house (which he is currently working on) and we need to learn how to cook a holiday dinner so we can have family over our house.

I do take credit convincing both my lapsed catholic parents and his pentecostal mother to come to Christmas Mass with me. That was a miracle in of itself! 👍
 
My DH is from a divorced family and my father passed away so my mothers family and my dads family are not connected. We had to figured out something like this for holidays. It gets crazy sometimes. One year its my moms family for thanksgiving and dads family for Christmas. Then the next year is his moms family for thanksgiving and his dads for Christmas. THEN its my dads for thanksgiving and moms for Christmas… you get the idea lol. I am glad you guys could come to an agreement though.
 
SMHW said:
Sorry. I missed the non-religious part too.

I know it sounds lonely not to be with family on holidays. But once you marry you WILL be with family. --your new family. And as a previous poster said, this is not a matter of “fairness” to your extended family so much as it is a matter of honoring the bond between you and your husband-to-be. This bond will supersede your relationship with your parents and siblings and his relationhip with his parents and siblings.

But there is one thing you need to establish very quickly. You can visit one family at a time at most. Your family is allowed to be sad that you aren’t with them for a particular holiday. But they are never allowed to play the “we don’t understand” card. Same thing for his family. Of course they understand. They just don’t like it and they would prefer that others were inconvenienced rather than themselves. You need protect your husband from manipulative acts by your parents (even if it is unpleasant for you) and he needs to protect you from manipulative acts by his family.

I wish you much happiness in your upcoming marriage.
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👍

With family up and down the Eastern Seaboard, my wife and I took our holiday schedules pretty firmly in hand after we got married. Generally speaking, we spend Easter with her parents as they are our closest (<2 hours away) Catholic relatives. Thanksgiving is kind of up for grabs…we traveled to my big extended family get-together in Virginia one year, but the others we’ve stayed home due to my work schedule. Where we absolutely do not budge, however, is Christmas. Christmas Day is at our house. We may travel the day before, we may travel the day after, but we are home for Christmas Day. We are fortunate that my sister and her husband live in the same city as we do, and so my mom usually will come down to visit all of us…a trip that (for now, at least) is easier for one person to make than for two people with a 6-month-old.

Interestingly, my mom told me recently that she originally bought her big 5-bedroom house she currently has because she had dreams of big family Christmases, but she’s since realized that we have our own distinct families and is happy to come down and visit us instead. She’s actually working on moving back down here so she can live near my family and my sister’s.
 
BlueEyedLady said:
I just wondered if some older and wiser married couples had advice on how to make this easier on everyone and what we can say to protect feelings.
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Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I hate to be cynical, but if they aren’t accommodating now, they never will be. When my wife & I were engaged, and then the first couple years we were married, we made a point of splitting every holiday as evenly as we could between the two families, going to one in the morning or early afternoon and the other in the evening. Her family was never satisfied with this “unfair” arrangement. My parents, having been through it themselves, were pleased with whatever we decided on, but knew that what we were doing wouldn’t last.

My FIL was so nuts about it that he would want to know down to the minute how long we spent at my parents’ house so that he’d be sure to get at least the same amount of time from us. I also have a large extended family, and seeing them at the time was important to us, so we’d have a Thanksgiving & Christmas get-together with them a few days after the actual holiday each year. My FIL felt that we should either count this as our time with my immediate family, or give them an additional amount of time equal to what we spent there.

We spent years struggling and fighting over this, and as we started to make changes to our holiday schedules, they’d go to great lengths to ruin whatever plans we had with my family. It went on like this until my FIL passed away. Now that it’s just my MIL (she has no local family and we haven’t been welcome at my FIL’s family’s gatherings in years), she’s invited to most of my family’s gatherings, although we still do separate Christmases. We still get the occasional complaint, but it’s nothing like it was years ago.
 
BlueEyedLady said:
My fiance and I have finally gotten to the point where we had to work out an arraignment for holidays. We are from different cities and both have close ties to our families. We’ve decided that no matter how inconvenient we will always have to split the Christmas season. A few days with one family and then a 6 hour drive for a few days with the other. Easter and Thanksgiving will be alternated each year. This year my family gets Easter and his got Thanksgiving. Next year we switch. We both really enjoy both families and are happy with the agreement. Our families are not. I think its just the usual growing pains of having a child become a member of another family and have other obligations, but we both feel a bit guilty.

This year his family doesn’t understand why we would want to spend Easter with my secular family when it means so much to them, and next year my mom will be hurt that her atheist daughter is giving up the chance to dye and hide eggs with my nieces and nephews to spend the day with people who celebrate it very religiously. Thanksgiving was the same thing. My family was hurt that I was traveling to see his family instead of them, and next year his will be sad that he’s having his first Thanksgiving without them.

I know that all of this is normal and that we’re trying to be fair to everyone. (And of course we’ll adjust if someone has a new baby or gets cancer or something.) I just wondered if some older and wiser married couples had advice on how to make this easier on everyone and what we can say to protect feelings.

We are both the only members of our families to live in a different area than they do, and we’re also the only ones in either family to marry someone not from the same areas as our families of origin, so everyone is pretty new to this.
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It is REALLY admirable that the two of you like your families so much. Good for you!!👍
We had two widowed Moms and siblings. Each family included the other’s mother so that neither would be alone on a holiday. Then when we had kids, I started doing the holidays because it just was too much traveling for the kids. However, If my kids had lots of cousins etc. I would have made adjustments and I believe it is very important for my kids to observe how their grandparents celebrate too. I think it is important for my children to look forward to going to their grandparents’ homes. They need to have traditions.
I say that with passion because my gkids have never been to our home at Christmas and that is unfortunate.
But as grandparents age there’s also a change in their expectations. I’d advise younger women to start taking on the holiday dinners when grandma hits 60+. It is exhausting. She may not realize it but it is time to give it up and let the younger women do it.
Our tradition with the BIG meal was switched when the kids were little to Christmas Eve. This gave us time to enjoy opening presents in the AM, Mass, and just relaxing with the kids and grandparents etc. The meal was leftovers from the previous night’s feast.
 
There’s also the hardest option: host it yourself and invite both sides to your home.
 
Richard320 said:
There’s also the hardest option: host it yourself and invite both sides to your home.
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That’s what I did! It’s the best! I love it! I do not have to travel, my kids can stay home, we get to see everyone, AND we get the leftovers! 👍

It’s also much easier on the in-laws. They just have to show up.
 
You should do whatever you and your future husband agree to. In our situation, once the babies arrived, we stayed home for holidays. If someone wanted to come visit us, they could. DH’s parents are divorced and for years we did not see them at holiday times. Now they are elderly and they both come on Christmas day, which is fine. My parents are deceased, but I am from a large family…we choose a day near the beginning of December that works for the most people and that is “my” family Christmas gathering.

The key is being flexible. Just because you “always” do something for a specific holiday doesn’t mean that it can’t change. If you are both happy traveling every holiday and taking turns with each other’s family…then keep it up.
 
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