Friday, 14 November 2008
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Holiday Celebrations: Your Family or Mine?
Mr. Giraffe
With the holiday season coming up (Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Christmas, Boxing Day), many couples have the unfortunate, daunting task of deciding which holiday to spend with which family. This drama is unfolding in my family with the recent engagement of my sister to her long distance boyfriend, Mr. Michigan.
Having had our own intimate celebrations with our close and immediate family, we wondered when the best time would be to celebrate with our extended family. The obvious choice was the Saturday after Christmas, because we know everyone is free around that time. The problem is that his family lives in Michigan and we want to celebrate with them but we can't impose on their plans and ask them to fly all the way out to Maryland.
How do couples decide where to spend their holidays? Thanksgiving can be spent with one family one year and the other the next. But the other major winter holidays are actually religious and important times to spend with one's family. Do you have a solution to this problem or a funny story regarding going to your boyfriend or girlfriend's house for the holidays?
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Comments (29)
Ah! This is one thing I am not looking forward to about getting serious with someone else, because my family lives in MN and my SO's family is really unlikely to live there if I meet him here in NY. I need to meet someone else from MN, haha. I've actually given this some serious thought because I can't imagine not being with my family on the holidays. I love celebrating the holidays with my family and it's the only time I get to see them all so it's going to be a problem when I'm serious enough about someone to talk about spending the holidays together.
My aunt and uncle rotate. One year they spend Thanksgiving with us and Christmas with his family. The next they spend Thanksgiving with his family and Christmas with us. Although I guess with my tendency to date Jewish guys, I wouldn't have to worry about Christmas... we could do Christmas with my family and Hannukah with his
Thanksgiving is going to be a problem though because I like to celebrate that with my family because my birthday is right around then, but I tend to date guys whose birthdays are right around then too...
Ok this comment is way too long...
Planning to go on a trip... just the 2 of us!
That would easily solve the problem
I have to work this semester break.So,there is no time for such things.
mine.. now i just need to find someone who does not celebrate diwali or chinese new year only!!!
Neither of our families practice any of that stuff.
We'll just be spending it together. <3
I've grown up thinking of Christmas as a family celebration - which it really is, if you think about it. So it'd just feel wrong if I spent it with anyone else, even if I'd rather not be at home. -__-;;
This is a tough thing to deal with during the holidays. Sometimes it makes my mom and dad disagree over where we should go. I don't know what I'm going to do when I get married.
My family doesn't really celebrate the holidays too much, so the decision to go celebrate the holidays with someone else is pretty much made for me. They don't mind; they rather go sing Chinese opera and play mahjong haha
The two halves of my family don't really get along all that well, so normally Thanksgiving is spent with my dad's side for my mom, dad, and myself while my mom's side celebrates with my maternal grandmother. This poses a problem with my boyfriend, however, seeing as my aunt who normally holds Thanksgiving and my boyfriend don't get along (she dislikes him for no reason), so he's not invited to her house. Thanksgiving might be held at my house this year, which would make it easier to visit my boyfriend (since he lives 5 minutes from me but close to 30 minutes from my aunt), however he has said that he has no intentions of ditching his family for Thanksgiving and thinks I should just spend it at his house (therefore ditching my own family).
Christmas is a little easier since it's two nights (one for each side of my family). Christmas Eve belongs to my dad's family and Christmas Day to my mom's family. Since my boyfriend and my mom's side of the family get along well, he's always invited over to my house for Christmas Day, which makes Christmas Eve the situation. He wants me to spend it with his family; my parents want me to spend it with my dad's side of the family.
Sigh. I still haven't come up with a solution for this.
Our solution kind of came about naturally, because before I moved halfway across the country to live with my sweetie, I lived only two and a half hours away from my family, and saw them for every major holiday. I also saw them every time I got two or more days in a row off from work. Moving so far away was a HUGE change for me in terms of the amount of time I got to spend with my loved ones, and he recognized that.
Anyway, because I live so far away now, and because airfare is not cheap, we spend all the holidays with his family or just the two of us EXCEPT Christmas. I take my vacation time from work over Christmas week, and since that's really my only time of the year to see everyone, he doesn't complain (except when, in the middle of a layover, he gets a case of the "travel bitchies", LOL).
Not sure what we'd do if things hadn't worked out this way. We'd probably rotate holidays or something, or always spend ABC holidays with his family, and XYZ holidays with mine.
A yearly alternation has always been set up with my older sibling, and I've no doubt it will be the same for me when it comes down to it. Luckily, my SO's family and my own live down the street from one another, so spending holidays with both families is quite easy!
I come from a large family, so missing one couple isn't really a huge problem. Dinners get kind of absurd, with reservations for 13, and I've no doubt that number will be 14 or 15 by next Christmas. Oh the joys.
My SO's and my parents used to live in the same town so we'd spend part of the day at his family's house and part of the day at my family's house for both Thanksgiving and Christmas. However, his family moved away to Arizona in the spring of 2007, so last Christmas we spent Thanksgiving at my house (because it was way closer to the college we were then attending) and Christmas with our separate families. It was a miserable Christmas, particularly for me, and we agreed not to spend Christmas apart anymore but to instead rotate between our families. Our plans changed, though, when we both moved to Florida and are days (by car) or hours (by plane) away from both of our families (his parents are in Arizona as I mentioned and my family is in Missouri). So now we're both planning on spending Christmas with our separate families again because I'm only able to visit with my family for one week of the year, and that happens to fall during Christmas. It's a bummer, but I love my family. Perhaps when we're married and I have a permanant job (I'm currently still in college and working a part-time job) we'll work out a different plan, but for now it's just going to have to be this way.
since both of our families live really close - 15 min drive - we can easily spend half of the day here and the other half there. since he isn't in touch with much of his extended family, we spend the other days with mine.
once we have kids, we'll have our own little celebration though. no driving around on christmas day. we can do it the following days.
My family is out of state, so I usually spent Thanksgiving with my so-and-so's family. And then there would be split time with both families for Christmas (assuming that there were travel plans for out of state that year).
This year, as I am in a new relationship, I do not have to make any considerations of his family or my family. I'm spending Thanksgiving with my best friend and Christmas out of state with my family. And in the new year, should there be a Chinese New Year celebration, I would most likely spend it with his family, due to proximity (but that would also depend on his agreeance to meeting his family). lol
she only has immediate family members here in the states, so i usually spend holidays with her. most of my extended family members are here, so they can celebrate the holidays by themselves and won't feel lonely. if i take her away from her family, that would make the rest of them feel more lonely i think.....
luckily, my ex-bf and i families lived in the same city, so all we did was drive around and visited everybody haha....it was hard, but we did it
@godofthelost@xanga - Yah... I'm pretty fortunate you live up the street! Dinner at one house, dessert at another?? haha I think the chances that our families all stay in state is pretty good, too, so that makes any future traveling greatly minimized!
In the past, my SOs haven't been on good terms with their families and so it usually falls on me to provide holiday festivities. In other cases, the religious aspect of Christmas (and Easter, sometimes) is important to my family, but not so important to my SO's. In cases like that, I just invite them along since they have nothing else!
My fiancee splits the days between one side of the family and the other (her parents are divorced). Her extended Mum's side usually sets aside one day for a big christmas party, which we usually attend (2 out of the last 3 I've been there)
I'm English-Australian, and my family is still in Australia so this year I'm going back to be with them over Christmas and my birthday (Dec 30).
Next year we're hoping the whole family (including future in-laws) will be around after our graduation to spend it together.
After that, I'm not sure. Depending on what we're earning we may try and alternate years...
This is a really tough one for us, because my dad and my sister always have their birthdays right before/after Thanksgiving. Then my husband's (recently married 1 month ago) family is all 20-30minutes away. So it would not be fair to miss my family's birthdays when we always attend his.
Thus for the third T-day in a row, we are having 2 turkey meals (lunch and dinner), since my parents are only 90 minutes away. Now that we are married, we are looking into a schedule where maybe every other year (or two) we do one big turkey meal at our place (inviting both families), but I need both our mom's to help. I'm not much of a cook (yet).
In the meantime, my mom will jazz up the turkey dinner again, so it is not exactly the same as our lunch. (TG, both our parents are still together.)
My husband's brother already has a plan for a decade -Thursday turkey with his side, and Friday turkey with hers. Now that my family and I are in the picture, we are hoping to work something out with them too. Similarly, maybe everyone can come to my parents house every 2-3 yrs too. They are only 90 min away.
My SO planned everything out by like, our first Christmas together, how he thinks we should spend any future holidays. My mother's religious/cultural/family tradition is for presents and spending time together with whoever is in town on Christmas Eve and having a big celebration then, and church. Christmas Day is the big dinner w/ extended family and stockings and whatever gifts anyone who wasn't around on Christmas Eve brought.
His family isn't very religious at all. Occasionally they go to a nondenominational church for organ concerts or things on Christmas Eve, open gifts on Christmas day, and have certain foods and stories for the evening.
So he thinks, if we spend the holidays together, for him to come over for Christmas Eve, and me to go to his place for Christmas. Of course, we only live like, 45-60 min away by car and 1 1/2 to 2 hours by train.
Thanksgiving... Who knows! My family likes to go out of town to visit other relatives because we have a huge family. His is tiny, but he goes to his grandma's sometimes. But right now, Thanksgiving isn't much of a big deal. We haven't ever worried about other holidays yet, but he celebrates Easter with me, if I ask.
Go to both.
Go to the funner one later. Haha. Or flip a coin.
my fiance and I have decided that we will go to my house for thanksgiving this year, and his house for Christmas. and next year, we'll switch and go to his house for thanksgiving, and my house for Christmas
Well, for us it's never been a problem til this year. My mom doesn't celebrate, so that made it easy. We'd just spend holidays with his family. But, this year my dad and grandma asked us to go to Oklahoma to see them for Christmas. I told my hubby that since we haven't spent Christmas with my family at all, it was only fair that we do this year, and we'd just spend Thanksgiving with his family. Then, my brother asked us to go see him for Thanksgiving, but I told him we couldn't. However, now it turns out that we won't be able to go to Oklahoma for Christmas, and it's too late for hubby to get time off to go to Colorado for Thanksgiving. So... I'm going to go see my brother at Thanksgiving, and then we'll do Christmas with his family.
I think it's perfectly fair to alternate both Christmas and Thanksgiving.
i'm glad that i don't need to bother thinking about it this year since i'm recently single... lol
we are blessed in that my father's side of the family, and his father's side of the family all live in the same town.. and his mother lives only 3 hours away, so we usually start with her, and work our way up to see everyone.. unfortunately, my mum relocated across country, so we just have to make due with phone calls.. although with my promotion, i can't take time off for the Holidays themselves, so we'll have to get together sometime after the new year..