So, I'm trying to find the right words to intro this post, and I feel compelled to tell you that when I had it in draft form, the only note I had on it was, "LISA!" Which sort of sums things up. Lisa was a wedding grad last winter, and she remains one of the only snowy or LDS weddings we have on the site (so other winter and/or LDS brides, get on it!) Lisa's blogs at Random Giggles, and is always saying really smart feisty things in the comments with her sunflower gravitar. She's been around APW for a long time, and I adore her. I think I mostly adore the fact that we have really different perspectives, and still grapple with similar things in really similar ways. So, when Lisa offered to write something about negotiating the holidays as newlyweds, I was all over it. I think you'll find her wise. And today, the last day before the holiday season is upon us, I could not think of a better thing to talk about than creating and owning new baby family traditions (even when that means standing up to your family of origin a bit).
Traditions, whatever they are, be they how we fix a meal to how we decorate our lives to how we celebrate special events, are what tie us to our homes, our families, our pasts. They connect generations across time and space. They help define who we are and where we came from. However, over time, over years or generations, they will do one of two things: they will change or they will die.
In the wedding planning world we talk about taking traditions and making them your own. The dress, flowers, ceremony, decorations, activities (such as bouquet/garter toss or games of softball and frisbee) are all things that in some way have a tie to a tradition, but are modified and made personal and meaningful by each couple getting married (or not used if they have no meaning to the couple). And this is not a bad thing at all. Recognizing the meaning of the traditions helps keep us sane and helps us recognize that it's two people getting married, not two stereotypes.
This same principle applies to the baby family as well.
Each of us has our own traditions that we grew up with. We all have them. Holidays are generally full of them. They are the things you do year after year that come to define the event, yet I have seen how these constants in our life aren’t always as constant as we believe them to be. They change or die.
We have holiday traditions in my family that in some form date back to when my grandparents were children while some started with my parents and so only go back one generation from me. Some have been modified more than others. Some haven’t changed that much. We now make Grandma’s traditional frozen salad with miniature marshmallows rather than cutting up big ones with scissors. We no longer include bananas in it since my mom is allergic to them. As my family has lived in different places over the years, going to see the lights at Christmas time has definitely changed as we’ve had to fit the community we lived in. My Grandpa always got a wind-up toy on his plate at Christmas dinner when he was a child. His were intricate and made of metal. Ours are simple and generally made of plastic.
And now we’re creating a baby family. This is an opportunity to evaluate our traditions and find the ones that really mean something to us and really tie us to others. What’s more, there are two whole sets of traditions to merge together.
It's been a tradition in my family since 1982 to open a music box on Christmas Eve. When I moved out I started my own collection and threw a holiday party for my friends (which became a tradition for some of them) each year and would ask a special friend from the year to open it for me. Now that I'm married it's moved back to Christmas Eve and we opened our first music box as a family last year.
We also made our own stockings last year. My husband is studying ancient Hebrew and Greek so he can read the Bible in its original languages. So when he got to pick what he put on his stocking he chose the aleph and tav. It really fits him perfectly. I decided to do silver snowflakes instead. My goal this year is to get our names on them.
Getting married at the beginning of November allowed us to jump right into the holiday season and its traditions as we started our family. Here are a few things we did that helped us.
1. Actually talk about traditions. Ask about them. What did your spouse’s family do for the holidays? How did they celebrate birthdays? Are there any foods they associate with anything? Decorations? Activities? It is a really fun way to get to know your spouse and their family even better.
2. Find the meaning in the traditions. What traditions do you particularly enjoy? What traditions mean something to you? Why do you enjoy them? What do they mean?
3. Find ways to merge the two sets of traditions. You might not keep all of both sets, but if you know what ones have meaning to you, you’ll end up finding ways to keep those, even if they do have to change some to fit your new situation. More traditions just means more ties to people and places. The traditions might even complement each other rather than conflict with each other so it won’t end up an either/or situation.
4. One of the things we did that helped the most, we spent our first holiday season alone with just our new family. That forced us to create our own ways to celebrate. Living in different states made that easy for us. If you live close to family, maybe set aside part of the day just for your new family while still spending time with your larger family. We did use web cams to spend time with our families, so we could watch his family play pinochle and my nephew open his presents.
5. Start your own traditions. What has meaning in your relationship that you want to celebrate? How are you going to enhance your life together? These can be big or small. It can be the way you say good-bye to each other in the morning or celebrating the day you met or declaring Monday to be taco day.
Slowly we are moving away from my traditions and his traditions and towards our traditions. We’re tying ourselves to both of our families, while still creating our own.
I have three older sisters (who are all married) and a younger brother (who is far away from wedding bells), so it’s been our tradition for a long time now to celebrate holidays the Saturday afterward, so the girls can all go to their husbands’ families instead. It’s vaguely paternalistic, I guess, but it mostly works for us.
My family is just my mom and my sisters and brother, whereas my boyfriend’s family has many more. (He’s got AUNTS! and UNCLES! and COUSINS! Like a real, regular family!! Not to mention his awesome grandmother.)
So I like to get to go over to his grandma’s house for Thanksgiving, and his parents for Christmas, but I still get pretty bummed out about not having Christmas at the house I grew up in. My mom doesn’t live there anymore, so not only do I not get to spend Christmas with her, I also miss out on our stockings hanging up on the fireplace, and sitting around the living room at the end of the day eating leftover ham sandwiches looking at the Christmas decorations.
I’ve already decided that once Sean and I tie the knot and buy a house, I’ll host the holidays at least for one year, and invite everybody (aunts and uncles and cousins and siblings and all).
November 24, 2010 12:31 pm
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My husband’s family is the opposite, all his brothers spend Christmas Day with their wives’ families and his family gets together sometime during the following week. That worked out *nicely* for me. I don’t know if it’s paternalistic or unfeminist, I think it has more to do with logistics. All my hubby’s bros live near their wives family and far away from each other. It just works out to do it the way they do it.
November 25, 2010 9:50 am
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“Slowly we are moving away from my traditions and his traditions and towards our traditions. We’re tying ourselves to both of our families, while still creating our own.”
LOVE this wisdom! My fiance & I started one tradition of our own a few years ago- we make & place a wish in our Wish ornament each holiday season. Last year, my wish was our engagement & it came true :-)
Other than that, we’re a mess during the holidays. Most of his family leaves about one hour away. Most of my family lives on a different coast. He spends all holidays with his family, as do I except when I fly to California for Christmas. This year, I set my foot down & planned spending some of Thanksgiving with my sister & her in-laws who are like family to me & the rest with his family. His Mom got mad that we won’t be there at noon when she serves the feast. Really, ONE holiday in our four years together that my fiance is missing a few hours & she’s upset?!
I look forward to the day when we expand upon our traditions & spend the holidays together, just us. I hope this happens someday soon.
Happy Thanksgiving~
November 24, 2010 12:57 pm
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I have been living with my boyfriend and his mum for the last couple of years and my Christmas traditions went completely out the window so I can’t wait till we get our own place so we can mix and mingle them.
November 24, 2010 1:08 pm
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Given weird first year residency rules for my grad program and the fact that Jason and I have two weddings on the East Coast to attend next summer, our parents pretty much gave us a free pass to spend the holidays this year as our own baby family unit. As sad as I am that we’re not getting to see our families for Christmas, I’m also excited and grateful that we get a chance to create some of our own traditions and memories this year. It also takes some of the “my family or yours?” pressure off, I think… this way we get to plan for spending extended time with both our families next summer without the angst of having to decide who gets Christmas Day, etc. (I’m also aware that this probably only works because we a) our parents are immigrants so most of our extended family is still overseas, and b) we each only have one sibling.)
In short, there are a lot of options and while each one involves giving up something, I’m trying to take the glass-half-full perspective and see the gains rather than the losses.
November 24, 2010 1:31 pm
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Something that’s struck me while reading and commenting on this post is that I can’t think of a good term to use when talking about ‘my family’ and ‘his family’ (as in my parents, siblings, aunts etc). Calling them ‘My Family’ feels like it undermines the new family that G and I have created by suggesting that we both have proper families elsewhere, and my ‘old family’ sounds awful, like I’m not part of it anymore or like G isn’t part of it. Maybe the My-lastnames and the His-lastnames? Or Clan-His and Clan-Hers?
Has anyone else found a good way to distinguish between their ‘old’ family and their ‘baby’ family without slighting either of them?
November 24, 2010 2:23 pm
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Family of origin, maybe? Unwieldy, perhaps, but not mean.
November 24, 2010 2:59 pm
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I’ve found that same weirdness. I try doing a mine/his/ours. But the whole “mine” thing is still just a big weird.
November 24, 2010 8:12 pm
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I’m with you. It’s tricky, not just because “my” is now my baby family, but because “his” family is my family now too. “His” seven nieces and nephews are mine now too. I don’t like to think of them as his. I like The His-last and The My-Last, but it’s a hard transition. It also feels like a separation since I didn’t change my name.
Sigh.
November 25, 2010 9:54 am
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About as unwieldy as ‘family of origin’ I guess, and not strictly true for everyone, but ‘my birth family’ and ‘his birth family’ [natal?]
Beyond the last-names thing, my FH’s parents divorced when he was young, so we’ve got the his-dad’s-lastnames to visit and sometimes the his-mom’s-lastnames to visit.
Ahh, complexity. ;p
February 4, 2011 2:11 pm
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We have no long-term plans whatsoever when it comes to “holiday sharing.” Honestly, we don’t expect our situation to be stable enough to establish some kind of firm rotation. At the moment, we are broke and living an hour from my parents. My partner’s family is a four hour flight from here. Next year, who knows where we’ll be??? This year, his mom asked if she could stay with us over Christmas, so she is going to be staying in our tiny apartment for two weeks and doing all the holiday stuff with us. My parents and one sibling will drive down for Christmas Day, so it will actually be a bit of a blended (though incomplete) family gathering. I was very tempted to declare this an “us only” Christmas, just to avoid the messiness of combining his and my (somewhat different) families, but alas, my partner was not into the idea. He thought it would be lonely to not have a group celebration on Christmas Day. Of course, I also have to consider that because of where we live, he doesn’t see his family very often at all, and so we should be mindful of taking the opportunities that are available to us. On the other hand, I am a little overwhelmed by the way things worked out, as I feel like we will not get the time that we need to spend alone during a very busy/stressful/emotional/important time. I am trying to figure out the best and least alienating way to set some boundaries with his mom so that I am not a wreck by the end of December!
November 24, 2010 4:04 pm
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My family had no real Thanksgiving tradition besides eating some special dinner. One year we had nobody to celebrate with; the next year three of our family friends asked us over, remembering the previous year. Once, my parents and my brother’s fiance’s parents all came down to Brooklyn and we ate at a restaurant all together (the first “hosting” any of us kids did). Last year my parents, grandfather and I went to a local seafood restaurant (and to this day I wish I’d order their awesome lobster instead of the mediocre turkey with weak gravy). So this year, it’s not such a huge loss that I’m on the other coast as the rest of my family, with my fiance, hosting his parents and grandma. I’m kind of excited even–first time actually cooking a Thanksgiving dinner, I feel like such an adult!
But Christmas? OMG. This year, THANK GOODNESS, his parents are visiting his aunt and uncle in a town about 30 minutes from my parents’ town. So we can do the always-exciting drive-all-over-the-place-and-see-everyone thing. But we’ll do Christmas Morning with his side, and I’m already sad about that. Christmas is a HUGE deal in my family; we have 4+ events we do. I’ve compromised away pajamas-and-stockings xmas day morning so that we can have xmas dinner with all my cousins (they’re all demanding to meet my fiance too; plus I know it’s the last year that event will be happening where it’s happened my whole life, and possibly my dad’s whole life). So, this will be hard. In a way it will almost be easier once we at least do Christmas morning on our own (though that may not start until we have kids of our own too, and even then who knows), because at least there’ll be something we won’t have to negotiate, and can start building into our own tradition.
November 24, 2010 4:25 pm
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Oh boy! This is a topic close to home. My family (mother in particular) are Christmas crazy. They usually have the tree up by Halloween and they spend a fortune on gifts. Throw future hubs family into the mix, including a mother born on Christmas Eve and his and his twin sister’s birthdays on the 28th…and did I mention my daughter’s birthday is the 22nd? Oh, and my best friend’s birthday is the 18th.
See what I mean???
We’re considering starting our own little tradition next year, since it will be our first Christmas together as an official family. We’re going on a trip. Just the two of us. I’m sure both our families will be furious, but we plan to enjoy ourselves.
November 24, 2010 8:15 pm
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My husbands birthday is the 28th. Figuring out Christmas is hard enough, but then to do a birthday right after is just real hard.
November 25, 2010 11:45 am
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Reading all the different experiences of negotiating with families (good and bad) really makes me determined to be a reasonable parent if I ever am in the position of having a child getting married and having to figure the holiday challenge out for themselves.
So much of people’s experience seems to depend on whether their parents and in-laws are supportive of their choices (it may still be hard/sad of course, even with their support).
November 25, 2010 1:44 am
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I’m an only child of only children (thus no siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, nephews) whereas my fiancé is one of four, including two married sisters with three kids each. Plus he still has all his grandparents (I have none) and various aunts and uncles and a bunch of married cousins also with multiple kids. They all live in in the same city as us (I moved to be with him) whilst my parents are 2.5 hours away. So we do ‘weekend-before-Christmas’ lunch with his immediate family, maternal grandparents plus my parents visiting; then Christmas Eve with his parents and various friends; then we drive down to Sydney on Christmas morning to have Christmas lunch and Boxing Day with my parents plus a few family friends who have no family themselves. It works well – his immediate family spend Christmas day with the extended family, so we’re not missed as we’re only two out of about 30 people!! My parents and I love the ‘weekend-before-Christmas- lunch with his immediate family – it’s a crowd, but not as insane as the whole extended family get-together. And in turn, my fiancé loves having the excuse to escape the giant, noisy extended family Christmas day celebrations, as we obviously can’t leave my poor old Ps on their own!
November 25, 2010 2:06 am
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I am so not looking forward to this stuff.
I *love* Christmas – everything about it. I bake, I decorate, I wrap all the presents, I watch movies, I listen to Christmas music, I like to go and look at lights, there are specific stories I read to my daughter, and to satisfy my mother, I’ve always gone to church on Christmas Eve. I have a ton of traditions that really matter to me. The boy, on the other hand, couldn’t care less about Christmas – after he hit his teens, his mother stopped doing much in the way of Christmas other than family obligations, so he has no interest in the fun parts of celebrating.
Last Christmas was easy because my parents had booked me a plane ticket home months in advance and the boy hadn’t met any of my family yet. We’re hoping this Christmas will be our last apart from each other, but at the same time I don’t know how the future ones will look. As a child, Christmas was all about my immediate family – both sets of grandparents and all aunts/uncles/cousins live provinces away so we had no one else to celebrate with. My boy, on the the other hand, has divorced parents who live in the same city (where we currently live), with grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins on both sides of his family who he normally has some obligation to see on/around Christmas. It bugs me a bit that in the future, we’ll probably end up spending more of our holidays with both of his families and very little with mine, despite the fact that Christmas matters a lot to me and to my family. We had a huge talk about this last night, and he just doesn’t understand why this is so frustrating to me. He also doesn’t get why I love Christmas so much in the first place, though. He has been talked into celebrating Christmas just the two of us before I fly home to visit my parents, but I’ve realised that beyond the present exchange (which is really not a big part of things for me), he can’t be very bothered to try and enjoy it with me.
November 27, 2010 5:11 pm
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We live about an equally ridiculous distance from our parents (mine are divorced so that makes 3 sets, all at least 24 hours drive away and in one case over water!). Each of the sets happen to live in a particularly boring towns and so are happy to meet in a random holiday spot every couple of years or so – or a few of them are, allowing for combined family holidays (yay!) but where no one has to play host (double yay!). Hiring a house between us is also pretty economical and a nice mini-break for those who have to go back to work and a great start to holidays for those that are taking them.
November 27, 2010 8:03 pm
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That sounds like a real good system you have going there.
November 29, 2010 3:02 pm
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Thank you for writing this. I think the kids with divorced parents have this especially hard. Even more if you marry someone who also has divorced parents. Then you’ve got like four families to work out…. it can be exhausting! But this post gives me some encouragement to not forget about the baby family while still being a part of the families of origin. Thanks giggles.
November 28, 2010 2:53 pm
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You’re welcome!
November 29, 2010 3:03 pm
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2 years ago, when Christmas landed on a Thursday, my boss let me have Friday off and I got up super early on Christmas morning and drove the 4+ hours to his family’s house so I could have Christmas dinner with them. My mother was peeved (even though she got me for Christmas eve and Christmas morning), but she got over it (or, rather, I didn’t back down and she accepted it). Last year, I couldn’t take any extra time at Christmas, so we opted to do the holiday totally separate and saw each other at New Years (which was when he proposed). I was miserable throughout the whole holiday. I didn’t go into it thinking I would be, but even before we got engaged I felt, at that point, as if I was leaving behind my family during an important holiday.
This year it’s been quite the discussion. Different factions in my family are having a “cold war,” so to speak, which in some ways makes it harder because my mother (a single parent) will want me there that much more as a result (she won’t come with me to his family). Rotating Thanksgiving and Christmas is tricky, as his family spends Thanksgiving in Disney World every year (this is the first year in 4 years I haven’t gone with them; I couldn’t take the extra time off this year). My family really doesn’t do Easter, and traffic in NY/LI on Easter is a nightmare so we often skip the celebration with his family, anyway.
So, the holiday of note is Christmas.
We’ve decided that we’re spending it together, it’s just a matter of where and how.
November 29, 2010 5:03 am
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That is a really nice idea. I haven’t been in a relationship this serious probably since I have started dating, so thinking of traditions as a “baby family” was something I never gave much thought to. Now that I’m with someone that I can see myself with for a long time, I think I would like to figure out a little tradition for us. We probably won’t be together this holiday season – she is a teacher and has the luxury of having two weeks off – but maybe, she and I will do something together on our own a few days before she leaves. :) Good post!
November 29, 2010 7:10 am
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Thanksgiving is easy because we live a few miles from my in-laws and my mom (who get along really well, my mom is always invited to their gatherings), and my dad prefers to spend the holiday hunting in the woods so I have no obligation to get to Maine. My sisters have their own places they can be for the holiday so we’re all fine being apart.
Christmas is a little more fraught. my in-laws have pretty firm traditions for christmas eve and christmas day, and they’re happy to include my mom so no problem there. But even though my dad is not crazy about the holiday, I think he would still like to have his kids around. I can’t see ever dragging Zach up to Maine for the actual day, since my dad refuses to get a tree or do anything actually christmasy. Maybe we will start a solstice tradition with my dad, he would like that. I think I just solved my problem haha.
November 29, 2010 9:32 am
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When I read this post I realized that for a long time I’ve been conflating Lisa (snowy LDS wedding) and Liz (moderator.) I’m very excited that there are two such kickass women!
November 29, 2010 5:54 pm
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What a big job it must have been to create this nice website. Very good! And thanks for the contests!Traditions, whatever they are, be they how we fix a meal to how we decorate our lives to how we celebrate special events, are what tie us to our homes, our families, our pasts. They connect generations across time and space. Thank you for sharing.
November 30, 2010 4:01 am
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I had my son when I was 19 and we’ve had many different kinds of Christmasses, almost all of which have been piggy-backing on someone else’s celebration. Consequently we have no particular traditions, I haven’t had a Christmas with both of my parents since 1989 and the last one I spent with my mum was 1991. This is a very lonely state of affairs.
Now that I’m getting married next year and spending Christmas with my intended, my son (now aged 14) and my daughter (aged 4 – from a subsequent relationship), it is finally about figuring out Christmas, our traditions and meanings.
For the first time in years I’m really looking forward to Christmas. :-D
December 1, 2010 4:03 pm
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I just wanted to say “Yea!!” and we only have “Exactly” buttons.
December 2, 2010 9:01 pm
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I wholeheartedly agree with points 1,2, and 5 speaking from personal experience… First of all determining exactly what traditions we held onto and why was the first step in eliminating the “baggage” of rote traditions that were more of a chore than a celebration of our roles in the family. Then actually coming up with our own unique family traditions was actually very liberating… well… once we got past all the push-back and resistance from family members who didn’t understand why we were doing what we were doing.
December 3, 2010 4:39 pm
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I like that you called some traditions baggage. Because some of them really can be, especially if they have no personal meaning. When we were little my mom thought that she needed to make gingerbread houses with us and every time she tried it was a complete mess and she felt like she wasn’t creating good Christmas memories for us. Then she realized that there’s nothing that says we needed to make gingerbread houses, especially since they were a chore rather than a happy memory. So she stopped trying. And we never missed them.
December 4, 2010 8:41 am
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Great post. FH & I have been together for many years, & spending holidays with both sides of family, usually involving a lot of driving to see my side and his two sides.
This past year, we hosted Christmas Eve dinner at our house, our first ever hosting, and it was so awesome to not have to travel! My mom & single siblings came, his dad and a friend of ours who is getting divorced and needed a place to be. I hope to do this again in the future! Usually xmas eve has been hosted by an aunt of his, she was too unwell for it this year. I hope she is better this coming year, of course, but starting new traditions for our baby family now that we’re ‘finally becoming official’ is great.
February 4, 2011 2:20 pm
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[...] The idea of leaving and cleaving has been instilled in me since I was a tot in Sunday School. One of the things we did that helped the most was that we spent our first holiday season alone with just our new family. We spent last Thanksgiving and will spend this Thanksgiving alone as a baby family. I know this has religious connotations that some won’t agree with, but the essence of “leaving and cleaving” is wrapped up in starting your own baby family. You can’t go on whining and complaining that you won’t be spending time with your family. You and your spouse ARE family. You are with family! I know it’s hard. I miss my family and all of their traditions. Yet, I have a family (my husband) and I have to put effort, time, and energy into building family (complete with traditions) with him. I think it’s an important paradigm shift to see this action as building a hopeful future, rather than an abandonment of previous identity with your family. You will have to mourn (I think that’s a normal and healthy part of the leaving process), but then you must go on. Get on with nurturing your baby family. CLEAVE. (Read more about this here.) [...]
March 4, 2011 1:45 pm
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[...] A Practical Wedding – Reclaiming Wife: Traditions and the Baby Family [...]
March 23, 2011 9:24 pm
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[...] A Practical Wedding – Reclaiming Wife: Traditions and the Baby Family [...]
December 7, 2011 9:01 am
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