This Thanksgiving, in the middle of our epic surprise roadtrip, I realized that partway into our third holiday season as a married couple, we had started to figure out the holidays. I don't mean figure out like it's easy now (it's probably never going to be easy for us, on a million levels), or even figure out like we now have a fixed set of traditions (that also might never happen). But we started to figure out the holidays this year in that they finally feel like they are ours.
Around this time of year, we tend to talk on APW a bit about the process of splitting holidays because it can be one of the first real trials you go through as a new family. For some of us, getting married means going through an emotionally transformative moment on our wedding day. For others of us, nothing much changes, at least at first. And then you hit your first set of holidays. Since a wedding is, on it's most fundamental level, about forming a new family in the eyes of your community, the holidays tend to hit like a ton of bricks. The fact that long standing holiday traditions have to shift to accommodate a new family can be painful and confusing. The fact that everything can't stay exactly the same can flat out suck. How can we honor the traditions and family we grew up with, while supporting and caring for our new family? How do we develop new traditions as we form and shape our baby family? Why is it all so hard?
But (surprise reversal!) this particular post isn't about splitting holidays, it's about owning holidays. As a Jewish household with an interfaith family, we don't have holidays to split, really. Christian holidays are generally with my family, Jewish holidays are either with David's family or on our own. And over the course of three years, we've decided that non-religious holidays are up to us. Nothing about this setup is particularly easy, but within the last year, we've started to make a home in it.
First, let's be frank. There are endless downsides to being interfaith and not having holidays to split. Christmas was always my favorite time of the year (and a religious time of the year at that), and for obvious reasons, when I decided to convert my relationship with Christmas shifted. When I hear people talking about splitting Christmas, I tend to want to curl up into a little ball, pound my head with tiny balled up hands and whimper, "Two whole families that want to have Christmas with you, lucky, lucky, lucky." Which is of course, totally unfair, but really, who is in a fair and balanced mood around the holidays? Certainly not me.
However, it turns out that there are surprising upsides to not splitting the holidays. In short, when you're not splitting them, in theory all the holidays are yours. Because we never have had to ask, "Whose family is getting Christmas this year," we got a jumpstart on the idea that our family is always getting Christmas, and it's up to us what we do with it. And that jumpstart has lead us to some important lessons.
Not Asking Permission
What I realized in the middle of the Arizona desert this Thanksgiving is that, particularly with Thanksgiving, a totally non-religious holiday, we'd stopped even pretending to ask our families permission or approval of our plans. Or in other words, God bless being an adult. This year, we decided that we wanted to visit my Grandmother. So we did. We told our families, asked them how they felt about us not being with them for the holiday, listened, and then went to visit my Grandmother. It was the right thing to do, it was fun, and I think we're both very glad we did (and that's not even counting the bonus Las Vegas trip that got squeezed in there). Realizing that as fully grown adults, with a family of our own, we don't have to ask permission from our parents anymore is ground breaking stuff. I'm not saying it's easy (on any level), but when you start to get it sorted out it's powerful. You can listen to your family, hear and validate their feelings, but still do what you need to do. Hard, but worth it (particularly when it ends with craps in Vegas the day after Thanksgiving).
Changing Traditions
One of the upsides (that comes with the downsides) of being an interfaith family, is that it allows you to not be shy when asking for changes in long standing traditions that don't work for you. For David and me, Christmas is fine as long as it's mostly a religious holiday (being part of an interfaith family is like one big cultural exchange). Secular Christmas, however, blurs the lines in a way that doesn't work well for us. Going to Christmas Eve services? Fine! Santa coming down the chimney? Uh-oh. So because of this, we asked my family to cut the Santa stuff. My family is awesome, so they did this without any complaints. (In fact, apparently my father has always hated the "Santa nonsense" and was profoundly delighted that we asked.) Not all of shifting of traditions has been as easy, but the process of tweaking traditions to make them inclusive of our new family has been a good one. It doesn't feel like our new family is simply visiting my family's Christmas, but that we're participating in it, and helping to make it everyone's Christmas.
Introducing Traditions
If changing traditions is hard, introducing new traditions is fun. Think of this as the carrot to the stick of asking people to change. As we've worked to shape Christmas into something that works for everyone (my Jewish born and raised husband has a deep seated existential dread of Christmas that we had to work through), we've introduced new traditions. David and I started cooking a big Christmas breakfast, as a low key and festive way to lead into the holiday. Everyone loves it. On David's first Christmas, I bought a huge imported box of holiday crackers from England with the theory that if I could make Christmas seem more like Hogwarts I could trick him into enjoying it. Turns out, Christmas Crackers are the very best part of Christmas. They've turned into one of the whole family's favorite bits, so now David and I order them every year.
****
Figuring out how our family could have ownership of the holidays has been hard. There have been plenty of tears, lots of discussion, and constant negotiation. Every year, things shake out a little differently, because every year what works for us is a little different. But even though it's been hard, it's also been good (funny how life always works like that). Figuring out the holidays has allowed us to figure out what we want our new family to look like, and it has forced us to sort through our new family's relationships with our families of origin.
But the real reward is obviously Christmas Crackers. Because they go bang and produce a crown, a prize, and a joke. Perfect.
Photo: By me for A Practical Wedding
Something else I find interesting about the interfaith family is that Chanukah in general doesn’t get as much attention in Jewish families as Christmas does in your average American family. Chanukah is 8 days, sometimes in late November, you often go to friend’s houses or the synagogue for dinner or some type of party some nights, but it’s casual. Christmas is one evening/morning and because most people are off work, they have the time to create traditions that can be done year after year. What was hard for me is that it was easy to go to his (non-religious celebration of Christmas) mom’s home during Christmas because it mattered to her ( and my family obviously wasn’t doing anything), whereas we would just show up at my family’s Chanukah dinner, some random night during the 8 days of Chanukah. It felt very unbalanced. So this year, both families are going on a cruise all 12 of us together. Problem Solved. I think :)
December 6, 2011 10:33 am
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Well, but Christmas is one of the most major Christian holidays, and Hanukah is almost a non-holiday in the religious Jewish year. We *basically* don’t celebrate it, because it’s of no particular spiritual importance in the Jewish year. We light a candle, fry some food, and move on. High Holy days or Passover though, those are big damn deals.
So we just don’t try to balance the two, because they don’t balance. The year, over all, balances, but not Hanukah and Christmas. Obviously if you’re more secular it might be totally different, but just throwing in my two cents as to why it might feel that way.
December 6, 2011 5:00 pm
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Yes, I meant balance the time with families. The other Jewish holidays are certainly more religiously important, but I never get more than 2 days off work strung together without causing issues at work. Whereas in the late December time frame, it is much easier to take a week off (some companies even shut down) and spend multiple days with family. It’s because Chanukah isn’t that important religiously that the time we had off from work was spent with the family celebrating Christmas. I think this is really only the issue when you travel to visit one side during the holiday “break”. It probably wouldn’t come up if you all lived in the same city.
December 7, 2011 5:27 pm
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Y’know, I’ve been wanting to tell you all at APW for a long time, but wasn’t sure where to say it: Thanks so much for giving us a “wedding blog” that I’ll never feel silly reading, even after my wedding. It’s a marriage blog, and I’m so grateful for it. Happy Holidays!
December 6, 2011 10:39 am
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I have always had a hard time enjoying Christmas and since my father passed away a couple of years ago it’s been even harder pretending to enjoy my husband’s enormous family holiday get togethers. After trying my hardest to force a Merry Christmasfor 5 years my husband is giving me the best gift of all and we are heading to Vegas for a week and I couldn’t be happier! We are now hosting enormous Thanksgiving dinners for both of our families and doing our own Christmas. Yay for being adults and choosing traditions that work for us!
December 6, 2011 10:44 am
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*LOVE* this. Both my husband and I count ourselves lucky that we’ve never had to negotiate where we go at the holidays. My family doesn’t really speak with me AND they’re Jehovah’s Witnesses so they don’t celebrate a darn thing. Easy peasy. We do what we want on our own and that’s that.
Only recently have his mom and sister started dropping hints and comments that they’d like us to spend more time with them at the holidays. We actually would really love to, but sadly, they live in the middle of nowhere – and in two separate states far from where we live. Thank Buddha for Skype.
My heart really goes out to people who have a tough time with their relatives, or get a lot of grief over where they’ll be splitting their holidays with various family members. For a time of year when so much emphasis is placed on togetherness, the anxiety that goes along with figuring out where to go makes one want to hide under the covers alone. Oh, the irony.
December 6, 2011 10:51 am
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I am neverendingly grateful that so far our parents have not made a fuss about seeing us for the holidays. I think it helped that we moved across the country from where both sets live in our first year of marriage, so we sort of established from the get-go that holiday travel or splitting of holidays would be difficult. (Also, we both grew up in immigrant families where our grandparents lived overseas, so the whole holidays-are-when-you’re-with-family thing was just never a reality in either of our families.) What’s also helped is that we try to spend extended time with each side at some other point of the year (i.e. we went on a cruise with Jason’s family this past August and spent a week in Atlanta with my family last June) so that they don’t feel like the only time they’d get to see us is holidays. The only difficulty so far has been how limited Jason’s vacation time at his new job is – if we spend a week with one family and a week with another, he’s left with no PTO for just-us trips. We’re both looking forward to when those days off increase! I imagine our current arrangement will probably have to change once there are babies involved in the mix, but for now, it’s really really nice.
December 6, 2011 10:56 am
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Wow, this post has made me think a lot about family and holiday traditions.
This is my first Christmas as part of a married couple, but my husband and I have celebrated previous ones as joint home owners for the past 3 years (Although we’ve only been together once before on Dec. 25) and in a relationship for the 3 years before that.
When I think about what I really want out of the holidays–I would almost prefer to always visit my family and have my husband visit his. I mean, the two of us do a lot of holiday celebrating throughout the whole month of December between parties, our own special meal and gift exchange, etc. Why do we have to be together on Dec. 25?
Other people have pushed for us to be together on Christmas, saying now that we are married we need to be together on the holiday, and I have pretty much agreed/accepted that. But, as I really think about it…I’d be fine and perhaps even happier/more holiday spirited if I were with the people that I’ve always celebrated the holiday with and who I love the most in the world other than my husband. I mean, I see him everyday, and I don’t get to see my little sister/dad/grandparents but a couple times a year.
Focusing on meshing traditions and creating new traditions is definitely fun, but why do married couples (especially those without kids) have to be together on Dec. 25?!
December 6, 2011 11:07 am
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So far this has worked for my boyfriend and I as well. We both live plane rides away from our families and the holidays are the one time of year we all have time off to spend together. Sure I would love to be with him, but we celebrate together before the real holiday and are together all year after that. I know he wants to be with his family and I understand that because I want to be with mine.
Many people have told me it’s strange and I should be spending the day with him. But for us this works. Plus I cringe when people say it’s a ‘couples’ holiday.
December 6, 2011 11:45 am
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Obviously your milage will vary, but for us, with or without kids… we’re a FAMILY. That’s really a truth, now, two plus years in. And one of the things that makes a family a family is shared traditions and celebrations. We still had primary allegiance with our families of origin when we were dating, and that was great. But now, David is my family, and he comes first. So when it comes to moments of celebration, times when we stop and reflect on life, and times when we create tradition… I need that to be with him. Otherwise, I’d still mostly be a family with my family of origin… not with the person I chose as my family.
It might not work that way for everyone, but it sure does for us, three holidays into family life.
December 6, 2011 5:05 pm
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Yes yes yes.
And then, if you do choose to add a kid to the mix, well, how can you decide which parent the kid doesn’t get to spent the holidays with?
December 6, 2011 5:31 pm
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Can we make an exactly times infinity button?
December 6, 2011 5:41 pm
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Yes, once we have children I’m sure our arrangement may change. It may change next year if we feel like it. I guess I’m lucky in that I have a really chill family and Inlaws- so they have always been cool with whatever we decide.
My bf is very much my fam, but honestly we haven’t seen our families of origin since last Christmas. So this makes the most sense for us. He is still my chosen family, and most definitely my primary family, but we’re just understanding that for now it makes most sense to be apart those few days a year.
December 7, 2011 12:29 am
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As I mentioned above, this is the same for us. You have to do what is right for you even if others say it’s not how things are done. My husband and I both have aging grandparents, and we are likely to be overseas next year with just the two of us, so if that means we celebrate Christmas together a little early this year, spend the 25th with our families on separate coasts and meet up for New Years on the beach with friends for that midnight kiss, then so be it!
December 7, 2011 10:52 am
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“Two whole families that want to have Christmas with you, lucky, lucky, lucky.”
I’ve had flashes of that in the past couple of years. Her family is not welcoming to me (We’re not sure that they’re even coming to the wedding — when our engagement was announced , several members objected loudly on religious grounds, and her parents refused to acknowledge my presence in the same room a few days later. Since then there have been a few shifts in attitude… I hope for more productive conversations over time.), and my sweetie won’t subject me to holidays with them until they’re willing to act civilly. With my family, the Friday after Thanksgiving (since before I was born; it started with my grandmother trying to split holidays!) and Christmas Eve are big (secular) events, and I don’t want to break that tradition. They have welcomed her from the start, and I know she enjoys spending time with them and with me, but it’s not what she grew up with (midnight Mass, presents on Christmas Eve), so that’s hard.
On the plus side, the two clans aren’t too far apart, geographically — if pressed, we could visit both for their respective Thanksgiving dinners, and spend Christmas Day with her family instead of mine. I rather expect to take over the family holiday hosting (at least Christmas Eve) when my aunt is no longer with us, so we’ve got several years with some flexibility. We’ve also create time for ourselves as a couple and joined with friends to celebrate together during the holiday season for the past two years. I hope that we’ll still be able to do that after the wedding.
December 6, 2011 11:14 am
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Wow, we are lucky that we don’t have any interfaith or other big challenges… Still, I knew going into our marriage that holidays would be tricky thanks to my mom. She has all but demanded that all her kids spend Christmas and Mother’s Day with her, on her terms, every year. There have been two instances where one of us has disobeyed the Christmas rule and she has never let either of us forget it. When George and I were doing our completely-voluntary premarital counseling, we decided to write up a marriage contract. We made a section for holidays and agreed that we would alternate families – the mom who “got” Christmas for the year would give up Mother’s Day and Thanksgiving. If we’re lucky enough to have kids, all holidays are at home, period. It’s worked out well for us so far, but we haven’t had to miss Christmas with my mom yet. But the plan is to just say, “sorry, Mom, it’s in the contract.”
December 6, 2011 11:23 am
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So thought provoking and awesome a post, Meg.
I’m lucky enough to have an easily solution for me and my FH, as our parents are next door neighbours and have been friends for longer than we have been together. Which works out well, because we just head in their general direction and wander from house to house (on our own and together) as we see fit. The only real negotiation is which dinner we eat (though that’s generally worked out either by combining dinners or just generally accomodating parents) …
But the whole easiness of it makes me feel guilty sometimes about the fact that we want to spend some of our holidays at our home (which is several hours away from our families).
So thanks for reminding me that it’s ok for us to do the holidays our way, even when doing it our families way is easiest.
December 6, 2011 11:56 am
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Thanks to the wonders of technology, it is almost possible to be in two places at once. I introduce – the web cam!
While I would love to be with both of our families this holiday season, that won’t be possible. But we’ll still get to open presents with each family, still get to see the reactions on their faces, still get to see my nephew beating my dad over the head with a “boomwhacker” (and checking the tuning of my dad’s head from our piano, my dad’s head is musically flat).
There are more ways to share the holidays than sharing the same space.
December 6, 2011 12:10 pm
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Meg, thank you so much for posting this. It strikes a chord with me as this will be my first Christmas after converting to Judaism. I’m already anticipating the awkward moments with my family when I hear “Happy Hanukkah” instead of “Merry Christmas.” I already got a card stating Happy Hanukkah and while I was grateful that they were thoughtful enough to not write Merry Christmas, it made me a bit sad thinking I wasn’t going to technically get “Christmas” cards anymore. And yeah, the music thing is hard, too. I wonder if I’ll have to explain anything to my niece or nephew about how I’m celebrating WITH them but not celebrating Christmas myself (although I told my fiance I am stubbornly always going to believe in Santa Claus).
Although it is nice that Christmas will never be split among our families, there is already the feeling that I am separated a bit from this holiday. It already feels different than it did last year. And it’s not just Christmas…once Easter rolls around, I have to decide if I’m going to eat Easter dinner with my family and eat food that isn’t kosher for passover.
As an aside, interfaith families with one observant Jewish partner may want to refocus the same holiday energy and zeal on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur through Sukkot. Hanukkah is a relatively minor holiday on the Jewish calendar, as others have said, and it doesn’t make sense to try to compete with Christmas. Let Christmas be what it is and let the other Jewish holidays stand on their own.
Thanks again for posting this. It’s nice to see a Jewish convert talk about their experiences on such a large platform.
December 6, 2011 12:11 pm
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“once Easter rolls around, I have to decide if I’m going to eat Easter dinner with my family and eat food that isn’t kosher for passover.”
We actually decided we would eat lamb for our Easter dinner because eating a ham just made absolutely no sense to me. The origins of Easter are in Passover, why would we eat pork? The only reason I can see where that tradition started was with the pig industry.
December 6, 2011 1:44 pm
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Um… who eats pork for Easter? Is this an American thing? It’s definitely lamb here (Ireland), and as you say, it makes sense. That’s when they are around after all. Spring lambs and all that…
December 7, 2011 10:03 am
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Easter hams are very common in the States. It’s weird. We have to search pretty hard to find a lamb roast or lamb chops for Easter. Although I hear it’s easier in different areas of the country.
December 7, 2011 10:42 am
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No… it doesn’t feel the same, does it?
And, just from someone who’s been there, I definitely DO eat Easter dinner with my family when given the chance, but I definitely DO NOT break Kosher for Passover. My family has had to learn to cook / provide some different foods, but that’s what being an interfaith family is all about!
And you’re right. We don’t do much on Hanukkah, because lets face it… it’s the most minor of holidays. We have the High Holidays in all their grandeur, and Passover for family. Why should we pretend that Hanukkah competes with Christmas, when we know that’s just some marketing bullshit, eh?
December 6, 2011 5:10 pm
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Love this. Thanks so much! We’re an interfaith family in a different sort of way, with my parents celebrating christmas, my husband’s mother being Jewish, his brother recently married and converted to Christianity, and us being more of the atheist/agnostic persuasion. In addition to not splitting the holidays due to the different faiths, his family is just the 4 of them (husband, brother, brother’ wife, mother-in-law), so they just join us for the non-religious holidays too.
This year, since we just got married, we’ve decided to officially start our own tradition, that we started kind of doing years previous, which is opening our presents to each other on the solstice (which is fun for me, since it’s a few days before christmas and it feels like I’m getting my presents early!). I’m hoping to incorporate a meal, and maybe certain wintry decor also in the coming years.
December 6, 2011 12:56 pm
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We do Christmas crackers too!!! And they also symbolize holidays for me! Yeah!
I loved this post. Although I will admit I feel rather spoiled. My hubby and I are in SF and our families are 20 minutes apart from one another. This means that Thanksgiving is usually a shared day….we go to both houses because my family tends to eat earlier. And then Christmas is fantastic because his Mexican heritage celebrates Christmas Eve with tamales and that means that Christmas day is with my family! Oh and then for Easter this past year, while we were traveling for 6 months, our families got together without us…..LOVE that. Since we’ve only been married for 17 days and don’t have a place of our own yet, I’m sure we’ll figure out our own traditions. But I’ve always felt so incredibly blessed to not have to worry too much about all of this stuff.
December 6, 2011 1:48 pm
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I’m on my third Christmas with my fiance, but our first “engaged” Christmas. We haven’t spent a Christmas together yet, and luckily this year is working out ok, our parents live fairly close to each other, so it’s lunch at mine, dinner at his.
But (isn’t there always a but!) my familt rotates Christmas between Mum’s side and Dad’s side-easy when it’s Mum’s, because they’re all here, but Dad’s are mostly interstate, so we usually travel those years…so on the travel years, someone is going to miss out.
Plus being in Australia means no Thanksgiving to placate the non-Christmas family.
I think it’s going to get more complicated as granparents pass away, I think it will mean more people doing their own thing. Even this year my Christmas is supposed to be Mum’s side, but half of them aren’t going to be here, and I think some of Dad’s family will be! Lucky it’s at Mum and Dad’s house so it’s just a mix of everyone who’s around can come along!
December 6, 2011 3:35 pm
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So much agreement for the Australia = no Thanksgiving thing.
Unfortunately, our families are in different states and one set are seperated and live at opposite ends of that state, so our holidays involve lots of swapping and splitting, and probably some new traditions in the future (we’re pre-engaged at the moment)
December 7, 2011 4:56 pm
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I appreciate this post. If nothing else, it helps me to hear all the other people who have trouble with splitting holidays. Last year was our first split holiday as a couple. Since our families live 9 hours apart from each other, we decided to do Thanksgiving with his family and Christmas with mine last year. This year is Thanksgiving with my family and Christmas with his.
I’m… dreading this. There’s no other word. My family ritualized Christmas Eve and Christmas day. His family doesn’t have any traditions to speak of. At least FH agreed to go to Midnight Mass with me (I’m Roman Catholic, he’s agnostic, his family is Born Again Evangelical), which should conveniently get us out of the fight about going to Christmas Day service with his family (we disagree very strongly with what their church teaches. They don’t respect that decision). FH is also prepared to ply me with bottles of wine every time I start looking weepy.
December 6, 2011 7:34 pm
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OMG we had our first “discussion” about this LAST NIGHT. I thought we had worked out a Thanksgiving with his family/Christmas with mine arrangement, and apparently… no. He’s “already been told” by his mother that it would be “fair” for us to be with them in alternate years. TOLD??? Sigh. Also, he’s not a big Christmas person (I LOVE Christmas), and he doesn’t even like his family. They live nearby, we see them a lot. Mine are far away and I love them and I miss them and I wanna have every Christmas with my Mom WANNNHH.
And we’re not married yet.
December 7, 2011 7:28 am
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You can’t let her walk all over you like that. Your dude needs to tell him mom that you two are going to alternate Thanksgiving and Christmas with each other’s family, and that’s just the way it’s going to be.
December 7, 2011 1:21 pm
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i’m a single fan of APW and i appreciated this post as well. My sister is bringing her boyfriend home for Christmas so it will be the first year with a significant other involved in our family Christmas and I’ve been feeling a little mixed about it.
One thing I didn’t realize is how little you really get to see your family when you leave home so the times you do spend together become more valuable and it does sort of feel like he’s intruding so I’ve been dealing with that, but at the same time I think it’s about mourning what will never be the same again and recognizing that change is hard but knowing that in theory there will someday be a lot more people at our ‘family’ Christmas and making new traditions and feeling happy for the love my siblings have found will help. :)
December 7, 2011 9:58 am
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Last year, you ladies (particularly Alyssa!) gave me some great advice on how to speak to my husband about this issue. Or, more to the point, told me what I needed to hear but already kind of knew.
Thanksgiving is not an issue for us, fortunately – either we spend the holiday with his family in Disney World, if they go and if we can go, or we don’t, and spend it with my family. My job doesn’t recognize Black Friday as a holiday, and my family is an hour away. If I’m going to fight with coworkers over taking a vacation day on Black Friday (okay, not really “fight”, but you get the idea), I’ll do it for a trip to Disney, but I won’t do it for obligatory family holiday travel, when we can just as easily travel to my family and I can get Good Karma Points at work.
Christmas is different. Getting time off around Christmas at my office is easier – not everyone celebrates it, and those who do don’t necessarily want the days surrounding it off, for one reason or another. Both of our families see Christmas as A Big Deal, and in both of our families, we’re the only ones who have a significant other that is not from a nearby town.
I finally said to him that we both were going to have to have hard conversations with our parents that things were changing for Christmas now, but that under no uncertain terms were we spending the holiday apart just to avoid these conversations. From there, we hammered out a plan. It’s a plan that involves a lot of driving, but everyone is satisfied.
Is it perfect? No. My husband’s family’s nonchalant Christmas morning gets on my last nerve, when I am a “get-up-at-5-and-relive-childhood” kind of girl. But, I love his family’s Christmas dinner celebrations. My family’s Christmas Eve (which involves a lot of chaos and mediocre finger food instead of a feast of sorts) makes him cringe.
We tried to start our own tradition of having a nice dinner alone on Christmas Eve, then joining my family for the rest of the evening, but as it turns out, though most of the restaurants in our town are open for dinner, most of the restaurants in my hometown were NOT, so those plans got squashed unceremoniously. Eventually we’ll settle into our own holiday traditions, separate from our birth families, but at least we’ve established that whatever we do, it will be together.
December 7, 2011 2:20 pm
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Although my husband’s family isn’t big on getting together for holidays, my parents are divorced so splitting holidays has ALWAYS been a pain. I am the only one of my siblings married, so it is difficult to get everyone to understand that my husband and I are our own little family and need our own traditions and time for the holidays.
Specifically, we’ve carved out Christmas Eve as our time – no traveling for us (since we travel out of state, usually to not one but TWO other states, at TG and other times around Xmas), and no guests. This has caused a HUGE amount of drama this year, with the 24th and 25th being on the weekend, when it’s easiest for everyone else to get together. It has been so. hard. to stand my ground, because I hate upsetting people and it’s important to me see my family as well. But I know I need to stay firm, because my baby family needs its independence and has the right to do what’s best for us.
December 8, 2011 12:37 pm
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