Which Stage of “The Married Holiday Cycle” Are You In?

It's a marathon, not a sprint

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Every year it feels a little like Michael and I are inventing married holidays again for the first time. We’re not quite settled into a routine of our own yet, but we also aren’t participating wholly with our families of origin each year either. Instead, we’re in this strangely exciting—and only a little stressful—limbo, where every year it feels like we get to roll the dice and see where we land. I thought maybe we were alone in this, until I stumbled on Meg’s holiday post from last year, where she laid out her stages of married holidays thusly (she added a fourth stage this year, when we started discussing it):

STAGE ONE: Splitting Holidays

As part of a new family unit, your holidays can’t continue uninterrupted, same as they’ve ever been. In the first stage, you’re wrangling parental expectations and managing your own expectations. If we do Thanksgiving with family A, we can do Christmas with family B. If we do Christmas Eve with family A, we can do Christmas Day with family B and family C and Boxing Day with family D. Fuck it, we’re staying home. Etc.

STAGE TWO: Owning The Holidays

This phase is crazy liberating. This is the moment where you realize that the holidays do not belong to your respective families. As a brand-new family, they belong to you, to share with your friends and loved ones. This is typically where you stop asking permission and start making independent decisions that work for you. No apologies.

STAGE THREE: Shaping the Holidays

Once you’ve claimed the shit out of the holidays, you have to figure out what they look like for you. What are your family traditions going to be anyway? Why?

STAGE Four: Living The Shit out Of the Holidays

Got some traditions you like? Live it up. Your family will meet you on your terms. (Or, you know, won’t.) This is the stage your family was probably in during your whole childhood.

Pink Line

Turns out? That strangely exciting limbo is us inhabiting stage two of Meg’s married holidays almost to the letter. It looks a little like spending Thanksgiving in Venice Beach with our cousins, and then Christmas at home doing a whole lot of nothing. Perhaps with dim sum. Because our motto right now is “Whatever, I’ll do what I want.”

The thing is, we went through a lot of years of the “Fuck it, we’re staying home” frustration of stage one before making it to stage two. And if I’m being totally honest? As liberating as stage two is (and boy is it liberating), there’s still a part of me that feels guilty we won’t be going home, that’s going to miss seeing all my siblings and my crazy big family, and that still feels like we should be killing ourselves (emotionally, financially, logistically) to do the rounds and let everyone know how much we love them.

But now, more than, ever, I also realize that stage two is temporary. If we have kids sooner than later, it’s going to upend our holidays in a totally new way. So we might as well enjoy a few quiet years of Thanksgivings on the beach, right?

If you’re worried about how you’re going to handle the rest of this holiday season as newlyweds, go read the rest of Meg’s post. It’ll remind you to put your own holiday oxygen mask on first.

For the rest of you, what stage of married holidays are you at? Are you facing them with mixed emotions? (You’re not alone.)

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