Christmas is a bit like a puzzle for us and the pieces are....
Mike's two sets of parents.
My Mom, who works in retail.
My brother and his wife, who live out of town and stay with us over the holidays, but only spend Christmas day with us every other year.
Two kids who sing in the church choir.
You'd think we'd have some sort of formula by now, but we don't really. We make up a new game plan each year. We have a couple of constants... we alternate Christmas day dinner between my Mom and Papa and Grandma Linda. Christmas Day until dinner time-ish is for the four of us.... unless it's a year Uncle Dave and Auntie Mel are home then it's for the six of us. Either way it's a quiet hang out day. Beyond that we just figure out what works best for that year.
What kind of Christmas plans do you make? Are they complicated or are they loosey goosey?
4 comments:
we finally won the battle of having christmas morning just the three of us. then we load up and drive to toronto for a few days. and then the now three year tradition of going to our friends in oshawa for a night on the way home. we're lucky that we do the whole thanksmas thing. makes everything much simpler.
In Belgium it's Christmas Eve which is the most important celebration moment which means that both my parents and my husband's parents hope that we spend the evening with them.
My sister has the same dilemma so it's a rule that one year we celebrate Christmas Eve with our parents and the other year with the inlaws (which is not a dinner but lunch). The evening of the 25th we are usually very glad to roll back into our own house and crash from the overload of family and food
All of our family is either prohibitively far away or really reasonable (I'm fast realizing this is the exception rather than the rule). We decide ahead of time whether we're going to be here or in London (at my sister's) but other than that we go with the flow. It's the few weeks before that have to be planned with military precision.
My parents are divorced and both remarried. They live within 45 minutes of each other, but they are all 3 hours away from my husband's family. Christmas Eve is the big deal with his family, but that's also my dad's birthday. Our planning used to be sticky every year, but we finally have it down to a science...for now. We alternate Christmas Eve with his parents and my dad. Because my mom is located in the middle of the others, we usually are with her on Christmas Day. For example, this year we will be with my dad on Christmas Eve and Christmas morning. Then we'll do the evening with my mom and her side of the family. On the morning of the 26th we'll head down to Jess' family. I like to be back here a few days before going back to school, so we usually do our own thing for New Year's Eve. Last year we watched The Princess Bride and stuffed ourselves silly on hors d'ouevers (sp?).
The minute we have kids of our own, though, we'll be reevaluating and renegotiating Christmas travel plans. I want to be at home and start our own traditions with our kids - I don't want the tradition to be hours upon hours in the car.
I also want to have a Christmas tree again. When we leave for almost a week at Thanksgiving (usually - we had a crazy amount of snow this week, and couldn't make it over the mountains), and then three weeks later leave for two weeks at Christmas, it's too much work to put decorations up. If I can't enjoy them, I don't want to go to the hassle. So I'm actually looking forward to being able to stay here and start our own traditions.
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