First Holidays as Spouses

We're moving the weekend before Thanksgiving...so there's that. But, it means that we'll actually have more than 500 sqft of space! His kids are coming down that week as well to spend Thanksgiving with us. So it will be turkey and boxes.

I'm not sure yet what we're doing for Christmas. We need to clear out our storage unit (in Oklahoma), so we might fly there, spend Christmas with my parents, then load up a U-Haul and stop and see his family on the way back (they're in Arkansas).

ETA: My family tries to get together once a year, but it isn't always on holidays (and we move holidays...we've celebrated Christmas in January more times than I can count). Luckily, our families live about 3.5 hours apart (central Oklahoma/NW Arkansas), so when we go back from where we live in FL, we can usually see everybody).

We try to do one holiday with my husband's family and the next with my family, and switch each year. The main holidays we discuss being Thanksgiving (my favorite) and Christmas (I'm Jewish, but Chanukah sometimes falls around Christmas). It can be hard splitting holidays between families; we get so used to our routine and what we love that it can time time to get used to doing something else.

Family is super important to both of us so we will be continuing our routine of visiting my family and hosting his.

I've been with my FH for 12 1/2 years and the holidays are still a disagreement sometimes. In the beginning, we used to go our separate ways in an attempt to please everyone else and in the past few years, we decided that we are a unit and need to be attending all holidays together. It upsets some family members, but it is what it is. We can't be everywhere at once.

So we switch off every year. Thanksgiving we do dinner with 1 family and dessert with the other (switching each year) and same with Christmas. For Easter, we eat breakfast with his family, and dinner with mine and don't switch only because his family only does breakfast - so it works.

In my opinion, you both have to compromise a little. Are your in-laws far away? If not, maybe just go for dessert?

We do most of the small holidays with his family (4th of July, Labor Day, etc) Christmas Eve with my family (it's a big thing for us) and Christmas Day with his (they do a big thing and we still see my parents in the morning). Thanksgiving is the tricky one. My mom i hosting so I invited his family over. Hoping they come. If not we literally eat two dinners in one day. It's tough but you'll figure it out...good luck!

We typically spend Thanksgiving with my family and Christmas with his... although with getting back from our honeymoon the week before Thanksgiving I really wish we could spend it at home just the two of us. I don't think my family would be okay with that though >. <

We took on the tradition of hosting Thanksgiving. For Christmas I'm pretty sure it will be with my side. DH is angry with his dad.

@Amanda We're going to compromise somewhere. Family and Christmas are important to me, I just wanted to spend the FIRST Christmas together as a new family. My in-laws live an hour from us while my parents live in another state. Which always causes problems because his family wants every holiday to be with them (huge Italian family), while my parents (mostly my mom) wants us to spend every holiday with her. So hurt feelings no matter what we do. We usually go to his family's place because of its closer but we try to do Thanksgiving with one family and then Christmas with the other and then alternate from there.

ETA FH says he understands that having HUGE family get-togethers isn't common for my family and that's why I get overwhelmed at his family events. My family is more apt to do a Christmas cruise or a Christmas vacation, so it was just us. FH says a Christmas cruise sounds fantastic and he is more than open to holiday vacations for our family.

Our families all live very close together. We usually do breakfast with my family and dinner with his. Next year we will be hosting both sides for dinner. We will do breakfast by ourselves. We will not have to split time this way. Our families get along so this works for us

What have you done in past years?

FH and I have had a little trouble navigating the holidays. This will be our 6th holiday season together, and our first one as a married couple. Normally for Thanksgiving we have dinner with my family and dessert with his. This year, his uncle who hosts got a divorce, so we aren't doing that. His parents are going on vacation, so we won't even see them. So we're just going to hang with my family the whole day. Christmas is tricky because Christmas Eve is always the big holiday for both our families. We start with his family and end with mine, but the timing is always dicey because we never agree on when to go.

Holidays can be so stressful!

Luckily FH's family goes all out for Thanksgiving and my family really celebrates Christmas, so we'll be splitting it that way for the next two years at least.

@AllieCat Usually we do one family for Thanksgiving and the other for Christmas. I don't have a problem with that. I just wanted our first Christmas as a married couple to be just us.

His family lives in Ireland, so we won't see them for Christmas. We live in the same house as my Mom so we will probably have a little Christmas by ourselves before we join her. And then we usually go to my brother's house to spend the afternoon with my niece.

This will be the first holiday season married! In the 7 years we have been together I think we have spent maybe one or two thanksgivings together. He has always gone to spend thanksgiving with his family, while I have stayed with mine. It is usually the time that my brother comes to visit since he spends Christmas with his girlfriend and her family so Thanksgiving is the only holiday my mom spends with both her children, Christmas has mostly been spent apart as well even though we are usually together for Christmas day and since I am Hispanic we celebrate Christmas eve. Anyway due to work and not enough pto since we got married this year, I believe we will spend Thanksgiving with a combination of our families (except for his immediate family who lives out of state) and I selfishly want to spend Christmas with just the two of us. We are still working out the details since my H is currently applying for a new job and I don't know what time he will have off.

We try to flip flop holidays between our families. His mom's birthday is on Christmas (ugh - sucks but nothing we can do) so he always wants to be with her on Christmas (I get it, but still annoying).

Depending on my family's work schedule (sister is a paramedic, and dad used to work rotations) my family may or may not do big holiday dinners for Thanksgiving/Christmas or want to do them on off days.

Sometimes it works for both families, sometimes it does not. We go with the flow. I think this year we will have Thanksgiving with my family and Christmas with his mom.

ETA - my family lives 15 minutes away from me, his mom lives 2 hours away so we try to visit her on some weekends throughout the year.

I doubt we will change anything up after we're married. We've been together for about 6 years, so have spent many holidays together now. We may change up small things, but both are families are local, so we will decide when the time comes.

This past Easter was great. Both of our families were out-of-town, and we don't really care about the holiday itself, so he took me golfing for the first time. We rarely have days off together, and there was hardly anyone on the course to witness my, uh, learning curve. I hope to do that again.

Same thing we do every year. Drive up to WI, visit his family on the 24, then my family on the 24, then just us on New Years.

We always divide ours up--it works out well that my family always does thanksgiving on Saturday and his Sunday (we're in Canada so it's a long weekend rather than mid-week) and my fam's big day/night is Christmas Eve where his is Christmas Day. we're also lucky to live in the same city as my folks and about an hour from the city his parents are in. we've been sharing the holidays since we got together 3 years ago so this year will be no different--we might offer to host Christmas Eve, since we just moved into a bigger house and actually have the space for it now.

Ahhhh we aren't sure yet! We live in NC, husband's family is 4 1/2 hours away in WV, and mine is 7 hours away in MD. We have no idea how to make it work.

Holidays are a hard one. We usually will do Thanksgiving and black Friday shopping with my mom(my parents are divorced) then go down to H's grandma's the day after. All of H's family goes there for holidays. Sometimes we will work in going and seeing my dad.

Christmas Eve we spend half the day with my mom and have dinner with her. After dinner we go over to H's parents for their Christmas Eve traditions and will stay the night there to then do Christmas in the morning. After H's parent's leave to go down to his grandma's we go visit my dad and grandma for Christmas.

Holidays are hard because everyone lives at least 2.5 hours away and we don't like to drive around to everyone all the time. We cannot wait until we get a house and can have all our families over for the holidays