How to survive the holidays as newlyweds

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Reminds me of the movie four Christmases!

Glad you were able to come up with a solution! Just reading about it almost made me grumpy haha

For the past few years, we’ve gone out of our way to accommodate everyone on Christmas Day, which for us means getting up extra early, and driving to 3 different cities in 1 day. By the end of it, we were exhausted and he was grumpy. Last year he put his foot down and swore we would never do that again.

This year my my parents moved to the island, so Christmas is 1 week early for them. Christmas Day will be with his family and we had a Christmas party with his dad last week. This year is much more low key and I am loving it. We decided together that for all holidays, we would only commit to one family per day, and I’m glad we’re sticking to it.

My fiance has decided, for reasons that I agree with, that we will not be spending the holidays with his family. It makes it easier (although it is sad to think that, if things don't get better, our children will grow up not knowing half their family).

My family didn't have too many "traditions" when it came to holidays. I am excited to be able to start some with my fiance and carry them on when we have children! We haven't talked about them yet though. One of the things we are doing at our wedding is giving each table a holiday and they can write out their favourite tradition, which will hopefully give us some good ideas!

We're celebrating with his family this year and mine next. We'll likely do a combined families the 3rd year and then just repeat the same pattern. Makes it fair for everyone.

We have been together for several years and have had to share the holidays between our families for years. We just have to figure out whose family gets which day this year.

We're finding it challenging to reconcile all the family traditions that have cropped up over the years...there are so many different celebrations that happen and while we'd love to be able to go to all of them, it's too much. Now that all the kids are adults, I really do think it's time to re-examine and start fresh so that when we have little ones, we can carve out a new set of traditions.

We've suggested picking a day either in advance or after Christmas itself to do the big 'extended family' visits. That way, we can have Christmas day to ourselves and one day kids. We've said that people are welcome to drop in as well. We're hoping it works out.