Wedding Blog
It’s that time of year again, when the question starts to arise: who are you going to spend the holidays with??
For the first four years of our relationship, it wasn’t an issue. Mr. Peppermint and I said our goodbyes as we each spent time with our respective families. However, one of the first questions after our late October engagement was what we were going to do about Thanksgiving and Christmas of that year. It was such an exciting time (after the engagement) for us and so special to be able to share these special days together and with each others families. We ended up splitting both (the day of in Southern California, and the days surrounding in Northern California).
Well, now that it’s that time of year again, we have to do it all over! However, the one major difference is that this year, our month of December will be crazy! We will have both families together for the week of the wedding, then we’ll be on our honeymoon for 11 days and be back just a few days before Christmas! Splitting both holidays (Thanksgiving & Christmas) between two places seems like it might add a lot of stress, as well as the cost of the flight might be hard with all that’s going on… I don’t know what’s best! Whatever happens, though, this holiday season promises to be crazy (and I mean that in the best way possible) for us Peppermints!!
Is this a hot topic for you & your significant other? Where are you spending your holidays??
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We’ve been on an alternating rotation system since our first holiday season together. Aka one year we do Thanksgiving with mine and Christmas with his, and the next year we reverse. This works well except that…my parents also have an alternating rotation system for THEIR families, so every year that I spend Christmas with my family, it’s always my Mom’s side of the family, so then my dad’s side of the family gets left out. We have found time to pop over and visit enough randomly that I think it’s okay (and Christmas was always a MUCH bigger deal for my mom’s side of the family anyway) but I always feel a bit bad. But both my and Mr. Bluebell’s families have been very easygoing and respectful of the alternating system.
Heh, I so feel your pain. 
Each of our parents have been divorced and remarried several times… If you do the math out, we have five different sets of parents we need to visit. After the first year of hourly Christmases we put an end to it. We started alternating the years and holidays. It’s too much stress any other way.
Of course it’s different now that we moved out of state. We have “Orphan’s Christmas.” We celebrate with all our local friends who also don’t have any family in the area. It gives everyone a gathering to look forward to. Good luck!
im so very stumped on what to do about this. My entire family hasn’t missed a Christmas in Ohio, with the whole clan. I’d like to get him to go with, but that means pulling him from his family here, and they do a more low key holiday. We’ve yet to have a Christmas together, so I don’t know what will happen!
This is a tricky subject for us as well. Our families both live in the same town where we live. Although it may seem very easy, I think this actually makes things more difficult because each family expects us to spend the entire holiday at their house.
So many times we end up “double-dippping” and stuffing ourselves with two Thanksgiving dinners! Hectic, yes, but it keeps the peace!
We’ve are fortunate enough to have immediate families in the same state. My family usually does Thanksgiving at home, so we do 2 Thanksgiving dinners in one day (his family always does lunch Thanksgiving, and mine supper Thanksgiving)!
However, all my aunt and uncles, grandparents, cousins, etc, are all in New York, so my family travels down there for Christmas. So in six years, we’ve never had a Christmas together! This year will be our first, Christmas celebrated together - our families have decided to vacation together for the holidays! I don’t know what we plan on doing next year though…
Luckily his family aren’t BIG holiday people like my family is. Looks like we are going to celebrate Thanksgiving the Saturday BEFORE so his sister’s family can go to Mammoth for Thanksgiving. Which means we get to leave for NorCal Wednesday night! yay! And at Christmas time we celebrate Christmas Eve with his family and then leave for NorCal afterwards so we get to celebrate Christmas morning with my family.
We swap as well. We spend Thanksgiving with one family and Christmas with the other - then swap the next year. It’s rough - but easier for our bi-coastal families.
we’ll be on our honeymoon over christmas. we kinda did it that way because it was easier for us to take off from work, but also so we didn’t have to choose a family to spend the holidays with…..
We did Thanksgiving with his family and Christmas with mine. Christmas is a huuuuuge ordeal on my side. He’s actually started saying that since I moved 1200 miles away from my family to be with him that we could spend all of the holidays with my family. I’m trying to talk his dad and brothers into coming with us.
Both sets of our parents actually live in the same town–so you would think that would make it easy, right? Well, I guess I can be thankful that we don’t have to actually decide where to spend each holiday–but that also means that every holiday is LITERALLY split. As in, part of the day here, part there–two Thanksgiving dinners, two Christmas breakfasts, etc., with barely a moment to stop & really talk.
We’ve heard from older folks who’ve dealt with this that it actually can become a little problematic once there are grandkids involved…
But for now I’m thankful that I don’t have to miss seeing my family completely in order to see his for the holidays, too!
This has been a source of strife with our families for the past 4 years! I don’t know about the rest of y’all, but on our end, it seemed like we weren’t taken seriously since we weren’t married. Now that we ARE married, we were able to somewhat lay down the law and start a conversation to prevent hurt feelings. Anyways, our folks are split b/t two states, so we alternate T’giving and Christmas days, but split Christmas. Thus one family will get TurkeyDay + Christmas Eve, the other will get Christmas Day.
Both of our families live within two hours of us, so luckily we don’t have to travel far. We spend thanksgiving day with his family and my family delays thanksgiving until Friday so we get to celebrate with them too. Christmas is pretty easy as well. My husband grew up celebrating xmas eve, so we spend have dinner and open presents with his family on the 24th, and then spend xmas day with my family on the 25th.
Very hot topic with my guy and I. Both of our parents divorced and remarried. We each have two sets of parents and then there’s the adopted family. My mom and I tend to plan early…March early. The holidays come every year…there’s no surprise, and we know what dates they fall on…what’s the problem? Well, guy’s family assumes we’ll be there and doesn’t start planning until November. Now I’m a home body to begin with, so going someplaces else for the holidays is tough, but we’ve worked it out to this:
Thanksgiving: one year with my folks, the next year we host or go someplace else. Exceptions can be made of course, but they better get their bid in early
Christmas: One year: Christmas Eve with my Mom’s side for the family reunion and Christmas day with his mom’s side
Next year: Christmas eve with my parents and Christmas day with his dad’s side.
Then sometime in December we do a potluck/party with my bonus mom.
That covers everyone we know. This is the second year we’ve implemented this and it’s worked so far…now we just have to make sure his Grandma doesn’t include us in the gift name draw since we won’t be there!
I have a friend who lives in North Carolina with her husband. His family is in Idaho and hers is in Texas. They are on a 3-way alternation - one Christmas with his family, one Christmas with her family, and one Christmas staying at home. They always do Thanksgiving at home with their friends because they can’t afford two cross-country flights in such a short time frame.
As for us, we live in the same city as his family, and he’s hinted that because we see them all the time, they wouldn’t mind if we went to see my family during the holidays. However, I don’t want to rob his family of him every T and C, so we will coordinate with my siblings on which years we are all in Houston and which years we do our own thing. The only snag is that my parents are divorced, so we really have four families (ours, his, and two of mine) to coordinate with.
I have been thinking about this a lot lately - I’m going to bawl like a baby this season because it’ll be the first time I won’t be with my family for everything. Of course, I’ll also be beaming because it’ll be the first holidays that I have a family of my own!
oh holy wow do you strike a chord. Right after “congratulations” the first words my mother said to me after I told her I was engaged were “I CLAIM CHRISTMAS!!” This was in April. Not only do I have to deal with my crazy (but very loving) mother, I have my dad (divorced parents) and now a whole other set of parents-in-law?! And did I mention that they are all scattered all over the state? I give up. In trying to make everyone happy, I always make myself miserable.
We are of the same church denomination as his family which makes it an easy to spend religious holidays with them, and non-religious holidays with my family.
my family is in the northeast, his in hawaii, and we live in california. we’re getting married in hawaii over thanksgiving week so i’m planning to spend christmas with my family. he’s up in the air since his job doesn’t allow him much time off at the end of the year. not sure what we’re doing next year though.
It’s definately worse if families are within a “reasonable” (3 hours) driving distance. The first Christmas we split, I went to my parents home & he went to his parents home a few days beforehand. Then I drove to his parents for the 23 & i drove home on Christmas Eve evening. Then my FI drove to my parents on Christmas day evening & we both stayed for another day until we drove to our “home”. Needless to say, it didnt work out to make each of us drive alone so much! Last yr we both drove to his parents for the 23rd & Christmas Eve, then woke up & drove to my parents for a Christmas & the 26th. It helps that his parents are big on Christmas Eve & my family is big on the day after Christmas. And we get to enjoy each other’s company on the long rides! We are actually quite lucky to see both of our families throughout the year (we live practically equi-distant between the 2) so that helps also.
I’ve been married 25 years, and its not always easy. We throw Easter in the mix, alternating Thanksgiving and Easter, and since we are close enough, we split Christmas. We have learned not to EAT big at either place. One year at Thanksgiving, our daughter had chicken pox, so my husband thought we’d all stay home…wrong…I asked him to take our son to his mom’s for lunch, and then I took him to my mom’s for dinner…worked perfect! We all had a great meal and both of us got to visit with all our family.
Ah yes. The getting up early on Christmas and driving elsewhere. What fun. I rebelled last year and stayed in my pajamas all day. It’s Christmas, and I wear pj’s all day on Christmas. (okay, not exactly “say hello to my little friend”, but I do what I can)
All our families are within a three hour drive, and one year, we hit all four of the main branches of family for Christmas. I was sick for a week afterwards.
luckily, his family is big into thanksgiving (mine isn’t) and not as much into christmas (mine is), so we’ve (thus far) been able to do one in one city and one in the other. i made it clear in our early dating days that i can never spend christmas away from my family. i guess this might be more of an issue after we have kids, but for now, so far, so good.
I got a staff job in academia just so I’d have the week between Christmas and New Year’s off for all this! That’s a slight exaggeration, but we’re in Chicago, his folks are in MI, mine are in very Southern OH, my one surviving grandmother is in OH, in another city, and his 4 grandparents (yep - all four! He’s sooo lucky) are all in IL, as well.
His family isn’t so big on Easter, so my folks get us for Easter in Ohio, and we get to see my grandma and the cousins then, too, but everyone takes Thanksgiving and Christmas seriously. We alternate, but this year we’re going to OH for Thanksgiving, and then going to try to see everyone within the week between Christmas and New Year’s… all around Lake Michigan, so who knows what the weather will do to our plans.
My sister, who’s been married for a few years (and who lives on the east coast!), is trying to get our folks to think more flexibly for Christmas. She, like Angel, believes in RELAXING, in her own home if possible, on the day of. Isn’t it supposed to be a holiday? What’s gonna happen when we all have kids?
mhb, I’m in academia too! Got to love that week off, eh?
The whole holiday thing has been an issue between us since we started going out. My parents are still together and Mr. Hummingbird’s parents are divorced but he was primarily raised by his dad. The first year we were together, we attended a big dinner with his father’s fourth wife’s family and had a small dinner with mine, but when Mr. Hummingbird’s mother found out about this, she accused us of being unfair, so now we have to have three Thanksgiving dinners every year.
Christmas is even worse since, at our peak, with all our extended families, we were attending six sperate Christmas dinners in a row (with two on the same day!) We’re trying to trim the number of event this year, but I still have a feeling that I’m going to spend most of my week off shuffling from house to house.
Ugh, just thinking about this is giving me turkey bloat. 
We’re stuck doing the split holidays as well since we live about 2 hrs away from our parents (and they live 45 min from each other). For Thanksgiving, we can just drive down and see one, then the other. Christmas is the big headache though. FI is Catholic and only goes on Christmas Eve, so we have to be in town for that. Then his mother forces us to spend the night at their house, which has us there on Christmas morning. There are no children in the family so I have a hard time getting the whole presents-under-the-tree thing (our family quit doing that when I was HS). His mom drives me insane, so I really don’t like staying there Christmas Eve. I’d rather spend the money for a hotel!
My dad’s family has a reunion on Thanksgiving every year, where we rent a church campground and stay Wednesday - Friday. To me, Thanksgiving isn’t a day, it’s a place. This year the reunion is near our school, so he’s going to join me on Thanksgiving day. Friday we’re heading up to his house to spend time with his family (and celebrate my 21st birthday!!!). We did Christmas with both families last year, although we weren’t together on Christmas day. Gifts with his family happened a week before Christmas, and my family got together the week after Christmas.
Travel-wise it’s not so bad, because my family gathers in the same town as our school, and his family is only two hours away.
This is a HUGE issue for Mr. Lily and I. We used to alternate Turkey Day between the families and split up for Xmas/Hanukkah. Last year Mr. Lily put his foot down and declared once we were married we could no longer split up. Sweet, yes. Realistic. Mmm. Not so sure. Especially since his parents are divorced so that makes it hard to see everyone if you rotate (all live on opposite ends of the planet). Still, he won. This year is Turkey Day with his Mom, up to Xmas Day with his Dad, and Xmas day onward with my parents. It’s going to be craaaazy!
The past few years, we’ve hung out with my family the week before Christmas, then we come home so he can squeeze in some time at work and I can get some singing gigs in, then he flies to his parents’ while my gigs continue, and then…then I drive from Baltimore to Cape Cod after the 11pm Christmas Eve mass.
On the up side, there’s not a lot of traffic.
This is always a hot topic for us. Because we live in Rochester, NY, and HIS family is an hour and a half west of us, while MY family is an hour and half east of us. Which is great most of them time, but not at holiday time.
For the first four years, we also went our separate ways on holidays. But the past two years, we did Thanksgiving together with one family then we spent Christmas day together with the other family. HOWEVER, each year, we both spent Christmas Eve with our respective families. So that means that one year, he got up at the ass-crack of dawn and drove 3.5 hours to my parents house, and the next year, I had to do the big drive. In Upstate New York. In winter.
Not fun.
We are looking for answers. My wife and I live in the same town as both our parents. Further our parents live in the same neighborhood. We have an additional 7 family members on my wifes side and two more on mine (mind you, all in the same town) Every holiday Chistmas/Chismas Eve/Thanksgiving and Easter now that I think about it. My wife and I have three young believe in the magic of Chritmas/Santa children. So grandparents want to see them each holiday. We also want our own family time to start our own traditions. We have tried to split it up but living so close how do you sit by the fire and agree to not see your sister up the block just because you shared a drumstick a few monthe prior. We end up upsetting each family and eachother every year. Thus we cant truly enjoy any of them. Any suggestions before I call Dr. Phil? The Duffy’s
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Miss Peppermint, LA/Palm Springs
Age and Occupation: 23, Actress
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 24, Web Producer
Engagement Date: October 21, 2006
Wedding Date: December 2007
Blogging Since: July 2, 2007
Venue: historic estate overlooking the heart of Palm Springs
About Me: I am a Southern California native who enjoys cooking, writing, travel and all things in the arts. Mr. Peppermint and I met in college and he proposed on our four year anniversary in one of our most special places, Joshua Tree National Park. We're having a destination wedding in Palms Springs that will incorporate tradition as well as reflect our personalities!
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