Weddingbee Blog

This little Zebra moment in history is brought to you by, well, Miss Zebra.

Now that Thanksgiving has passed, it is officially OK to discuss Christmas. (I’ve been listening to Christmas music for weeks…and my decorations have been up since Halloween.) The holidays, while a festive occasion, have that inherent ability to truly bring out the worst in us. People are stealing each other’s parking spots, throwing around the middle finger, pushing to get that new toy. Sounds of screaming children and car accidents fill the air. It is a stressful time of year, no doubt.

Last Christmas, Zeb and I had an embarrassingly huge fight, and in the spirit of keeping it real—I took my ring off. Now I don’t take my ring off for fights, but this was definitely a moment where I worried that we just wouldn’t be able to weather the marriage storm together. It is the only time in the seven years we have been together that I doubted the success of our relationship. In retrospect, it all seems sort of silly, but I doubt either one of us will soon forget how we felt, parked behind the spot where we had one month before taken our engagement photos on Christmas Day.

It was because of the Christmas Day shuffle and the importance of family that we fought, not realizing beforehand that we were now our own family unit. Luckily, in the end, the lesson we learned was most certainly a valuable one. You see, you spend however many years knowing only your family. For us, we spent many years together but considering our parents and siblings “our family.” It took us a little over a year to realize that engagement and ultimately marriage are just stepping stones in the creation of a couple’s own family.

Pre-Cana further solidified this point when one of the host couples told us that now we are each other’s family. Above all else we are to take our spouse into consideration first. We are now a family unit, and a newlywed couple must “create their own fence” (establish boundaries) with outside entities.

This doesn’t mean excluding or disrespecting our extended families, but rather redefining our familial priorities. This year, our priority is to enjoy the holidays. Sometimes having both of our families live within a five-mile radius is wonderful, but at Christmas it becomes a constant dance between several households, and sometimes we visit the same house multiple times a day. Last year I didn’t appreciate missing my brother who had to return to Long Island for his own Christmas shuffle, and Zeb didn’t appreciate my clocking the hours spent with his extended family versus mine.

I spent most of this past year wondering how we are going to work Christmas out this year. The reasons we shuffle are wonderful. Seriously, who doesn’t love the warmth and love Christmas produces? I love his family and he, mine. Any other day we wouldn’t mind visiting with family. After a while, however, it becomes expected, and we knew that once we started popping out kids the expectations would only grow. So in October, we decided that we would only visit each family once and split the day in two—half with his family, half with mine. No more driving back and forth. The next step was notifying our parents that we would be cutting back this year on our shuffling. We wanted to give them plenty of time to accept our decision. We haven’t yet decided which house to visit first, but that is neither here nor there. We have a plan. Everyone seems receptive to the idea, and we are feeling more relaxed. We’ll see how it goes.

How do you split the holidays?