Tell me how you equitably split the holidays

[sjh722]

I am steaming because I just got a passive-agressive email from my MIL wondering "if anyone even wants to get together at all" (they have 4 kids. 3 of us live within 30 minutes of them. We get together every year around Christmas), and simultaneously wanting to know when we can reserve a date for a party with her brother and his family. (H's cousins and all their kids.)

My SIL (H's sister) is rigidly inflexible and wants to do Christmas Day, on the day, every year. They also, no budging, do Christmas with his family every year on Christmas Eve. (Which is convenient when they all live in the same damn area.) She's the favorite of MIL and FIL.

H's brother is a flake. He lives about 12 hours away, no one ever knows exactly when he's showing up, he ends up being around for a week or so, and MIL thinks the earth revolves around his presence. She tries to schedule parties with all of their extended relatives, plus H and his siblings, plus ALTERNATE DATES in case anyone gets sick, all within that week. (Never mind that I live 2.5 hours from my parents and most of my cousins and siblings live out of town!)

And then his other brother and his wife are normal but we get steamrolled or are called the inflexible/difficult ones every single year. 

I need to talk to H about talking to them and shutting this shit down, but I'm trying to think of some ideas to suggest. Like Christmas one year/the weekend after the next year. We have some friends who rotate Christmas/Christmas Eve and New Years with all their siblings every year, but that doesn't work with anyone's jobs in any family. Other ideas?

I am not tied to the idea of having to spend all of Christmas Eve/Day in my house every single year, or always seeing my cousins, etc,  but I'm sick of getting stuck driving on Christmas, or always having to make a whirlwind trip to my family because we're jamming so much into the week around Christmas. We both have 3 siblings, so that alone is a lot of people to plan around. 

What do you do? (And unfortunately I am pregnant so the answer this year is not DRINK HEAVILY.)

[VillainV]

YOU are in charge of your holiday plans every year, not them. You don't need a "rotation" -- "rotation" implies a promise to stick to a schedule that may or may not actually be what you want, or what is best. Each year you have the option to do what YOU want, and visit who is best for YOU. Or you can choose to stay home and either invite people to visit you, or you can spend the holiday on your own.

If you feel like being equitable, you can try one family on Christmas Day one year, the other family the next year. You could throw a year at home into the rotation. But if you have BILs and SILs, the likelihood of each sibling ending up in the same place every year (or every other year) is remote. Your ILs will have to learn to deal with this. An invitation to spend time with them at the holidays is not a summons. Not everyone has the luxury (time off, money, etc) to spend time with family over the holidays. It's not a requirement to have everyone. Some years you just extend the invitation, try to find a time that's easier for most people, and whoever can come, comes.

[ssmjlm]

We don't, we always host because it's easier and DH's family sux.

Last year Christmas was such a shitshow with my BIL whining about things that I basically told DH they could all fuck themselves or show up for brunch at 11 bc it was E's first Christmas and for one year we were on her schedule.

This year I don't care who does or does not show for Christmas.

As for extended family gatherings that is usually the weekend before the holiday n

[pinkdutchtulips]

my family is literally spread out everywhere (CA, MI, WY) so getting together for the holidays is a RARE occurrence.

when my mom lived in CA, then h and I would alternate holidays bt his (which live w/in 30 mins of each other) and my mom 90 min away. if we did thanksgiving at one, we'd do Christmas w/ the other and vice versa. we weren't ALWAYS doing one holiday w/ my family and never his and vice versa.

w my mom now in WA state and h being an xh ... its hard to navigate the holidays (fwiw thankfully I have a sister 3 1/2 hrs away w a new baby so dd and I are heading there for thanksgiving AND Christmas !)

[Blue Moon]

My H's family pretty much all lives in our town, and my family lives 2 hours north. We finally settled into a routine a few years ago that I think we'll keep up for the foreseeable future. We alternate Thanksgiving/Easter so one of those holidays is spent with each of our families within a year. We host H's family for Christmas Eve at our house. Christmas morning is spent as a family in our own house. We leave early Christmas afternoon to spent Christmas Day/night at my parents house. We sleep over and head home the next day.

[niq]

The norm among msniq's family has been that Xmas eve we open some presents with her dad, exstepmom, & siblings, and then on Xmas day we open presents with her mom, stepdad, and siblings. Typically there are more presents and more presents per person on Xmas day.

I gave up on trying to keep the score even between my mom and dad when there was literally no place for me to sleep at my mom's. This isn't an issue anymore for obvious reasons, and going forward I'm just going to send mom on vacation whenever dad visits.

I love the holidays, I swear!

[lindyanne]

DH wanted thanksgiving and I wanted Christmas so that's what we did. DH's family is local so we also celebrated with them the weekend before or after Christmas. This all changed when my sister separated because she has to share with her ex and my other sister isn't coming now bc she wants to be home now that she has a son. But we did what we wanted.

[redheadbaker]

You have my sympathy. S.O.'s mother pulls the same passive-aggressive shit. We usually alternate holidays. One year, we'll do Thanksgiving with her, Christmas with my family, and switch the next year. Two years ago, she sent S.O. a text, inviting us for Christmas. Since we had done Christmas with my family the year before, he accepted. She replied with, "I'm surprised. I figured you were going to her parents'. You know, since you never brought him over while I was sick [with cancer]."

WTF, lady? We go see my parents once a month because THEY CALL US AND INVITE US OVER. You? Never call. And anytime you did call, you complained about how you were so weak and tired and sleeping all the time. Was that supposed to come across as a subtle hint that we should bring our active toddler to your home to visit?

[holly116]

FIL's extended family gets together at my inlaws on Xmas Eve. MIL's extended family, the Saturday before or after Xmas, depending on who's hosting. That all happens 100 miles from our house.

After driving 100 miles up and back 4 out of 5 days when DD was 4 months old, I have since stuck my heels in and want to wake up in our own beds and have Christmas morning at our house always.

SIL just got remarried and has a DS with her ex and has to break up the holiday so there's more to coordinate around this year. We decided to tell my inlaws that we will come up once. We don't care when, the weekend before, the 23-24th, the weekend after, whatever. They can tell us when, but it will only be once. We have three kids and there's a chance of crappy weather, I'm not driving a million miles up and back over and over again.

My dad is super easy going and we'll get together at one point with him and his girlfriend. I'll probably invite them over for actual Christmas Day because that's the reward for not being a holiday family asshole in my book.

Usually there's all kinds of jostling around my mom but I think I'll just stay on non-speaking terms for the time being.

[Deleted]

Because "you do you" never works in real life here is best advice:

H's family has started picking a weekend either directly before or after the holiday. He has six siblings all with jobs that require holidays. It's a giant PITA to hit a holiday and everyone together for more than 10 minutes. It's so much more relaxing. We're all not in the middle of holiday stress and if we do it earlier it gets us geared up for upcoming festivities which are more fun knowing that family event is out of the way.

They've also done NYs day if we can't make a weekend work and that's pretty fun too. We're all old with little kids so we're not really raking in the New Year's Eve joy anyways..ha.

Friday nights later have also worked. Leave work at noon or they're all within a 3 hour drive so they are there by 7ish. People can then leave the next morning and carry on with whatever or stay for the weekend.

There is usually some f*ckery and drama surrounding gifts and what to eat and what color napkins MIL should buy and on and on. That sort of stuff when it crosses my inbox or text messages I just ignore or say, "Let me know what happens. I'm good with anything!" Ha. I have no time for that.

My own family is fraught with actual drama and weird work schedules too. Ours changes all the time. We usually do Christmas Day later in the afternoon though. There's only 3 of us and none of us have time for petty drama so we just make something work. Other holidays (Like this Thanksgiving) that just won't work we schedule a waterpark hotel weekend later on and have a party.

[greycat]

Both our families are local. We do Christmas Eve with MH's family and Christmas Day with mine. We alternate Thanksgiving. We used to do Easter with both (his family for brunch and mine for dinner) but I think we are going to start alternating. It's worked for the most part. Sometimes we get crap but oh well.

[anna7602]

My siblings and I all spend Christmas Eve at my aunt's house every year as we have every year since before we were married. There have been very few exceptions to this. I don't know how my brothers convince their wives, but I imagine that the flexibility to do whatever they want on Christmas Day plays into the agreement.

Some years, DH has had to work on Christmas Eve and can't travel that day, so I go without him. It's not my preference, but it's not a big deal to him.

We spend Christmas Day with my parents and other extended family, depending on the year. If no one else in the area is hosting anything, some years we've headed back home on Christmas Day itself. It's a pretty chill day to ride a train- no crowds, etc.

So, basically, we always travel and are always at the mercy of other people's plans.

[Deleted]

Can you just start picking and choosing activities?
That's a lot of parties to attend.
I just start typing back with, "We will do X but we'll be at Y during EVENT. Go ahead and say hi to everyone for us."

You can only do so much.

AND don't explain it, argue it, justify it or feel bad. It just plays into the passive aggressiveness. Just keep repeating your plans. 

What does your H say about this? What does he want to do? I usually let H decide his family events (after they've blown up my phone with the 43643643 text message ha). I hate the never ending drama, but it's important to him, so I just ignore all the chatter beforehand and appear.  

[sjh722]

Nov 13, 2014 19:58:25 GMT -5 @this said:

Is the flake brother the one dating Candy? Or was that your brother?

You know whatever you do, you owe us pictures of Candy's outfits, blue car, and turtle purse, right?

Well, H and I each have a flake brother. Candy is dating my brother.

I am crossing my fingers that the turtle purse comes to thanksgiving.

[jeaniebueller]

We don't. We spend Christmas at home. If anyone wants to see us, they come here. We do the holiday with FILs side a few weekends before. I do thanksgiving with my side.

[dcn]

My three sisters and I either spend Christmas with our immediate family or in laws. Then my family does a get together usually the weekend after and whoever can make it goes. We live too far away so haven't been with either family in a few years.

[ilikedonuts]

Everyone is local (well within an hour of us). We do Christmas Eve day with my MIL/FIL (DH is an only child) then Christmas Eve with his family (basically whatever side mom or dad is the closest that year). Christmas morning we are at home now that DD1 knows what's going on and my parents/siblings can come to us if they want (my parents like literally 5 minutes away now so its close for them) Then Christmas day afternoon is always with my family. I am 100% not flexible about that because its at my grandparents and they are the only living grandparents between me and DH and its just a really big deal to me. DH's family never did anything major on Christmas (other than him doing stuff at home with his mom and dad) so it worked out well.

But I 100% do not have the patience of trying to coordinate crap with relatives. Tell me what you are doing and I'll let you know if it works for us. The end.

[h]

We do Thanksgiving with one side of the family and then Christmas with the other side, then flip flop the next year so that we spend every other Christmas with each set of grandparents. All our siblings do the same and are on the same rotation. My parents and ILs generally go on a trip over Christmas on the years they don't host all the kids/grandkids. We have been doing it this way for 13 years, 7 of them as parents, and it has worked out well.

[sjh722]

Nov 13, 2014 20:47:37 GMT -5 ilikedonuts said:

But I 100% do not have the patience of trying to coordinate crap with relatives. Tell me what you are doing and I'll let you know if it works for us. The end.

This is what I am most pissed off about.

I will coordinate exactly two gatherings: one with my immediate family and one with H's. I want some time at home with H and DD to open presents and do stuff together. I am not going to spend every Christmas Day of DD's childhood on I-94.

Everyone else, just schedule it and we'll come if it works for us. That's what my whole side does, and it's much more laid back. If you make it, great. If not, no problem. It's usually a week before or after Christmas.

H's mom gets PISSED if everyone cannot attend every event and she wants all the dates you are committed/not committed from about December 20 - December 30, and it pisses her off every year when I say, "Don't plan around us! We'll come if we can!"

I was ready to lay into H about how he needs to go over there and talk to them about how this shit needs to end, and I am sick of hating December because of 95% her, and then he had something kind of big come up at work this afternoon so I am internally seething. I did give him a one-sentence summary as a heads up because ILs were dropping off some stuff we're borrowing for a party, and I was not going to be caught off guard if they brought it up again.

[ilikedonuts]

As long as you plan on doing one thing, then you have nothing to feel bad about. Making someone commit to multiple days just in case someone gets sick is RIDICULOUS.

I 100% crushed my MIL's christmas hopes and dreams and I don't feel bad about it. She was unrealistic and I wasn't going to plan my life around her. Nor was I going to let her play Santa but that's a whole other story lol

[Deleted]

Nov 13, 2014 20:55:59 GMT -5 sjh722 said:

Nov 13, 2014 20:47:37 GMT -5 ilikedonuts said:

But I 100% do not have the patience of trying to coordinate crap with relatives. Tell me what you are doing and I'll let you know if it works for us. The end.

This is what I am most pissed off about.

I will coordinate exactly two gatherings: one with my immediate family and one with H's. I want some time at home with H and DD to open presents and do stuff together. I am not going to spend every Christmas Day of DD's childhood on I-94.

Everyone else, just schedule it and we'll come if it works for us. That's what my whole side does, and it's much more laid back. If you make it, great. If not, no problem. It's usually a week before or after Christmas.

H's mom gets PISSED if everyone cannot attend every event and she wants all the dates you are committed/not committed from about December 20 - December 30, and it pisses her off every year when I say, "Don't plan around us! We'll come if we can!"

I was ready to lay into H about how he needs to go over there and talk to them about how this shit needs to end, and I am sick of hating December because of 95% her, and then he had something kind of big come up at work this afternoon so I am internally seething. I did give him a one-sentence summary as a heads up because ILs were dropping off some stuff we're borrowing for a party, and I was not going to be caught off guard if they brought it up again.

I'd let her be mad at this point. Throw her three dates that work, let her plan from there. and do as you wish. You tried. 
She's probably always going to be p*ssed at you about something, so better this than something else.  
Sometimes people try to pass off their inflexibility as flexibility, kwim? so I'd just throw enough their way to appear flexible and be done.

[jena]

This year I would like to give thanks for being an only child from a small family.

Thanksgiving and Christmas are at my house. My mil, my mom, my dad and dad's gf will all be gathered at my table for thanksgiving and Christmas. Sure my mom is mildly crazy and there's tension between my parents even 35 years post-divorce, but it sure does make scheduling easier. The only question mark we ever have is where SS will be and when.

[undecidedowl]

We don't. Too bad, so sad, they can get over it.

I feel no need to commit myself to some family share schedule so we just decide each year what will work for us and let everyone know. MIL will always complain so no use trying to please her.

[ladygrey]

Nov 13, 2014 20:20:27 GMT -5 greycat said:

Both our families are local. We do Christmas Eve with MH's family and Christmas Day with mine. We alternate Thanksgiving. We used to do Easter with both (his family for brunch and mine for dinner) but I think we are going to start alternating. It's worked for the most part. Sometimes we get crap but oh well.

Same here. We did a few holidays with both families in the same day when we were first dating, but it's way too much food and too much family togetherness in one day. 

[Odonata]

I want to second what VillainV said. Every year is different and you have to do what is best for you that year. Both sides of our family have mothers who *must* have all the kids together every holiday. It just won't work. It can't work. It is not possible so my mom and MIL just have to deal with it. Everyone on each side lives in the same area and at first H and I would do dinner at one family and then dessert at the other family for every single holiday. I started to hate and stress about the holidays so much because of this. We always were looking at the clock in anticipation to leave just to please everyone. So we put a stop to it. No need to ruin my holiday for anyone else's expectations.

On my side my brothers all have ILs they need to accommodate as well so it's rare but awesome if we all land at the same holiday table together. My mom has learned to cope because there are three of us telling her "oh well, deal". My MIL on the other hand has a harder time b/c H is the only sibling with another side of a family so it seems like we are the ones always "ruining" the holiday by not being there. But, she'll just have to deal.

We usually alternate the holidays but that's not a rotation I make known, because like VillainV said, if you have a rotation you are locked in and it makes it harder to accommodate situations because now it seems one family is entitled to your presence on certain years, and they aren't. This year we are doing Thanksgiving at the ILs for a second year in a row. The reason being is that H has a cousin that moved to CA a few years ago and we rarely see her except Thanksgiving. Though not enough to skip my family's year, this year I had DD and cousin is DYING to see her. My family all live 10 min away and if they want to see DD they can drive over here and see her whenever. Cousin is only in town for a few days of the year.

[mushmouse]

Once my siblings started having children we stopped getting together on Christmas Day.  It was just too hard to make the kids travel and everyone also had to plan to see their inlaws.  We started getting together either the weekend before Christmas or the weekend after Christmas at one siblings house.  We all vote on the day sometime leading up to it and everyone comes.  It is fantastic, stress free and like having a whole extra Christmas.  It's the best thing we ever did.  Unfortunately now we see my husband's brother's family on Christmas Day so we have to deal with the hell of leaving the house on Christmas Day with a small child.  But at least we don't have to choose between families.


ETA - my brother has a huge dinner on Christmas Eve as well that everyone is invited to.  I went for years when I lived locally but stopped when my son was born and it was too hard to get there.  He doesn't consider it mandatory, it's separate from the big day we all get together but everyone is always welcome.

Another edit!  Rotating a holiday CAN work.  We do that for Thanksgiving.  All of our siblings got on the same rotation and we all get together every other year for Thanksgiving.  One sibling never comes but that's on her (traveling is always somehow farther and longer for her than it is for us all to get to her house).  It's harder for Christmas maybe because you still don't necessarily want to leave the house.  But we have rotated a holiday successfully!

[krystee]

We don't split equitably and I feel very guilty. H's parents live 1,400 miles away and holiday airfare is so expensive. We did Christmas with them last year, but it was the first time in four years we were there ON Christmas. We used to go a few days later, which saved us about $600 on airfare. This year we are going there for Thanksgiving, but not around Christmas. Next year we are letting his family know that they are more than welcome to come to us, but we can't go there (my mat leave requires me to use all vacation days before it kicks in so I'll have no time off). I have no idea what we will do after that.

It makes me sad that if we have Christmas mornings at home, they will never have their son or grandson with them on Christmas. As a future mom, that is just heartbreaking to me. But at the same time, I loved having Christmas traditions at home and would have been sad to be out of town for Christmas.

I think we'll just go there Dec 26 most years and hope that's good enough.

[Deleted]

DH's family is all here; mine is a 3.5 hour drive away. We alternate years. On his year, we do Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with his family, then drive up and spend Boxing Day and the next day or two with my family. On my year, we drive up on Christmas Eve and drive back on Boxing Day.

No one whines. We've done it for ten years. We used to drive on Christmas before kids, if we wanted, but we decided to stop that nonsense when we had kids because it was always doing the driving on deserted roads after dark.

As for the other kids: DH has two single brothers that do all holidays here, obviously. I have an older (half) brother that never, ever comes for holidays with his family (he will not do holidays with my dad, and they really never drive with their kids - he's a 7 hour drive from my parents). I have an older sister with a family in Australia. They've been home for Christmas once, as that's just how the visit worked out. My younger brother is recently married, but he lives close to home and so does her family, so they see everyone every year. My family is small enough to join SIL's family at my brother's house and they're not too crazy (although her dad did HOLD MY BABY WHILE HE HAD THE FLU last year).

[ECB]

Nov 13, 2014 20:55:59 GMT -5 sjh722 said:

H's mom gets PISSED if everyone cannot attend every event and she wants all the dates you are committed/not committed from about December 20 - December 30, and it pisses her off every year when I say, "Don't plan around us! We'll come if we can!"

You have to learn to just let her get mad. 

The ONLY thing I would suggest DH say to her is that "mom- w/ 4 kids and we're all (most?) married/ in relationships, it's going to be next to impossible to get us all together.  EVERY year we deal with this and EVERY year people get upset. We ALL need to accept that ALL of getting together every year isn't going to happen.  SJH and I aren't going to jump through hoops every year and commit to a bunch of events.  You can get upset about this if you want, but this is what we need to do for ourselves.  We have a lot to juggle and we need to alleviate as much of the stress as possible.  I hope you can understand this".

Then let it drop.  If she still gets mad, oh well.  Let her.  You can't dictate how she feels or reacts.  you and DH have to find a way to accept that this will be her reaction and find a way to let it roll off of you. .

[sjh722]

Nov 14, 2014 9:00:04 GMT -5 ECB said:

Nov 13, 2014 20:55:59 GMT -5 sjh722 said:

H's mom gets PISSED if everyone cannot attend every event and she wants all the dates you are committed/not committed from about December 20 - December 30, and it pisses her off every year when I say, "Don't plan around us! We'll come if we can!"

You have to learn to just let her get mad. 

The ONLY thing I would suggest DH say to her is that "mom- w/ 4 kids and we're all (most?) married/ in relationships, it's going to be next to impossible to get us all together.  EVERY year we deal with this and EVERY year people get upset. We ALL need to accept that ALL of getting together every year isn't going to happen.  SJH and I aren't going to jump through hoops every year and commit to a bunch of events.  You can get upset about this if you want, but this is what we need to do for ourselves.  We have a lot to juggle and we need to alleviate as much of the stress as possible.  I hope you can understand this".

Then let it drop.  If she still gets mad, oh well.  Let her.  You can't dictate how she feels or reacts.  you and DH have to find a way to accept that this will be her reaction and find a way to let it roll off of you. .

This is the fight we had last night.

I was team you.

He shut down and got mad that I hate his family. (Well, right now they make it really hard to like them, when they are only nice to me to see DD, and are constantly passive-agressive with EVERYTHING down to misprouncing her name and saying they aren't. It's Elizabeth. It's one of the most common names in the fucking English language. Quit saying LIZ-a-beth and trying to turn it into Lizzy.)

You know how people say you don't have an IL problem, you have a H problem? Right now I have a H problem because he won't talk to his parents. They ALL avoid conflict like the plague and then we we do get together it is the uncomfortable Olympics because there's so much tension in the room.