How to Manage Thanksgiving and Christmas as a Couple
So this dovetails to the previous topic of how to plan your vision for the holidays. This is more specific to planning holiday dinners and gift openings with extended family. When you marry your spouse, you open up your lives to more people to love and spend time with. The problem comes in during the holiday when there are multiple houses to go to for all the events. How do you decide where to go? How do you not feel stressed running from house to house? Here are tips to settle your schedule prior to the holidays.
Write down all the places and events
Write all of the places that you have an invitation to. Does grandma have a cookie night on Christmas eve? Does hubby’s Uncle John host thanksgiving and your parents? List all the events including all potential conflicts. We are just listing all the conflicts, we will determine which ones are attended later.
Now write down the things that you want to attend and do that are not family related, Ice skating, holiday lights, tree lighting etc. Those events are important to have listed so that you can weigh this in your decision making process.
Analyze the possibilities
What can you really do? What are the events/activities that if you don't do YOU/INTERMEDIATEFAMILY will feel like their holiday season was missing something? What are the new things you really want to add to the schedule. Schedule these things on the calendar in PEN. Meaning these are the events you will not erase from the schedule to accommodate less important things or obligations.
Drafting events
Now is the time to start filling in the rest of the schedule. As a reminder, the goal is not to jamm as many activities on the schedule as possible. It is to create a schedule of meaningful and intentional interactions for a memorable holiday season. With that being said, honesty is truly the best policy for this discussion.The goal is to eliminate conflicts AND to reduce ripping and running across town. It's ideal to just have one or at most 2 places to be on the holiday so you don't feel rushed and can be initial about time spent. Continue the conversation about all the events with what events matter. Which ones will truly be memorable for the whole family. Some questions that will help you get the honest answer on rather to attend or not:
Are you going out of obligation?
Do you actually have fun is it engaging for both you and spouse and kids?
Are there better times to connect other than on actual holidays?
My husband and I had a conversation early when we were seriously dating about what the holidays would look like. Obviously both sides of the family had multiple things going on the actual holiday and surrounding days. We had to compromise. Since I could never imagine Thanksgiving not being at my parents house, because they were the hosts, I chose thanksgiving. That was the holiday where all of my extended family came from both of my parents' sides of the family. For Justen, Christmas was a HUGE deal in his family. His Aunt does cookie night for all the kids in the family, the entire family and friends (he has a HUGE family) have Christmas Breakfast, and then Christmas dinner is at another aunt's house. Meanwhile on Christmas, I would just have dinner with my dad’s aunt and side of the family. I missed going there of course, however I couldn't compete with a multi day/multi event Christmas festivities on his side. Also, early in our relationship we lived in Cincinnati, my family is in Cincinnati and his family is in Columbus. There was no way we could stop by multiple events in different cities and not be wore out and basically not really connect at either because we had to rush to get somewhere else. You have to be willing to compromise and be truthful about where you get the most engagement and what will easily become a chore if you try to Jam Pack everything in.
Connecting in other ways
For the events you said no to, try to find other ways to connect. For example, if you cut going to your in-laws house on thanksgiving because there are no kids there and it's mostly for you and your spouse, schedule a time to have dinner with the in-laws on another day during the holidays. Can you step away at another house and do a virtual call to the other house to say happy thanksgiving? It takes only 5 minutes and a quick virtual hello can go a long way.
Can you rotate whose house you go to each year? Maybe Aunt Rose house this year but on the opposite years you go to your in-laws.
Some connections can just be a call or a visit when it's not the holiday throughout the year. You should not only connect with those you love around the holidays because tomorrow isn't promised. You don't want to put off a connection and then regret not being able to talk to that person if they were to pass away.
Final schedule
Once you agree on the schedule, stick to it. No changing because Aunt Rose guilt tripped you. Chances are you will be miserable thinking of what you could have been doing and won't be present at the event. Which is a complete waste of everyone's time. Be intentional about those you want to connect with in other ways.
How many homes do you go to on Thanksgiving and Christmas? What are your tips for managing the schedule?