How Do You Share the Holidays with Extended Family?

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little girl opens a present wrapped with blue paper with snowmen on it; in the background are stacks of other presents wrapped in a variety of wrapping papers.

Here’s a fun question for today: How do you share the holidays with extended family? For example, does one grandmother get a visit during Thanksgiving break, and the other gets a visit during the December/New Year break? Do you save certain events for just your partner and kids? This could look a lot of different ways — and gets more complicated if someone is divorced.

{related: our favorite holiday traditions}

When I was a kid growing up in Ohio, my mother’s family was all local, whereas my father’s family was pretty distant (South Dakota and beyond), and my maternal extended family was much more “into” the holidays than my paternal extended family — in part because my grandfather had been a surgeon so he was often on call. My maternal family was also much more religious than my paternal family, and we all attended Catholic church every Sunday.

So growing up, we spent Thanksgiving Day with my maternal grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins — and we spent Christmas Day with the same crew. (One set of cousins would leave midday to visit their other parent’s extended family, who were also local.) We saved Christmas Eve for just our nuclear family, and my parents, brother, and I would have a fancy candlelit dinner with steak, lobster, and my (paternal) grandmother’s cranberry cake.

(My father’s family only visited us once or twice, and I only remember spending one Christmas out there.)

When I first got married, it took a bit of adjusting to realize that we should split the holidays with my husband’s parents — it just wasn’t the way I was raised!

It’s also been weird to realize that if people are visiting, you can’t really “save” an event just for your nuclear family — so goodbye, intimate candlelit dinner. Even opening presents on Christmas morning can feel a bit like an intimate event that everyone should be invited to if the visiting extended family has access to it.

(My kids tend to be up at 6:00 and opening presents shortly thereafter, though, so it isn’t really a time I’m ready for a big gaggle of guests…)

I should note also that my husband is an only child and my only brother is unmarried without kids, so we more or less have the grandparents’ full attention.

I’ve seen a variety of threadjacks like this, with readers being dismayed that their parents (or in-laws) expect them to travel multi-leg stops with a toddler, being annoyed parents or in-laws are crashing for a long time (or not having space for them to visit), or even being pissed that the parents are demanding dinner be served at a certain time or to certain specifications. (All for good reason, I think!)

So, readers, let’s hear it — what does this look like for your family, no matter which holidays you celebrate? If you have divorced parents or are divorced yourself, what does it look like? If you have siblings with kids (and in-laws of their own), how has that factored into the equation? Do you feel like the split between your family and your partner’s family is equitable? Were these holiday traditions negotiated, are they flexible, or have you just sort of fallen into a pattern that repeats each holiday season?

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Folks, is anyone else absolutely paralyzed by climate collapse and what the world will soon be like? I’m shifting to buying used only and have gone vegetarian but what else can I do to help? Now that I’m a mom, this all seems so much more important now.

My parents live a 10-hour drive away. We live 5 minutes away from my FIL and DH’s stepmom, and 15 minutes away from my MIL and DH’s stepdad. DH has a sister and four stepsiblings, all of whom have their own spouses and children. Two siblings are local, and 3 siblings travel from out of town (one for both Thanksgiving and Christmas, one for Christmas every year but never Thanksgiving, and one alternating Thanksgiving and Christmas with his wife’s family every year). There’s a very, very delicate balance of managing the holiday schedules of a large, blended family, and any change can upset the balance.

My mom has never been into Thanksgiving. My parents put no pressure on us to travel and have no interest in traveling, given that there’s only a 4-day weekend, and travel expenses and logistics are really rough. So, on Thursday, we have Thanksgiving with my FIL’s family, and on Friday, we have Thanksgiving with my MIL’s family.

We spend Christmas Eve with my MIL, starting with the “small” group of 14 opening gifts at her house and then driving over to her cousin’s house for their extended family get-together. This year, on another night that week, 11 of that group of 14 are also having dinner together.

We go to FIL’s house Christmas morning for breakfast and opening gifts with their group of 15. This year, we’re also all going to our city’s Christmas lights event the day after Christmas. (SIL texted everyone when tickets went on sale, and everybody decided to go.)

We keep the night of Christmas to ourselves. It’s a nice pause in the middle of the holidays. DH and I buy cheese and charcuterie from a local cheese shop so we don’t have to cook and make a nice board and a festive salad. And we all just rest and maybe play with our new toys or read our new books.

My parents wait it all out and then come visit 2-3 days after Christmas and stay until 2-3 days after New Year’s. We open presents with them when they arrive, go out to a nice meal one night, and have a fancy holiday meal at home on New Year’s Eve. FIL, DH, and my dad go to sportsball together, and Mom and I go to a holiday tea service at a local hotel.

We’re Jewish and my parents are local. Thanksgiving is historically at our house with my parents and in the past DH’s parents and sibling have also been invited and come maybe about half the time. Hanukkah is usually just us, my parents will come over if they’re around but are rarely there for all 8 nights. Both us and them tend to travel over winter beak because we’re a family of academics and it’s the only time to travel between July and March. Passover is traditionally with my in-laws since my MIL’s family has a huge gathering and my parents don’t really do anything to celebrate. However the last year we went was 2019 because of the pandemic and then my MIL had a huge fight with her siblings. Last year we just went to my in-laws and it was bleak. I much prefer the big gatherings because there are other kids for my kid to play with, and more adults to talk to who aren’t my difficult FIL. We’ll see what happens this year.

We live 15 minutes from my parents and 5 minutes from my father in law (mother in law passed when my DH was in college). We see my parents at least weekly, if not more (and they’re our backup childcare) and see my FIL monthly as he’s not as interested in family. I pivoted my career from a dream job to a meh job before we had kids so I could move back to my home city and my DH has passed up really great promotions for the same reason. We value proximity to family over just about everything else, but also are lucky that we’re both from an area with good schools, a good job market, fun things to do and an affordable COL. Our siblings and our extended families mostly live in the area too, though my kids are the oldest cousins by 6 years on one side and the youngest by 5 years on the other side.

So all that to say – this is infinitely easier for us than for families where travel is involved. We alternate years on Thanksgiving and spend Christmas Eve with my in-laws and Christmas dinner with my family. Both of our families are the more the merrier and are friendly with each other so if my parents don’t have Christmas Eve plans they’ll join us at my FILs and vice versa. Holidays are a mix of immediate family, generations of extended family and long-time family friends for us.

Also- we go to the same church as my parents and siblings so end up at Christmas Eve mass together but it’s not a planned family event.

Christmas Eve story, stocking and cookies and our family light show outing are immediate family only.

so we are jewish, so the whole christmas thing is not a thing. i always envisioned living driving distance to family but alas we live flying distance. we alternate thanksgiving every other year with my family and DH’s family. this was a big to do when we got married bc my MIL insisted she only cared about Thanksgiving, but Thanksgiving for DH’s family is only immediate family whereas Thanksgiving with my family includes extended family on my mom’s side, who we would never see but for Thanksgiving. While we don’t celebrate Christmas, since having kids this includes time off from school, so whoever we don’t see for Thanksgiving we see for December. While my in-laws are also Jewish, they don’t really celebrate any of the holidays, so we try to see my side of the family bc it is an extended family gathering with 30+ people from my dad’s side. We hadn’t seen everyone in-person since Passover of 2019 (actually really since my mother’s funeral in December 2019) and got together in September for Rosh Hashanah and it was so so special since 6 additional cousins have joined the family since. We also visit my in-laws for ~ 2 weeks in the summer (they have a beach house) so it’s not like they get less of us.