Marriage question--how do you handle Holidays?

1, don't keep score

2, I DGAF, so I let her call the shots on that.

3, DON'T KEEP SCORE

Our families live 6 houses apart so we can just go all the holidays with both easily.

I have it even easier. SWMBO has no family so it is only mine. And if she did they would be in another country across the Pacific. We're across the country from my family so going there usually wasn't an option unless it lined up with a transfer when I was military. Which it did a couple times. Now my mom comes out for one of the holidays and alternates which one, Thanksgiving or Christmas every year.

So far we alternate Thanksgiving and Christmas between our respective families and it has worked out well enough, though there is some discussion of trying to switch the alternating since we're always at her family's for Christmas when her one uncle who lives further away than we do isn' there since he comes on the alternating years.

Other holidays are one an as-needed basis. We undeniably end up spending more time at her family's simply because they live a 10-hour drive away and not a day's flight (or 2 day's drive), so it's much cheaper and we can take the dog with us. Her family is also a lot more close-knit than mine (she's largely the only one who doesn't still live in her home town- and who wouldn't move back even if offered millions of dollars, while my family has been far-flung since I left for college...). We both wish we could see my family more, it's just not practical- and everyone understands this.

We intend for the holiday schedule to change once we have kids- we've lamented that we never get to spend the major fall/winter holidays at our own house since we're the 'most mobile' of the family with not having kids to lug around, so once we do we're going to stay put a lot more.

Today, there's a few holidays we get together for, and they've fallen into a rather comfortable rut. Based in no small measure to the interests of the various families. My family loves 4th of July and makes a big thing about it. Her family is into new years and makes a big thing out of that.

In the beginning of our marriage, it was not so simple, and we created our own drama over this trying to balance things and make everyone happy. Stupid stuff, like 1 Easter + 1 Thanksgiving here = 1 Christmas there, etc.

When the baby was first born everyone wanted him there, and we tried to appease. After a Christmas spent in the car driving everywhere, playing with nothing, ending in screaming tears, we both slammed our feet down and refused it all.

That actually worked well for us. We'd finally "grown a pair" as it were, and established ourselves as top dogs with regards to our little family. Everyone backed off. Demands and veiled demands ended. No more "you are coming over, aren't you?". Instead, some polite offers were extended. It became "we would love to have you over after Christmas when it would best suit". That was much nicer.

And that's how we've gotten to where we are. Some general holiday patterns like the aforementioned 4th of July. Some alternating weekends after Christmas, in no particular order. Thanksgiving hither and yon and sometimes even naught.

My wife and I gave up trying to please everyone by going here and there and finally we both came to the same conclusion that we are not going to play that game any more. We stay home for all of them or go do thing with just our family. We have both made it known that our door is open to those that want to drop by and there will be plenty of food and beverages available.

It solved all those problems.

We like to stay home for Christmas.

For the rest, we carefully consider everything, and try our best to make everyone happy, and then usually I get yelled at for a while, then it's back to work!

foxtrapper wrote: When the baby was first born everyone wanted him there, and we tried to appease. After a Christmas spent in the car driving everywhere, playing with nothing, ending in screaming tears, we both slammed our feet down and refused it all.

THIS.

The part that really pisses me off are the comments about us coming to visit. Yet, when I tell them that I looked at the map and found out that it is the same exact distance from my house to yours as it is from your house to mine. They get the tilted puppy head look like that is news to them. Then I did a count of the trips in the previous year or two on how many times I visited them vs them visiting us. It was so skewed I told them they need to really think about how important it is to see us and then act accordingly.

We don't see them anywhere as often now and I am quite OK with that. It gets me pretty PO'd when I think of how one-way it was and how much vacation time and money we spent for this BS.

Them - "We have not seen you in so long".
Me - "We'd love to have you visit..."

End of conversation.

my wife's family is 4 hours away(except her parents, they're 10 minutes). they all get together(30+ people from grandparents down to little baby cousin things) on thanksgiving so we go up then every year. doesn't bother me, i don't want to see some of them more than once a year anyway and the rest we have a year of catching up to do. it's way more important to me to be home on christmas morning, especially now that we have kids of our own. i am not spending christmas sleeping in someone else's house and carting crap all over. so we do christmas at home and both of our parents and my sister and a couple other close family members come over for dinner.

it works out well, alternating would be a pain. my brother in law does that, and they wind up all over the place because even though they alternate between his parents and hers, her parents are divorced and live in ohio/georgia, her grandparents are in pissburgh, and they seem to end up in PA every time instead of every other time at the expense of spending time here. i don't care anymore, they can cart kids all over the eastern half of the country, it's their business - they live in orlando.