So, what do you expect will happen once your ds gets married??
@HImom im confused. Where did/does your husband’s dad live?
All of my immediate families live locally but we’re not getting together for big holiday. So it’s always a small group. Less stress that way.
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Biggest pain in the first 11 years of my marriage was the intense pressure to make sure we alternated holidays every year with both sets of our families. And intense pressure for us to travel to visit them. It was really hard when you don’t have any paid time off since you’re brand new at your job and stuff like that.
When we had kids, we had moved to another state. And couldn’t afford airplane travel at all. And neither of us had any PTO left since the kids were in daycare, got sick all the time, and used up our PTO. So the grandparents had to come to us…my parents were always resentful of this but they were never willing to gift us with plane tickets, so there you go.
I think that the requirement for the entire extended family to get together for every Christmas is asking a lot and a little ridiculous. Everybody needs to be a little flexible and not get bent out of shape if somebody can’t make it. Same for if everybody decides to do a big get together in the summer…stuff happens sometimes and not everyone will go. It’s ok.
We had a quiet Thanksgiving with just our immediate family and my MIL this year. My sister lives within a 90 min drive from us, yr she was doing a huge Thanksgiving with friends…16 people. And I wasn’t in the mood to hang out with 21 people, the vast majority of whom I don’t even know.
There isn’t one right answer to this. Be willing to do things differently sometimes. As for me, when my kids are out of the nest, if they can’t come to us, I don’t care if the tradition has been to “always” go to Great Aunt Mabel’s house…if my kid has to work the day after Christmas, we’ll, yeah, I can go have Christmas at my kid’s place. It’ll be fine.
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My FIL lived with MIL in HI, until she died when the kids were very young—S was 3 and D was 1. FIL then moved to SF to be with my SisIL as living alone in a house with all the memories of MIL was too hard. He lived in SF until he died about 5 years later.
For S and fiancée, they will have to figure out how to navigate the holidays. I’m surprised they have never chosen to celebrate Christmas together so far. I would be willing to travel to SC to celebrate with them and her family but S really likes being in HNL with our extended clan, as does D.
I am and have always been curious as to when S and fiancée will choose to have Christmas together. They’ve been together for over 5 years and always spend Christmas apart. It has always surprised me. I mentioned that when I first met fiancée 5 years ago, since she talked about how important the holiday season is to her and i know it’s important to S.
Not saying you and your H are not doing this, but sometimes it takes the blessing of the families to the couple to “do as you like” to give them “permission” to pick one family and enjoy the holiday together. THAT can be a priceless gift!!!
Or it may just not be important to them to be together for a holiday for a few days when they are together the other days of the year.
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I have a new DIL this year. Every year (except the really bad covid year) before they were married they spent both Thanksgiving and Christmas with us. Her family doesn’t celebrate the holidays together other than maybe a lunch together at some point not on an actual holiday. Given they always came to/with us before they were married, I was quite surprised when she vetoed both Thanksgiving and Christmas in our normal way. I am trying for “understanding and acceptance,” but I admit it’s been hard.
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I have two friends who married brother in a family with 6 kids, and all the kids lived locally. The MIL declared the Sunday after New Years to be ‘their’ Christmas. All kids, spouses, grandchildren attended that day and they all looked forward to it. They were then free to plan Christmas, New Years, the week between however they wanted, with the inlaw families, by themselves.
It worked for them, took away the pressure of scheduling Christmas eve, Christmas day, etc. , and running all over town for two dinners, little kids crying because they are tired, trying to fit it all in on one day. They got to establish their own traditions or continue with their own families.
The inlaws died a long time ago, but the surviving siblings (I know at least one has died) continue the ‘Sunday after New Years’ tradition because it is rather easy. Their kids and grandchildren come if they can. No pressure. (It’s also cheaper as they can shop the after Christmas sales for gifts!)
I realize this isn’t just a holiday thread, so will say the siblings see each other several times a year. One of my friends have a gorgeous mountain home and invites the siblings and families up in the summer but it is that ‘Sunday after New Years’ that is the real tradition. For the summer gatherings, usually all the kids and grandchildren can’t make it.
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That sounds great in theory. Everybody get together the weekend after new years.
Except that no one in my family lives within 6 hours of each other. And taking another weekend to travel somewhere for a family gathering would not be possible.
It only works if people can travel to each other for a weekend visit and within driving distance.
My nephew got married this year. With little notice and on a Sunday. One of his cousins made it. That’s all. One of my kids had covid but had surgery scheduled if they hadn’t contracted covid. The other kid was out of PTO. Would they have liked to come? Sure. But it wasn’t possible, even for a wedding. Especially with no time lead.
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@sbinaz
Sorry, decided to delete my comment. It just wasn’t productive.
deleting my comment since deb922 deleted his/hers and my comment no longer makes sense now.
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I have three siblings and ShawWife also has three. Growing up, my family always celebrated Thanksgiving and Passover with my aunt and uncle and our two cousins. When I got married, we would alternative Passover’s between her family and mine (and mine meant sometimes at my parents’ house and sometime at my aunt and uncle’s house).
Our kids used to come back for Thanksgiving and Passover (and school vacations) When both kids were living together (until this year), we flew to them on Thanksgiving. Now the oldest is married. ShawSon and his wife will stop here when they are on business and we will visit them, but so far haven’t celebrated holidays with them (they stayed on the other coast for Thanksgiving) and ShawD, who has moved back to our coast, went to visit friends in Mexico City over Thanksgiving. So we went to our cousins.
My MIL has a large property on which there have been a number of family weddings (ours was the first and ShawSon’s the most recent) and family reunions. She is trying to leave it to the family in her will in a way that it will be continue to be used for those purposes. I doubt that this makes economic sense, but we’ll see.
It’s a challenge when everybody is not in the same general area or even in the same state.
For example:
- DH’s aunt, uncle, sister, BIL, our niece & nephew live in southern CA. About 6-6.5 hr drive from us, depending on traffic.
- MIL lives hour and a half from us.
- my sister lives hour and a half from us.
- MIL’s cousin lives in OR. They’re very close, but due to distance & stubbornness on both of their parts, neither has been to visit each other for over 10 years and it looks like they’ll both die being stubborn and proud.
- my dad lives on east coast. He remarried 1 year to the day after my mom died from cancer. Mom died 12 yr ago.
DH’s relatives:
- BIL (DH’s sister’s husband) never wants to come here because he thinks it’s boring.
- now he no longer comes because he & my MIL can’t stand each other. AND because he’s having an affair for the past 2 yr with woman across the street, refuses to end it, but SIL can’t afford to get a divorce (neither can he).
- AIL & UIL - consider anything more than a 60-90 min drive to be ‘too far.’ We’ve been in our current location for 5 yrs. They’ve come one time.
- getting all of the ILs together takes an act of God.
- even when we are all in the same general geographic area (southern CA, for example), DH & I have to always be the ones who are flexible.
I’ve lost count the # of times that we were in San Diego with 1 set of ILs and other set of ILs are about an hour’s drive away and other set of ILs say that there’s no way they can drive “SO far” to come meet up with us, even though we drove over 6 hours one way just to get there.
…which has, in the past, often resulted in DH & I having to be willing to take extra days off of work in order to spend a couple of days with this set of his relatives and another couple of days with another set of his relatives, all the while schlepping my MIL with us, too (and she never offers to help pay for gas, but that’s a whole other issue).
Many times, we’ve gone on a short family trip to Disneyland out in Anaheim, which is 1 hour’s drive from where AIL & UIL are and it’s 1.5 hr’s drive from SIL & BIL. Tell them every time what our dates are, say that we’d like to meet up with them, remind them and all that. They say all the right things…“Oh that would be great, we’ll have to see” blah blah blah. Nothing ever comes of it.
We’ve stayed a few times with friends in southern CA who are about an hour’s drive from SIL, AIL & UIL and also an hour’s drive from Disneyland…SIL has even SAID on 2 occasions that she’d meet us at friends’ house at specific date & time. And then she doesn’t show up.
So we no longer make much of an effort beyond telling them when we’ll be out there and to let us know if they want to get together.
The Christmas right after I had breast cancer surgery, I wanted a drama-free Christmas and thanksgiving. We spent Christmas that year in southern CA w/our friends and had an amazing time. Didn’t tell the ILs. They found out after the fact and got mad (of course), didn’t care that I just didn’t have any more proverbial spoons left that year to once again be Miss Julie the Cruise Director of the Love Boat of our extended family.
SIL now comes to our state once a year around MIL’s birthday for a long weekend. She’s told us that’s all she can handle any more of her mother other than 3-4 days once a year. And that’s ok.
On my side of the family, I only have 2 cousins and because my dad and his older sister can’t stand each other, am not close with the cousins, but they’re normal and fine people…1 lives in WA, the other in WI. Extended family get-togethers with all of them have never been a “thing.”
After my mom’s death, my dad went into revisionist history mode and decided all of a sudden that my mom was emotionally abusive to him because she couldn’t and wouldn’t have marital relations with him while she was feeling terrible while going through weekly chemo and daily radiation treatments for pancreatic cancer (he seriously tried to claim to us that he was an abused spouse, I’m not joking). Within 3 months, he started dating one of her friends, who was still married at the time. And on the 1st anniversary of my mom’s death, they married each other (after the friend had gotten a divorce).
the last time that my father was here to visit me, my sister, and my 2 kids (his only grandchildren) was almost 8 years ago. It’s been an open invitation this whole time. He mailed to us all of the family pictures he and my mom had ever had. Photos of my kids that I’d sent to him. Didn’t act like he cared about knowing my kids anymore or having a relationship with him. Yet for some reason, thinks that my sister & I are terrible people because we won’t go fly there to him and kiss the ring. “Because that’s just how these things work, you see, the children come to visit the parents,” is his opinion.
My immediate family has rarely had the vacation time to spend my father’s mandatory 1-2 weeks visiting him. He’s fully retired, has lots and lots of retirement money in the bank. Could have come to visit us many times.
But he’d rather be right than be happy.
DH’s aunt & uncle? Would rather be right than be happy.
MIL? Same thing.
When my kids leave the nest and set up their own homes elsewhere, I am never ever going to subject them to all of the nonsense that DH & I have had to deal with trying to make all of our extended family satisfied.
…so that’s why my general advice is to not get all bent over it. Pick a date, a place, and a time, and then be like Elsa and let it go. If somebody can’t come, oh well, they’ll miss out…better luck next time. If somebody gets upset that somebody can’t come, oh well, stuff happens that you can’t control sometimes…better luck next time.
Decide what YOU want to do and then go do that. If almost all of your extended family are able and willing to get together once a year and manage to have a decent time with each other, then you are blessed and shouldn’t sweat the small stuff.
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It works for this family, partly because it was set up many years ago when the parents were still alive. It won’t work for everyone but it a suggestion.
If family isn’t local but they still want to get together, then pick a summer weekend and give lots of notice, keep the cost low (or have alternative hotel costs and activity costs). It won’t work for everyone, but this topic was about how to make it work (or if you do it). If you don’t want to do it, don’t.
I worked with a woman who was going to her family reunion one weekend. She had 50 first cousins (plus 9 siblings). Of course they couldn’t all be there but those who could attend did attend.
Then she told me she had another 50 first cousins on her father’s side of the family! She said “My H only has 4 first cousins, can you believe that!” I had to break the news to her that I only had 2 first cousins. She was in disbelief. How could that be? Well, my father had 1 brother who had 2 kids. The end.
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I have friends like this. They are simply incredulous at how few first cousins I have.
Honestly, I sometimes feel like people from large families pity those with small families. I don’t get that, but I think many think life/holidays/whatever simply cannot be fun without a large family. I don’t think that’s true.
Folks just don’t miss something they’ve never had.
Goes back to what I wrote before - all depends on what you are used to.
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It is also easy to say “here’s a solution”. - but when you have not only oodles of individual circumstances, but individual personalities, what makes sense….doesn’t always win!
There are a lot of families and/or family members who really are more focussed on the “me” and not the “we”.
And when it comes to our children there are probably not too many of us who won’t bend over backwards and then some to have time with them. Some on here will be exceptions, but there is a lot of “just smile and nod” going on - and it’s not really nothing new. I think my parents did that for us often as well.
But we can keep on TRYING to meet people in the middle with/for plans! 
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Honestly, I think my kids gather to be with their cousins and other loved ones (plus warm up), not especially for us. I honestly don’t think S feels he needs permission to do anything and celebrate wherever he prefers.
My D’s grew up with no first cousins. H was an only child and my brother had no children. Their extended family was their workmates, neighbors, and especially classmates- high school, college, grad school. Their H’s have sibs but only one child so far. The weddings of both D’s (one just recently) were wonderful. Extended family came and our side consisted of very long term friends of theirs. It could not have been better. Friendships (which one chooses) have been invaluable to both D’s and I am so glad they make friends easily.
In answer to the thread, when we worked kids came to us for visitation- never an expectation of holidays. Now that we are retired- we go to them. They however, do enjoy coming here at random times of the year.
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Neither my husband or I have any first cousins!
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