Sunday, December 26, 2010

Sharing is Hard

This year marked our first set of shared holidays. For Thanksgiving, we did an early meal with Ryan's family and a late meal with mine. Aside from being ridiculously full, I think it turned out really well. The inconvenience for our families was relatively low and we each got to share and partake in the each other's family traditions. Christmas was a little more difficult.

Both of our families do a Christmas Eve get together but consider Christmas Day to be the Big Deal. This year, we spent Christmas Eve with Big's fam and Christmas Day with mine. Lesson learned: sharing is hard. Neither of our families were fully happy with this arrangement and neither were Big and I. Christmas is such an important holiday in both of our families, and there are so many traditions and expectations surrounding it that the change was kinda hard to take.  Ryan and his family made the big sacrifice this year by being the first to forgo spending the Day together. Our intention is to swap next year, and do Christmas Eve with my family and Christmas day with his. I'm hoping this will be a little easier next year, but I have my doubts. It makes me wonder what it will be like when Ryan and I start making our own traditions.

Any tips or advice on how to navigate these choppy waters? Do you or have you ever had to deal with sharing holidays? How did/do you handle it?

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