Are you obligated by family to travel for the Thanksgiving and/or Christmas holidays?

[evilmommie]

STORY TIME!

Read every bit of your story and can relate to it on so many levels! LIFE IS TOO SHORT for crazy family drama.

 

[1GoldenSun]

We used to go to Disney most years for Thanksgiving because it was one of the few times of year we all had vacation days. Occasionally we'd come back early (we live close to Orlando) and have actual Thanksgiving dinner with MIL because she loves Thanksgiving. She lives less than an hour away from us so it's not much of a hassle.

We always spend Christmas at home and no one has ever challenged it. My family's not like that anyway. They're all invited to our house if they want to come. At least some of them always do. Sometimes the company gets to be a bit much, but I keep a chair in my laundry room off the kitchen for when I need to get away and hide for a bit. I have an extra pantry off the laundry room so I come and go through there a lot, so no one really notices if I go in and don't come back out for a while. There should be another thread for dealing with holiday houseguests. I'll give it some time; I'm sure someone will make one!

 

[DisneyJamieCA]

Read every bit of your story and can relate to it on so many levels! LIFE IS TOO SHORT for crazy family drama.

Same!

And we made the decision about how we were going to spend our holidays before we even had kids. Nobody was ever happy anyway (came too late, left too early, etc) that we finally sat down and asked ourselves why we were doing it.

It IS ok to put your needs/wants first. Let people be upset if they want to be.

 

[Julie's Haircut]

I thought it was obvious I was whining about my first world problems and looking for others in the same situation to commiserate with?

Yeah, I suppose some people are not happy unless they're not happy.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

All of my family we see lives in town, my husband's family that we see mostly lives in town but he has relatives in STL area, a few in TX and a few in MN. For holidays we stay in town. That does not mean issues don't arise. Usually it's trying to split time between my family and my husband's family. My father-in-law does a separate Thanksgiving and Christmas thankfully although there have been a time or two it overlapped on Christmas and it was just not fun spending 2-3 hours here, move to the next place spend 2-3 hours there move to the next place and so on.

One year we did go visit the relatives in MN on Thanksgiving (and took advantage of Black Friday shopping at the Mall of America). My family is very chill with things, they understand everyone has their own lives and "you gotta do what you gotta do" is really a big motto. My cousin her and her husband go to IA to visit his family for Thanksgiving and then spend Christmas here. My other cousin him and his wife do things more on a priority level with the wife's family with ours being secondary. It's all gravy (pun intended lol) here on that. That is not the case with my husband's family. It's usually the source of conflict. The family that lives in STL sometimes they come here to KC but most of the time we just find a time between Thanksgiving and New Years to go to STL and do a Christmas thing there. That's about a 3-3 1/2 hour drive and isn't too bad. We're okay with that because it's not trying to do it all at once. We didn't do that last year due to covid but I'm not sure what the plan is this year.

I just asked my mom a few days ago and we are doing a family Thanksgiving this year (did not do one last year nor did we do a Christmas with my family) so we'll have to start talking about timing of everything really soon.

I don't think I would be up for all that travel all the time. I think I would be more likely to either pick one holiday and do that or alternate years especially if it's really starting to get to you. One big thing I was vocal about when my husband and I first got married is "hey we have our own traditions we can start". I think some traditions are honestly very heartfelt and meaningful and others are just pure stubbornness because that's the way it is. Traditions I am not the most fond of but realize they mean a lot to my husband's mom is reading the cards for whatever event (birthday, Christmas, etc) out loud and for Christmas it's going around in a circle opening gifts one person at a time. But if that tradition was traveling hundreds of miles that's not necessarily tradition, that's more "it's convenient for me kinda don't care if it's convenient for you".

 

[pfp258]

For the past 26 years my wife and I have been obligated to travel about 500 miles round trip for Thanksgiving and about 350 miles round trip for Christmas.

For Thanksgiving in my opinion it is ridiculous. My in laws are the ones that host, yet live 250 miles away from where they host. Every year they rent a small event hall, an old house converted into an event hall, and everyone goes there. In the beginning the in laws hosted at my mother in laws mothers house that the in laws owned. Once my mother in laws mother passed away and they sold the house no one there stepped up to host. They all just expected my in laws to continue to host and refused to travel.

Christmas is also a little on the ridiculous side. We always go to my brother in laws. His wife hosts a big Christmas Eve party primarily for their local friends and her parents. It was so hard when my kids were little. Having to somehow get all the presents there without the kids seeing. Eventually we started coming home on Christmas Eve getting home around midnight every year. It made for a less than relaxing Christmas morning.

Not once has any of the family we travel to offered to bear the burden of traveling, even on an alternating schedule.

I really wish we could start our own family traditions.

 

[pfp258]

For the past 26 years my wife and I have been obligated to travel about 500 miles round trip for Thanksgiving and about 350 miles round trip for Christmas.

For Thanksgiving in my opinion it is ridiculous. My in laws are the ones that host, yet live 250 miles away from where they host. Every year they rent a small event hall, an old house converted into an event hall, and everyone goes there. In the beginning the in laws hosted at my mother in laws mothers house that the in laws owned. Once my mother in laws mother passed away and they sold the house no one there stepped up to host. They all just expected my in laws to continue to host and refused to travel.

Christmas is also a little on the ridiculous side. We always go to my brother in laws. His wife hosts a big Christmas Eve party primarily for their local friends and her parents. It was so hard when my kids were little. Having to somehow get all the presents there without the kids seeing. Eventually we started coming home on Christmas Eve getting home around midnight every year. It made for a less than relaxing Christmas morning.

Not once has any of the family we travel to offered to bear the burden of traveling, even on an alternating schedule.

I really wish we could start our own family traditions.

Sounds like a choice, not an obligation. Why not just say no? Do you and your wife agree that it is too much or are you the only one that feel this way?

 

[MomOfDisneyPrincess]

One good thing about my ex hubby was that he didn't come with in-laws, at least parents, and since the rest of his family lived in Canada, we really were not able or expected to travel there, though we did spend our honeymoon there, so I met all of them.

My sister's hubby was expected to visit his mom on both holidays, leaving us never seeing my sister on the major holidays. She finally put her foot down after their first child came along and told her husband that his mom could travel here or he could go see her alone, but they were not traveling out of town over both holidays. His mom figured out she could visit longer if she came here, since she's retired and she visited often after that.

My brother and his wife just naturally traded off travelling and when they were with her in town in-laws, they were always up for alternating Christmas Eve and Christmas Day so they could be part of our family, as well as hers.

Each family should establish their own traditions and with this last year of dumpster fire life, it's a perfect time to set up some new boundaries with new traditions.

 

[disykat]

We don't travel for the exact holidays, but have always had a tradition of going to see family 450 miles away for the week between Christmas and New Years. We felt like it was the best of both worlds. We had a our own holday traditions at home with friends plus a lovely family tradition.

We're struggling with this with our own kids. We do not expect our adult kids home and thought we were very flexible, but our married son and his wife live only about an hour away and always prefer to make their own plans with no alternative date family plans. I find it surprisingly hurtful. I thought we might spend an occasional holiday together at least before they have kids since they live close, but no dice. Fortunately our other son and his girlfriend still are interested in making holiday plans with us sometimes, but of course rotate plans with her family, etc. Once we're fully retired we need to establish some other traditions, hopefully involving travel, for the holidays when all our close friends are with their own kids, so we're not sitting at home just the two of us having movie marathons!