Deciding where to spend Christmas

[SnuggyBuggy]

How do people negotiate what they are doing for Christmas?

Without wanting to write an essay my MIL is sort of the family matriarch who always hosts at Christmas. My DH has a family member who literally never had a Christmas at home growing up for example. It's just the done thing to go there for Christmas.

I'm not completely against going to my in laws at Christmas but I don't want to do it every single year. However my DH says he doesn't like small Christmases and we don't have anyone else to invite. I'm happy to invite and host his family but I know that they will say no.

It may well still be August but ILs are going to have the conversation about Christmas plans in the next week or so. Ugh how would you resolve this.

We do the same ever year and it works very well for us.

Xmas day: DH, DDs and I spend the day at home. DSD comes round for breakfast / morning. MIL comes round after church for the day. DH and I generally share the cooking.

Boxing Day: DH, DDs and I go to my parents.

You sound wonderfully considerate OP as do most posters. I do think it is unfair though that one pp resorts to name calling your husband (mummy's boy!!) for wanting to see his parents but there are the usual female posters who always go home to their parents because it is what they have always done and no one name calls them (although a lot of us notice the double standards).

I don't feel DH is a mummy's boy. I think the problem is that I hate long car journeys in heavy traffic and I've never worked in a place that shuts down for Christmas week. I've previously said I will travel if I can get some time off but otherwise no as I want to relax for the few days I have off.

I'm more annoyed at my in laws for being inflexible and unwilling to ever travel to us despite being retired.

We always go to my mums for breakfast, we arrive open presents, eat then we’re on our way. For quite a few years we would then go to MILs which is approx 2hrs drive. As our DD’s have got older we have stayed at home, we decided it wasn’t fair on them going here there and everywhere and not getting chance to play with their presents. We still go to my mums but at home we operate an open door policy, we’ll be home and if you want to come you’re welcome. Most years MIL has come to ours and it’s worked quite nicely. We do have DD’s birthday on the 28th as well so tend to have a quite day Boxing Day so the DD’s aren’t overwhelmed.

We had this and got caught in a rotation loop between three sets of our parents, when we had kids we said that we would start always spending Christmas Day itself at our house and everyone was welcome to pop in. Instead of everyone popping in what we now do is have a few mock Christmas days in the run up to Christmas. It works so well, we have a turkey dinner and open all the presents to each other, it spreads out the presents for the children and makes the season seem much longer. Highly recommended!

I typically see my family earlier in December because they live 4 hours away (more like 9 hours when traveling at Christmas!) and do some sort of meal.