How do you ‘do’ Christmas?

[Nellynoo182]

So for Christmas this year we will have a newborn! Very exciting indeed! Our little one will be the first grandchild for both my parents and my husbands parents.

My husband and I both come from extremely loving and wonderful families who are so excited to welcome the first grandchild. This year we will just have Christmas to ourselves and tell family to pop in for baby cuddles!) but it has got me thinking - what do other people do for Christmas to see both families?

Our families only live 15 min drive from each other, so usually we do this:

Christmas Eve:
Lunch with his family
Evening in pub with my family and sleep at my parents

Christmas Day:
Open prezzies in AM with my family
About Midday go and see his family and open prezzies
3pm both go separate ways and have lunch with our own families
Evening - he joins my family

Boxing Day with his family
27th with mine

This has worked great for us over the years but I’m sure we won’t want to be shuttling round a little one so much in years to come! So I’m interested in what everyone else tends to do?

And I apologise in advance for talking about Christmas so early 😂

Christmas Eve around 3pm my mum and inlaws arrive. We eat at 5ish and then go to church. After church, we'll play a board game and hang up stockings.
They tend to leave on boxing day. I'm an only child so have to have my mum and of dh's siblings, one lives in another country and is usually on call over Christmas (dr) and the other always goes to her inlaws for Christmas and comes to her parents for boxing day.

Extended family all live in other countries so don't factor into Christmas plans.

Ahhh that will be so lovely OP. We did the same before kids but now 3 dc later we host in our house. We did the first Christmas with dc1 in my parents but after that we let them come to us. Still time when they are small to travel around if you want to but once they hit 3 its lovely to have people call to you

Christmas Eve either pantomime in the afternoon, snuggly Christmas film at night or a play at the park in the morning, crafts in the afternoon.

Christmas day very laid back Day at home with a fun breakfast and a snacky dinner for the kids with a nicer one for us. MIL often comes over. The kids playing with the new toys and often out on our street playing together for a little while.

Boxing day my family come over. I don't leave my house on Christmas day. My children don't get dragged from one hour to another. We relax, play and have fun.

Feast of St. Nick:

• we order takeaway
• kids leave there boots out for st nick (and recieve chocolate and xmas decor)

Christmas Eve:

• Christmas Eve boxes with new PJs and hot chocolate before bed
• DH insists on watching Father Ted for some reason
• When the kids are asleep we set everything up

Christmas Day:

• get up when ever the kids do (usually 7-8am)
• we open the wrapped gifts under the tree one at a time going clockwise (theres 5 of us and approx 50 presents so it takes a while)
• we cook and eat breakfast as the kids play with the easy accessible toys
• we clean up wrapping/boxes and unbox things, set them up, sort batteries etc...
• we start cooking dinner as the kids just play, usually xmas tv is on but no one watches it
• we sit down for dinner and eat
• we do crackers, family game at the table
• we do stockings after dinner and kids play a bit longer with the stocking toys (usually a game for them to do together) while eating sweets out of stocking
• kids look through their santa sack
• Thats usually bed time then so bed for the kid and we just attempt to relax among the chaotic bombsite

Boxing day we dont do anything really, Im still not sure what you are suppose to do on boxing day.

Sorry I realise I didnt answer the question about seeing family, simple answer... we don't.

We both agreed once we had kids we werent going to drag them around, I grew up not going anywhere at xmas and loved it, DH family did 1 year themselves and 1 year visting family in rotatation and he HATED the years visiting family.

We want the day to be relaxed and the kids to just be able to play in their own house, not having to worry about getting dressed and drive around and eat other people food (which you cant control, frankly Im not a huge fan of In laws cooking) while being polite to crabby kid hating aunt Karen and having to put up with being chased around by little nieces who want to play unicorn princesses when my boys want to play dino hotwheels but your either in their house so have to or are told to 'host' them so do what they want etc...

We are lucky that like you are families live in the same town.

Christmas Eve is all ours, Dh always off work, a traditional meal we always have.

Christmas Day we wake up in our own home, I could not imagine sharing that morning magic with Grandparents and alternating. A stocking is from Father Christmas, just token gifts and the rest is from us.

We then travel 45 minutes to my family first due to my sisters seeing their in-laws later on, we co-ordinated that 20 years ago. We have Christmas lunch and open presents afterwards so everyone gets to see everyone open their gifts.

Later we travel 15 minutes to Dh's family, open presents and have nibbles as they have their Christmas lunch at a restaurant. It used to be MIL cooking but sadly she is no longer with us. Everyone is stuffed from lunch so nibbles are lovely. We used to then put the children into their pyjamas, bundle them up in a coat and blankets in their car seats and head home around 7pm. Felt really magical. They are now teens so we leave much later and no pyjamaness needed.

Boxing Day is the day they actually get to enjoy their presents.

Re sprinkling snowy footprints, definitely do it so you can show them photos when they are older, much more convincing and keeps the magic alive.

We are always alternated years with the year spent with DH family being the year the whole extended family get together, cousins etc then the year we are with my family coincides with the year all his cousins etc do the same.
His family are very rigid and traditional so there's quite a fixed formula. They live 2 hours away so it's a case of go up around 23rd and stay to 27th and have a fixed itinerary.

My family on the other hand live 20mins away and have always been really relaxed - never really had a formula, some years growing up we were abroad, other years just us at home, others with extended family at theirs.

Now we have our second DC on the way I'm pushing more for spending it at ours and doing our own thing as I want to just relax and see the kids enjoy it all.

My choice would be:
Christmas Eve is films / Christmassy activities.
Christmas morning always just our little family (already doing this no matter where we are) to do main presents then see family for lunch and afternoon.

We see the family we are not spending Christmas Day with the weekend prior.

I don't think I've ever had two consecutive Christmasses the same!

No DC and "niblings" are all adults. We have/had six siblings between us so sometimes we visit one of them, sometimes some of them come to us, sometimes we spend it with friends or extended family, sometimes we go abroad etc etc No idea what we're doing this year yet!

(Christmas is the one time my inability to have children makes me really sad, it must be so lovely having little ones at that time of year. Any other time I'm fine 🙂)

We stay at home, but any family who wants can join us. Shuttling between families isn't much fun for DC at christmas, and being at home means you get to decide on your own way of doing Christmas rather than fitting in with someone else's.

We got to my parents on Christmas eve after work and exchange presents with them then. Christmas day is spent at home. Sometimes FIL will pop over on the evening as he usually has to run people home and we go to the inlaws on boxing day. Thankfully everyone lives locally, I like to be in my own home for Christmas day.

First year not working xmas since forever and I am trying to contain myself on things to do. The just 4yo would be overwhelmed if I try to do a daily activity for 2 weeks.
So I'm planning to scatter activities through out Dec.
Xmas eve we will make cookies and gift some to our neighbours, dinner, hot chocolate and movie.
Prepare food for santa and reindeer and bed. (Mum and dad will stay up to prepare food for the day after and have a drink in front of the fire)
Xmas day will be at ours as is the first year we own a house.
Presents/stocking then breakfast. Walk and a drink at the local pub. I don't think no one will join us so probably stuffed chicken, 568 trimmings and a tonne of chocolate.
Boxing day and 27th will go to inlaws.
My family lives in a different country so can't visit them

Alternate years. His family on Christmas Eve or Boxing Day, whichever they prefer. Your family on Christmas day.

Christmas eve: Usually spend a good chunck of the morning prepping christmas dinner. Will either go out for lunch or for a coffee and cake before some last minute shopping. Afternoon is for christmas movies, board games and some festive activities. When it starts getting dark we'll go for a walk with the dog and see all the lights. In the evening will go over to my sisters along with my mum for some drinks before going home, open the christmas eve box, watch polar express and put the kids to bed.

Christmas day: wake up when the kids decide to get up. Open gifts from santa, drink bucks fizz, have breakfast then start on gifts under the tree. Will pop over to my mums for some more bucks fizz, back home have lunch. His family will come over late afternoon for some drinks. My eldest two will spend Christmas night with their Dad this year so they'll head off around the same time. Everyone will leave and we'll usually just watch some festive TV and then go to bed.

Boxing day: we do absolutely nothing on boxing day. Apart from take the dog for a walk we don't leave the house. We just eat leftovers and watch movies all day.

After years of stress when we were younger (DH and I had family in two different countries), paying a fortune for flights or ending up with a newborn at Christmas in my in-laws house when I wanted to be with my mum, I swore I would never do the same to my kids. Since DS1 got married a few years ago himself and his wife have continued to come to us on Christmas Eve as it has always been a biggie here and DIL loves it too, they usually go to her family on Boxing Day, but we have had a shared Christmas meal with DIL's family on Christmas Day. Not always the most convenient as there are other kids (all adults now) and partners to accommodate but we have made it work. There is now a grandchild so neither set of grandparents want the others to miss out. We do all live a reasonable distance from each other though. It has made for some interesting meals; DILs family do an Aussie "seafood and cold" Christmas, mine would riot if they didn't get hot turkey, roasties and pigs in blankets. A buffet is the way to go.

DH is a shift worker and our families know that our Christmas plans will depend on his shifts. Our Christmas ends up being slightly different every year.

One year, DH was working Christmas Day so we did the full thing on Christmas Eve. DS was too young to know or care!

My mum lives a few hours away so this year we're going to her, as DH has 3 days off in a row (unheard of normally).

We usually spend Boxing Day at the in laws.

We have changed our plan Xmas Eve with my family then Xmas morning just me dd and dp then DSS will come to us at about 11 do presents then go to fil for Christmas dinner

We used to go to exH's family for Christmas, making a full week of it as it was a 9 hour trip in the car. There were Bad Feelings the year we announced we would be staying home with three DCs and all their toys and winter clothes, but ILs eventually got over it. We went for Thanksgiving instead as a means of reducing the impact of our announcement. My advice is to start as you mean to continue when it comes to Christmas with babies and toddlers and ILs.

Christmas Eve:
Mass at 6pm.
Festive dinner and nice dessert.
Opening gifts from family and giving gifts to each other.
Santa turns on the bread machine for cinnamon roll dough and washes up
Bed for all but Santa, who has business to take care of.
Santa makes cinnamon rolls and sets out to rise.
Santa hits the hay.

Christmas morning:
Tea and toast for Santa while cinnamon rolls bake.
DS makes big brunch.
Presents opened.

Lots of cooking for the rest of the day.
Dishwasher filled and emptied twice

Dinner at 7ish.

Boxing day:
No cooking or washing up whatsoever done by Santa.

Me and my DD usually get up Xmas eve and do her Xmas eve box. We then make Christmas cookies for Santa and we always go out and grab some last minute bits. My grand parents come over for a bit and then me and DD order Chinese food, and she has her Xmas eve bath with bath bomb and gets he Xmas eve pjs on. A wee hot chocolate and a cookie. Then we set the snacks for Santa and his reindeers out and head to bed. On Xmas day we usually get up and do presents a breakfast and then we visit my aunt uncle and cousins, then go round to my mums for dinner with my dad and sister and my other uncle. I am however working Xmas eve this year and it's really p*ed me off so it's still a touchy subject lol xxx

Just jumping on to point out The First Letters of Christmas The First Letters of Christmas [https://amzn.eu/d/cPB8oEv] which I'm pretty sure someone on the Christmas boards suggested to me.

It comes boxed and inside there is a story and then on alternate pages a blank 'letter to Father Christmas' with a carbon copy underneath, so you send the top letter and you have the copy underneath to keep so they can look back on their believing years 😀

I think its nice to start from birth, but comes in to it's own once they can write. FC always writes back of course!

It's not a bargain, but it's a beautiful lifelong keepsake.

Didn't manage a clicky link, sorry! But Google is your friend.