How did you celebrate Christmas if your DH/DP doesn't believe in it?

[scouserabroad]

Dh is muslim & grew up in Algeria, I am a sort-of catholic from near Liverpool. He doesn't believe in the religious side of xmas but yesterday I did make Christmas dinner, and we all exchanged presents etc. He happily goes along with it but it feels wrong somehow, he never celebrated Christmas in any shape or form until the age of 31 when we got married & had the DDs. It's the same in reverse for the muslim festivals, I go through the motions but it's not like it's supposed to be.

Is it always like this in mixed race/culture/religion families, what does everyone else do?

I went to church with DH for the service yesterday, although I am a muslim. A chance to be in a place of worship that isn't the mosque was rather lovely!

Don't beat yourself up over it - I think it is fine to go through these for the sake of your partner/spouse and to be supportive of their religion; prvoded that there is the underlying understanding that God isn't more or less wonderful just because you have a different way of celebrating faith.

But Christmas will necessarily have a more secular diamension where one is living in a Christian country (often Muslim festivals have the same dimension in largely muslim countries) - so it is a time of family gatherings as well as a religious festival, so I think there is no harm in enjoying the festivities for their own sake as well.

Azul, scouser! I think that's about all you can do. My ex handled christmas dreadfully, he never wanted to come out and say that he hated us celebrating it, so he would just do his best to scupper it, criticise everything, bully us into not doing christmas at all. But he is just dreadful at relationships/being married.
To be fair, he didnt celebrate any festivals either.

[gets back to thread weeks later]

azul nightynight! that is my only word in tamazigt (sp??) apart from houth (fish! why??)

I'm not religious, nor is my family so it's not really a problem, We all enjoy the family aspect of it and don't worry about the religion!

Hi...

I was brought up in a Mixed household and altho my dad is Muslim he isnt particularly religious and my mum not particularly Christian altho we were brought up as Muslims in as much as ticking boxes on forms and going to Mosque with my nan but not to Church with my other nan and no pork etc. We always had Christmas but it was always about family, rather than religion, abotu eating (which Turkish people love and it takes about 5 hours at the table) and presents, my cousins (who are also Turkish) always come to us and we have a massive family dinner and it is loads of fun.

My DH is Bengali and not that religious either but he always trys to scupper the idea of a xmas tree he point blank refuses... before we had kids it didnt bother me but this year i bought a small table top one as i didnt address it in time, but next year i will have a proper tree because frankly the tree has nothing whatsoever to do with Christianity, altho the conifers did have a not so good conotation in Islam.