Christmas (i know I know)

[FreeSpirit89]

Hey all,

Me and DP are looking at a court order for extra access over the holiday periods due to being unable to agree to any with DSDs mum.

What do you with Christmas? When does Santa come? Dp wants too have Santa come on Boxing Day morning so he can have an normal Christmas with her.

So can I ask how you deal with blended family Christmases with step children and your own children

Thanks

We have alternate Christmases...we always did stockings here on whatever day dss was here because his mum didn't do them at all.

Alternate Christmases were sooo much better than picking him up halfway through the day.

We have all the kids for Christmas every year (mine and DP's) as neither of our exes seem to want them especially.

It's lovely having them all. The only difficulty the one that Swissfamily describes - the DSC's mum does them an entire re-run of Christmas on a different day (or sometimes does it early, before Christmas) complete with stockings and santa. Whereas my ex takes the view that our DC have had Christmas with me and doesn't re-run it - so I do get a few complaints from my youngest in particular that it's unfair that santa visits the DSC twice and her only once! They're all old enough not to actually believe in santa though, and to understnad that they have different parents from and aren't going to be treated the same in their other houses - we make things as fair as we can in our own house, but can't control what goes on with their other parents.

I guess they DSC's mum likes to do the whole extra Christmas thing with them - and they don't mind having two lots of presents. Eldest DSC has kicked up a fuss though when their "second Christmas" was scheduled to take place at new year when she wanted to be out with her friends instead.

Reading this has made me think that doing the whole Xmas thing again on the Christmas we don't have the kids is not so important after all. They've had Christmas and to be honest, I'm sick of turkey by the Christmas night!! It's actually quite stressful doing it all twice

I'm lucky in that my ex said our son should be at home with his other siblings on Christmas Day so I have him every year. He is just told that Santa goes to his dads too but he knows he doesn't get those presents until Boxing Day.
DS is happy with this. It works well.

We have split Christmas, so that the SDC are at their mums xmas eve, and then xmas morning.

We then pick them up from around lunch time til boxing day.

Santa visits both houses, but there are also presents from dp and I in the mix too.

The rest of the holidays are theoretically up for debate, but if the past few are anything to go by as long as the DSCs mum gets Christmas morning, she tends to be happier with us having them more than not IYSWIM

Having them more days in general sorry

We split Christmas holidays equally - one year we have Christmas, the next year we have new year. Works really well - no need to redo Christmas as we have a fun new year celebration that year and everyone (including father Christmas) knows well in advance what is going to happen! Also the children like having extended time in one house without too much toing and froing in the holidays.