When you and your significant others family celebrate Thanksgiving or Christmas or whatever it is on the same day, how do you choose whose house you’re going to?
Our families do Christmas on a different day, thankfully. As for Thanksgiving, if one is lunch and one is dinner then we try to make both. If they are at the same time, it depends. We either rotate years, or sometimes we split up. I go to mine and he goes to his.
We do one household Christmas Eve and the other Christmas Day. Some families alternate holidays and reverse them every year. E.g., he gets Thanksgiving, you get Christmas, he gets New Year’s if kids are young enough to not want to be with their peers. Next year you get Thanksgiving, he gets Christmas, etc. Oh, and there’s also Epiphany, the last of the 12 days of Christmas, and Eastern Orthodox Christmas so you can celebrate then also.
My ex has a debilitating illness, so I let the kids (grown and flown, but now adding in-laws to the mix) go to him on Thanksgiving and more since presumably I will outlive him, and my daughter and SIL live close enough for me to see them any time they’re home.
My son lives overseas, so everyone only gets to see him and his family rarely, and we usually have to share him with lots of other people when they get to visit the U.S. I hope to fly over for a visit for my grandson’s birthday in March.
This year I’m spending Thanksgiving with my BF’s family. Sometimes I host a holiday dinner for friends who can’t be with family for the holidays.
Don’t wallow if you won’t see your kids for a holiday. Make your own fun and spend time with new family and family-like friends. Time and holidays are man-made constructs anyway. You can enjoy family and celebrate anything at any time. My BF’s birthday is in February, but after quadruple bypass surgery he now celebrates his “rebirthday” in the summer instead.
Someone suggested a Friendsgiving or Friendsmas bar crawl wearing Christmas pajamas. Other friends with lots of older family members, some infirm, plan on having burgers and pizza as the whole turkey dinner is too difficult and expensive for them to pull off. Make your own fun! See your kids on Groundhog day, Veterans’ Day, a random Tuesday.
I host all the holidays, but when making plans I try to coordinate with everyone else’s family and work obligations. Like our family does our big thing on Christmas Eve, which frees up Christmas Day for my sisters family to spend with her in laws. Thanksgiving they usually spend here because her in laws do Thanksgiving on Friday.
If you are close by to each you can go to both. Or 1 year go to one family for Thanksgiving the other for Christmas. We only had my parents and they hosted on the weekend us adult children had just our family on the actual holiday