Holiday Planning is SO Fun!

Dear Katie & Kelly,

I’m recently engaged and my fiance floated the idea of doing Christmas with his family and doing Thanksgiving with my family … every year. He says he doesn’t care about Thanksgiving. I shouldn’t have a problem with it — I love Christmas but it’s not the be all end all for me like some of my friends — but I do.  My fiance and I have never spent the holidays together. I guess the problem is that I’m close with my family and don’t want to never see them on Christmas ever again.

What do I do?

Signed,

Confused in Columbia

Dear Confused,

Welcome to the wide, wide world of super fun holiday planning. Not! If you were lucky, you probably never knew the tumult behind the scenes of holiday planning until the point you decided to get hitched. Holidays and newly forming families are a powder keg. To avoid lighting this fuse, they involve compromise (ah, the joys of marriage!) and finding what you can each live with and that your families can live with. Sometimes everyone is flexible and easy going about things. Sometimes they’re not. The latter is out of your control since you didn’t pick your family or your fiance’s. You’re your own family unit now. Go with your collective guts.

Just remember that no matter what your personality type, change is difficult. Give people time to adjust, including yourself. Plus what you decide to do now isn’t written in stone.  If you have kids one day, you might decide to shake things up or your siblings or parents might do it for you. We will say one thing for certain, the first holiday you don’t spend with your own family will be tough even if you like your in-laws. But, it gets better from there. Or at least ours did with a lot of good wine!

Merry Christmas!

Katie & Kelly