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We are a blended family, so things get crazy around the holidays. Also complicating matters is the fact that my husband's side of the family is HUGE and there are a billion young cousins who love to spend the time together and put a lot of pressure on my family who can't 'compete' in that way (Pop-pop and Gram are great but not quite as much fun to run around with as same-age troublemaker cousins).
Fortunately my family is pretty flexible and actually has a tradition of celebrating on different days, for example my parents host our Thanksgiving dinner on the Friday after, so nobody has to deal with horrible traffic and I can have Thanksgiving with my MIL guilt-free. Also my dad's extended family (my aunts and cousins) celebrate our family Christmas in mid-December, usually around the 15th, so everybody can fly in without dealing with jacked-up airfares and airport crowd madness, and the cousins can spend Christmas proper with their wives families. We've been having that off-Christmas for almost two decades now and it works great.
My mom is a stickler for Christmas Eve, so we spend Christmas Eve with my parents, always. Sometimes this gets a little tricky to navigate with my stepdaughter, who likes to come to Christmas Eve with us but sometimes gets co-opted by her maternal grandmother that night. Christmas Day we spend the afternoon at my husband's mom's with all the sisters and cousins etc. (My stepdaughter is always with her own mother for Christmas morning).
It's complicated, and it makes for some extra cooking and gift-buying, but it works.
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Hybrid Mode
