Sharing family time can be tricky for newlyweds
Determining how to divvy up festive family visits so that everyone is happy requires compromise, Flannery Dean writes.
“What are you doing for the holidays?” can be the conversational equivalent of nitroglycerine when you’re a newlywed and “your” holidays automatically become the compromise that is “ours.”
About 150,000 Canadians exchange vows each year, and joining the monogrammed set requires undergoing a few rites of passage, including determining how to divvy up the holidays so that everyone is happy.
Stephanie Miles, 30, and Mike Hart, 29, married in August after eight years of dating. For the Hamilton, Ont.-based couple, conversations about the where and when of the holidays — from Thanksgiving to Christmas — are best solved by splitting the difference 50/50.
Or maybe it’s “60/40,” jokes Hart, who says he doesn’t mind “dishing up” that 10 per cent. “She makes plenty of compromises for me, too.”
This year, they’ll spend the holidays as they have since they started dating. They’ll be with Hart’s family on Christmas Eve and spend Christmas Day with Miles’ family (they all get along, so Hart’s mother joins in the festivities, too.)
Fortunately, their respective families make the holidays easier by celebrating Christmas on separate days.
“We’ve been very lucky that our family functions have been during opposite days and we can go to each,” says Miles, who admits if that wasn’t the case she might not be so reasonable.
Thanksgiving is their real sticky-wicket, holiday-wise, she says. That’s because both families celebrate on the same day, which means they only spend a few hours at each respective gathering.
It’s not the most relaxing way to enjoy the holiday and Miles’ mother has proposed celebrating on a different day.
The holiday question is a chance for newlyweds to define who they are within the new family structure they’ve created, says Dr. Guy Grenier, a clinical psychologist and marriage therapist in London, Ont.
“You get to be grown-ups and decide what you want to do. You get to decide if you even want to go or not, and if you go and don’t like it you can decide to leave,” he says.
Though all is peaceful now, Miles wonders how holiday harmony will change once they have kids.
Adding children to the mix does make the holiday conversation more intense, says Jordan Moore, 35, an entrepreneur who runs the commerce site Bump Boutique and is based in Dundas, Ont. Before they had children she and her husband, Chris, 40, took a divide-and-conquer approach to the holidays. She went to her parents for Christmas Eve, Chris went to his, and they met up for Christmas Day.
After the birth of their first daughter four years ago, they realized that approach wasn’t realistic. Finding a new strategy meant going through some tense negotiations. Each recognized they had to sacrifice something of their childhood attachments to the holiday to create a new tradition for their daughter.
“We both had to dig deep and decide what was important. We realized it was no longer about us individually, but about our daughter — that was the moment of clarity.”
To better suit their family — they welcomed a second daughter to the fold in 2015 — they’ve instituted their own tradition: everyone comes to their house on Christmas Day to celebrate, and every year they alternate who goes where on Christmas Eve and Boxing Day.
When it comes to resolving conflict there are four standard paths to agreement, says Grenier. You can compromise like Hart and Miles; you can try to persuade the other person to do what you want; you can opt for a blended approach, taking into account both sets of preferences, like the Moores — or you can choose to end the relationship.
No matter what, it’s wise to be flexible. If Christmas really means something to you then take a stand and express your feelings, but make sure you really care and aren’t just doing it because it’s a habit.
Don’t fall prey to the “tyranny of the calendar,” says Grenier.
Newlyweds Stephanie and Mike couldn’t agree more. Though each confess it wasn’t always that way. “It was a journey,” says Miles.