Plans for Christmas

Holidays Forum

What are your plans for Christmas this year? Do you live out of town, or state, from your family? Are you going to see them? Going to your in-laws? Share with us what you will do for this holiday. And if you don't celebrate this holiday... well, is there something else that you're doing?

Heidi and I are flying up to the San Francisco Bay area to have Christmas with her family. We switch off and do Christmas with my family one year, and then with her family the next. It will be nice to go up there and be COLD. I love the cold.

I think that one specific thing we are doing is visiting the aquarium in Monterey. It's the largest aquarium in California. The Star Trek movie where they came to earth, to find the whales... that was filmed at this aquarium. Anyway... so that's where we're going... and then I believe staying the night in Carmel. So, I'm looking forward to that.

Another family tradition here.....

My mom's house Christmas Eve....with my mom, my three brothers, their wives (only two wives, one of my brothers is not married) his girlfriend, my son, my two nieces, a nephew, two dogs, and a partridge in a pear tree.

Christmas morning at my house with me, my son, and my husband....Santa arrived late Christmas Eve....

In the early afternoon to the in-laws house.....

In the evening.....back to my mom's house....where everyone sits around and plays games like trivial pursuit and Balderdash...etc...

Fun!

Well, I have to share time on holidays between both of my families and it kind of sucks. We'll have to do the whole dinner thing with my fiances family then the same with my family and I always have to argue with my mom because that pisses her off for some reason. So I end up eating two dinners for every occasion and someone is always offended when we're already packed full of food at dinner. Its usually drama. Pure drama. Involves a lot of cleaning up and keeping kids out of the christmas tree. Either way on my side of the family it's always been just me and my kids, my parents, my sister and her girls, and my brother. We celebrate with our own selves because my dads parents and relatives don't celebrate Christmas and my moms family is mostly dead. I have always loved Christmas since I was a kid and I exceptionally love Christmas with my kids. They love doing the tree and presents.

The Saturday before Christmas, my mom and sister come to my house for a day of making Tamales.

Christmas Eve: I read the nativity story, go to church service, then a late buffet at mom's with my family and my nephews. Go home read the Night Before Christmas and put the kids to sleep and wait for Santa.

Christmas Day : see what Santa brought, I make a big breakfast, exchange presents with Ron and my kiddies. We rotate who hosts Xmas for Ron's side and we get together in the afternoon.

I miss the way that Christmas was in my family until I was about 20 years old. My grandmother and aunt have passed away, and that changed a lot of the dynamics of how we spent that holiday, and it's just never been the same.

One of my cousins married this wench (and I'm being nice with that statement) who has 3 of her own BRATS!! These kids are the worst behaved children. No one in the family likes his wife or those children. So, no one ever wants to have holidays as a family, because we don't want to be with them.

With Heidi's family, it's a lot nicer. When we are opening up gifts, we go around in a circle, and each person opens up ONE gift, and then we keep going around and around until you've all opened your gifts.

With my family, those terror children rip everything up, never say thank you... nothing. And they are all over 7 or 8 years old - 13. I won't buy them anything again. They are so ungrateful... makes you sick.

I remember opening up every gift, as a child, and going right to that person and thanking them, before I did ANYTHING else. I guess it's all in the way you raise your kids.

So... I miss the traditions that my family had. It's sad, because we will never get back to them!!! *sigh*

My family always rips into everything at once. The kids always say thank you. Ron's family gives a present to every person and we open them at the same time. It takes a lot longer, but you know what people got and if they liked their presents.

It is always hard when family traditions change. My nephews are 18 and 24 and I know that I will have only so many Christmas Eves left with them before they go off and start their own families. I will really miss them when that happens.

Mystic, I love that idea of the smallest kid going first. Wow. I think I will have to bring that up with my relatives this year. They may like that.

I think that is a great idea.... letting the youngest and so on.
The only thing... kids get really impatient. One kid opens up something, they ALL want to open something.
Wouldn't work in my family... there are like 10 young ones, all cousins. Greedy little buggers!!