How we do holidays
Dec 24th, 2007 by Kathy
Both G and I have been with both kids every Christmas of their lives. And whether or not that’s a truly important statistic, it feels kind of important. Important enough for us to have made the effort to figure out some strategies that seem pretty sensible. Maybe other dual-households can benefit by hearing how we work it.
Even before we were divorced, there was kind of a division between how G and I celebrated the holiday. Historically, his parents were big on Christmas Eve dinner and he was happy to cook that. We’d all go on our annual visit to the local Unitarian Church, sing Christmas Carols that carefully tried to avoid as much mention of Jesus as possible (I love the Unitarians), and then G would run home to finish dinner while I’d drive around for awhile looking at the lights with the kids. Then we’d come in to a house full of good smells and steaming food and proceed to eat and open some presents.
It’s not that much different living in two houses. I go over there for Christmas Eve dinner, we open presents from each other and from G’s side of the family, and eat ourselves into stupification. Then, depending on where the kids are staying, one or several of us crawls back down to my house, where we reconvene in the morning to open my side of the presents and eat and drink ourselves into an even more advanced state of self-loathing. We follow the traditions of his side of the family most devotedly, mainly because his family traditions include the most drinking and eating.
A couple of our ground rules:
1) Each house can choose exactly how to celebrate its part of the holiday. If one house wants to pick up In N Out burgers and watch Nickelodeon re-runs, that’s absolutely fine.
2) Jill is adamant about keeping all pot luck aspects of the meals out. I personally don’t believe in this as strongly as she does, but we do abide by her wishes. The hosting house is the host; the guest is the guest. I do get that keeping the boundaries clean makes for better role-playing. I walk into the other house not as a former occupant, nor as a helper in the evening’s meal, but as a pure guest, expecting to be able to relax. Which is nice. Really nice.
3) Whatever we decide to do is OK. This year we’re putting on a huge spread, on both sides. Traditional food, big eats. But next year may be different. We don’t want to get stuck in a tradition that confines rather than enhances.
Of course this system only works if you like each other, for starters. And if you live pretty close to each other. If those two things are reasonably within reach, however, I think it works well. The cooking is evenly divided, the kids get to open presents twice, and there’s a kind of glorying in the separateness between the houses. It becomes a movable feast, which is what life should be like every day.
