My husband and I fight the most when it comes to our families. Holidays are one of the topics that tends to get heated. Tonight out of the blue over dinner my husband and I started talking about Christmas. I think he asked what we were going to do with our sleeping arrangements at my Grandmother’s house. There are just simply more people sleeping there then there are beds, let alone room for 2 cribs ( I am due with our second child in Oct).

To cut to the chase, my husband was raised mostly Jewish and every Christmas his family whet to Sanibel Island, FL for 2 weeks. They didn’t celebrate Christmas. So when my husband said that WE WILL have Christmas at our own house (not my Grandma’s) starting in the next couple of years, because there is just something about coming down your own stairs to your own tree, that did me in. How the fuck does he know? I am the one who for 32 years have been driving to my Grandmother’s house and walking down her stairs to the her Christmas tree. Just because she paid for all those things, doesn’t mean that they didn’t feel like mine. Because they are MY traditions and I don’t know anything differently.

So we stopped talking during dinner and now haven’t spoken much sense. I think my feelings are hurt. I was shocked when he said that, and with such force. I feel like already that my little nuclear family is turning into “those distant relatives” because we live about 40 minutes away. So by changing up Christmas that will create another wedge, something else that we don’t do together (meaning my extended family).

So I must ask, does getting married mean that you need to change the traditions that you have known your entire life? Even if it’s what may make your nuclear families life easier on the day of, or to start a new tradition? How do you change things up with out affecting other people in your family and their feelings? My Grandmother would be crushed, my brother – who is in his 20’s, would have a big change on his day, what about my parents and all they’ve ever known since they were married back in 1973? Whose house do they go to? I know they want to see their Grandson’s open gifts just like my Grandma watched my brother and I. We each have our duties that morning and expectations.

If a spouse comes along and wants to change it up, is that fair to everyone else? And if not, how do you get your spouse to see why it’s important to you when they are seeing things from their point of view that are important from their perspective for their children and starting their own traditions (since they have no ties to the childhood ones that you grew up with?)