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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Okay, if your family is not Christian, your DD is not missing out on celebrating anything with them. Why not do Christmas Eve and Christmas Day at home with you, DH and DD? Start your own traditions and celebrate according to your values. Your OP says DH is NOT interested in doing Christmas with his family which makes this an easy decision. You can drive up after Christmas, maybe even for New Year's Eve and have a visit with all the family then. Or look for other times in the year that make sense to you and both families. [/quote]

OP here. I think this is what we'll do. Not go up during the holidays, but make sure they understand that we've seen them quite a bit this past year. His family just thinks that since they're Christian and my family isn't that they then own Christmas. So when we go down they don't understand why my family would want us for more than a day or so (of course it always happens that my family sees us when there are no holidays and they have to work too). My family seems willing to come down and visit us sometimes in the next two weeks. They recognize that I'm really stressed and they are very minimalist as far as gifts, etc.

Quite frankly, we've seen DH's family on every single long weekend I've had in the last year (I don't get many holidays with my job) and they've managed to have DC and DH with them without me for at least a week or two, so I don't feel that much guilt about that. It's more that I feel guilty thinking about them opening up presents without kids there. I know kids make it more joyous. But we've agreed that we'll participate in their over the top celebrations next year.

Thanks for the helpful comments. [/quote]

OK, you are not Christian, and your husband's family is. And you can't understand why this wouldn't be a special day for them when they would want to see family?!

Let's remove this a few steps from majority-society/culture. Let's say you were athiest, and your husband's family was Jewish; you wouldn't make a point to spend Hannukah with them? Or Ramadan if they were Muslim? Wow. That is just so stingy, I can't even. As a previous poster said, you don't have to go overboard just because they do. Are you honestly saying that if you got your ILs framed photos of your child and a homemade Christmas ornament that your child made, that they would throw it back in your face and say it wasn't good enough. Come on. Seriously. This isn't about them and how they would reasonably react, this is about you projecting your fears, frustrations and feelings of inadequacy onto them in this fictitious scenario that you've built up in your head.[/quote]

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