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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]No, no say. We just go and they tell us what to do. It happens a lot with younger siblings, and you don't say whether your dh is younger or older. In my family, only the oldest sibling matters, in other families only the daughter or son matters.

[b]In functional families there will be more.compromise and coordinated planning. In dsyfunctional families, it's more authoritarian.[/b][/quote]

In a functional family, you would say that you'd like to have the kids leave cookies out for Santa, and people would consider whether that contradicted or precluded some other important tradition, realize that it didn't, and say fine.  You might volunteer to bring the cookies if they don't have any.

In a functional family, you'd say that you'd really like to make your family's special potatoes for the meal, and the host would think about whether that was wildly inappropriate based on the menu she was planning, realize it wasn't, and say fine.  Or she'd say that her family has their own special potato recipe, and ask if there was another dish you'd like to bring.

The people responding that you shouldn't expect any input into celebrating a major holiday with your in-laws come from dysfunctional families.  Unless you're asking for big changes to their holiday traditions or demanding rather than discussing, it's totally reasonable to make some suggestions and requests.  [/quote]

I completely agree with this.  Nice normal families can be nice and normal under the same roof.  Just one holiday spent with my husband's family was enough to see that they were some wackadoodle power stuff, crazy sibling in-fighting,  happening that I didn't want to be a part of.  I tread lightly in that house.  [/quote]

Agree.  We're still at the point where every holiday is spent going to one of the grandparents homes.  Thankfully, both sides are functional and trying to make the best of it so we always get asked if there is anything in particular we want for Thanksgiving or how we'd like to handle Christmas for DD.  If either side was super "No, you do what we tell you to do" right down to not allowing cookies for Santa... let's just say we wouldn't be continuing with the 50/50 split we've had for holidays up until now.

My maternal grandmother was like OPs ILs and we only spent one Christmas at her house as children.  My parents wanted to give us nice traditions for Christmas and spending the holiday at her house didn't allow for that so she missed out on any of the grandkids spending the holiday with her.  [/quote]

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