Our "rotation" is the following:

Thanksgiving we do at home - it is too short a holiday and the worst travel time.

Christmas - one year with my family, one year with DH's family, one year at home, rinse and repeat.

For Thanksgiving and the Christmas we spend at home, we invite anyone to join us. They never have.

Typically, for the year we go to my family for Christmas, we try to visit DH's family at some point during the year and vice versa. For the year we stay home for Christmas, if we have time/enough leave we'll try to visit both families at some point during the year. "TRY" is the operative word here. I do not feel obligated to do so and do not see these trips as replacement for Christmas - they are just trips to see family and frequently line up with another holiday or family celebration (i.e., wedding, birthday, etc.).

My family is in Louisiana and DH's family is in Florida.

Anonymous wrote:Do you go to the other side the weekend before/after/within the month or not at all if you are celebrating with one side.

Trying to see if we will need to be doing 2 TGivings, 2 Xmases etc or just do one of each with each side and not try to plan an alternate date to celebrate.

Before kids we would do TG with one of the in-laws and Xmas with the other, then switch the next year. The glitch there was the one side was divorced and only one parent was remarried. Instead of splitting the time in half we'd do 3-4 hours at one house and then switch. it was a nightmare and the one parent who was alone would call if we were ten minutes late (no exaggeration). It felt more stressful than like joyful family time.

After our kids got to be about 5 we still switched off for TG but stayed at home for Xmas. Our kids wanted Santa to come to our house. Extended family was and is welcome to come and stay with us for Xmas.

Anonymous wrote:God, not two of each.

Year One:
Thanksgiving with ILs
Christmas with my family

Year Two:
Switch

Other holidays and birthdays informally switched around/mixed up/skipped as circumstances dictate.

This is what we do. Except my inlaws are annoying and almost always try to force a 2nd Christmas when it's not their year. Drives me nuts, but everyone is local so I don't really have a good reason to be so annoyed. Except that my family does NOT schedule a 2nd Christmas on my inlaws years.

Anonymous wrote:We’ve successfully alternated thanksgiving but Christmas is a mess. The side we don’t go to wants us to come for New Year’s Eve (we have a couples party downtown we’d like to attend, not sit in the family room and watch it on tv with in-laws). But if we don’t go they ask nonstop when the kids are coming for their gifts.

This year it’s my family’s side and we’re hosting Christmas. I’ve invited in-laws. They won’t come and will want us to travel. Sigh. I wish they’d come to us just once.

This situation can be fixed, for sure. Consider doing gift exchanges at Thanksgiving for the side that has Thanksgiving that year--or establish that you'll visit/invite the side that doesn't get Christmas at a later weekend in January.

Say outright: We really prefer to stay home for New Year's after hosting the holiday. Set the expectation that that's not an option.

It does *not* mean duplicates for us!

And that did take a little enforcing--beware the "but you could just, but we could just" etc kinds of comments.

Our families are both at a distance, but my parents are much further away than my ILs. My MIL wanted to do essentially an extra Christmas event on the years they have Thanksgiving and my parents come for Christmas. Our answer has always been, "Let's pick a weekend in January for you guys to come down."

We did the "let's travel to both sides over Christmas" routine for the first couple years we had a child, but once we were expecting our second, we established the rotation. It allows us to have some down time in our own home.

Anonymous wrote:Those who alternate Christmas, do you exchange gifts? Do you just mail them? Moving towards this as I get tired of driving five hours south of DC then five hours north of DC back to back.

We buy online and have them shipped. No one waits to see each other in person and now it involves air travel.

Anonymous wrote:Those who alternate Christmas, do you exchange gifts? Do you just mail them? Moving towards this as I get tired of driving five hours south of DC then five hours north of DC back to back.

We exchanged gifts with my parents at Thanksgiving. They got my daughter’s unicorn robes and slippers, so it was fun to see them wear them for movie night at home and around the house. Sometimes, we mail gifts.

Anonymous wrote:My DD recently married and she plans to alternate Christmas - this year will be with ILs. Thanksgiving will only be if we go to her because she lives out of the country and can’t make the trip for thanksgiving. So we expect we will do that the years she doesn’t come for xmas, and when DS gets married that can be the year he goes to her family. I actually care more about July 4th at the beach - that’s our family vacation week and I hope both kids and spouses will continue to come to us to come for that (it’s a place they all love and we pay for travel).

We ended up with Christmas together with my sister’s family day mine because it was fun to have the whole family together- every other year. On the other, we sometimes had Christmas with DH’s family and sometimes not. As things went on, we ended up doing New Year’s with one of DH’s sisters and spent Christmas with my parents so they would not be alone (preferred choice by SIL and DH’s parents were out of the picture at that point).

My brother and SIL do easter & Christmas with one family, new years and Thanksgiving with the other. The next year they switch it. 5 hours apart and they have friends in both places.

It works well.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So at what point would you plan a trip to visit the side that did NOT get Xmas?
We stay home for TGiving but plan to alternate Xmas. Should we plan to visit the other side in January or is that 'too soon'
For what its worth MIL is the type that once you do something, it is now a tradition that must continue

At NO point would I be planning to visit the family I didn’t see at Christmas. For the love of Pete, why is it on you to then do the visiting? Are you seriously suggesting that you visit one family during Christmas and then pack your bags a few weeks later to visit the other family? That’s just ridiculous.

NP here. This is kind of what happens to us. MIL visits for Thanksgiving. My parents come for Christmas. Then FIL and Step MIL expect us to fly to them after Christmas. They are the ones that expect us to travel at the holidays and are the ones who never visit us, despite the fact that they travel nearly every weekend somewhere. It’s really frustrating but I want my kids to know their grandparents so away we go.

Anonymous wrote:Depends how far away you are from each other.

This. So many factors. How much travel, who has kids, how old are the kids, do elderly relatives have travel issues, other family dynamics. There’s no one right answer.