s/o reconciling different holiday traditions

We've been together a looooong time so it's hard to remember back to the beginnings and the differences

Stockings were a bigger deal in my family, not at all in his. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen a stocking at his parents' house. One year I told him I wanted my stocking stuffed by him......he rolled up a few scrapbooking magazines and called it stuffed

When we were kids everything was wrapped, nothing was assembled, it was all "built" after opening. In his family big stuff was assembled and left unwrapped. We do a bit of a mix.

When I was a kid we woke up at the ass-crack of dawn, I'm talking like 4am. When he was a kid they couldn't get up until the tree was lit (but in order to see they tree they had to get up and walk to the living room, makes no sense to me). He makes our kids wait till a more reasonable hour, drives me crazy, we compromise on about 6.

We've been together a long time. The only big difference is that dh' s family were Christmas eve people and we were Christmas day people, which worked out well most of the time. (Notable exception, the year we bought ds a Wii, which we had told him was too expensive. MIL gave him a Wii controller or a game or something on Christmas Eve, thus spoiling the surprise. We have never again told her what we were giving him.)

I have a large extended family and we always got together on Christmas eve. Dh had just him and his parents locally, so they didn't really do anything.

I've kept Christmas eve for my family and we typically do Christmas day with his.

Luckily things meshed pretty well for us. His family gathered on Christmas Eve, and mine on Christmas Day. When we met, his sister hosted all the family gatherings. After she died, her daughter hosted a couple times and then we took over and have been hosting for a while now.

My parents were always the hosts for my mom's side of the family for all holidays. My dad is gone and my mom still is having things at her house but needs help with most of the work (she's 87 now). It really made things easier for us that our families gathered on different days.

My husband didn't do much with stockings. Ironic because his mother had a knitting machine and made stockings for countless people. She gave us personalized ones for our first Christmas. He didn't do anything about filling mine for a few years until I finally told him that I'd like that. Now he does a pretty good job.

He didn't do any decorating for Christmas when he was on his own. I think he was a little surprised by how much I liked to do, but he has honestly gotten more into it as years go by. I think part of it is the fact that he can set up the program to control all the lights and has it so that we can have them come on and go off automatically, and control them from our phones or iPads as we want. The techy stuff gets him interested, and he likes the lights. Also, our house looks really good when decorated for Christmas and he likes it. He used to leave the tree totally up to me but has been very involved in the decorating of it for the past couple years.

DH's parents were divorced (they lived in different states), and his siblings' kids are not Christian, so we pretty much follow the traditions from my side of the family. We attend Mass together on Christmas Eve, and we do some small gifts EARLY on the 25th (just myself and DH and our kids) before I do morning services. We go to my folks' house for a few days afterward, and that's when we have CHRISTMAS with stockings and big gifts and food and all the good stuff.

DH used to feel bad for the kids because they didn't have "normal" Christmas morning on the 25th (I am a church musician), but I kept telling him, "This IS normal for them! It's all they've ever known!" I feel like it's almost an advantage that they know that God has priority over Santa. LOL!

My family never had the presents under the tree until right before Christmas. We always hosted extended family on Christmas Eve which was when all of our family gifts were opened (usually clothes from mom and dad, aunts and uncle gave us toys, books and new winter coats or snow suits). Nothing happened until our two aunts and uncle showed up, we all had dinner together and then we could open gifts. Santa brought unwrapped toys that we found by the fireplace hearth with our names written on them with a Sharpie pen. We kids would get up at the crack of dawn Christmas morning and the older ones would help the younger ones with their gifts, all the while shushing us so our parents wouldn't have to get up too early.

DH's family celebrated on Christmas Day. Nothing was opened early, ever. Santa gifts all came wrapped in special paper that was different from the paper the family gifts were wrapped in. Then they would have eggnog and stollen for breakfast followed by everyone sitting around the living room and passing out the gifts and opening them one.by.painful.one. while the others watched, until every last thing was unwrapped. Which wouldn't have been too bad except MIL liked to give a LOT of weird stuff.

When we had our kid, DH and I battled over the wrapped vs. unwrapped Santa presents. I argued that it would be faster and way easier long term to not have them wrapped, not only that but how do you have "special" paper YEAR after year without being found out by a snooping curious kid? (Not that ours is, yet.) He argued that he didn't want her coming down early and ripping it all open to play with until he was awake to watch. He won out even though I wrap 99% of the gifts.   Thank God I had the sense to buy a ginormous roll of Santa paper from Costco years ago, which should last for at least another 5-6 years, LOL, at least long enough to last through the better part of the "magic" years!

I usually only put the few gifts that come from out of state family under the tree when they show up and keep the pile of family gifts hidden until Christmas Eve when I bring them all out of their hiding places. (Our tree is visible from the front windows and I don't want a pile of presents under it for weeks to give anyone who might peek in another reason to break in.) We open one gift each on Christmas Eve, and that is the new matching PJs I've made for the three of us. Santa presents show up, wrapped in their special Santa paper, on Christmas morning.

My family and DH's families are very different.  We don't have kids so we can easily do separate family dinners. DH and I joke that's why our marriage has lasted for so long. Keep the crazies apart.  😂 

My DD(6) came home from school one day last week saying, "Some of the girls in my class were saying that Mickey (Mouse) isn't real. I told them he IS real because I went to Disneyworld and have pictures of me and him. They said he's just a person in a suit." I asked her if any of them had ever been to Disneyworld and she said she thought one girl was going to go over Thanksgiving break. Then I said, "The next thing you know, those kids are going to start saying SANTA isn't real." She rolled her eyes and said, "Of course Santa is real." Then she thought for a minute and said, "I told them Mickey IS real and they just need to use their IMAGINATIONS." LOL, I just love that kid!    I don't think I'm ever going to have to have *that* conversation with her because she already kind of gets it. (And FTR, my parents never had that conversation with any of us either, we just went with it and never questioned a thing!)

If we take nothing else away from this thread, let it be "don't be a dick" about holiday traditions when we become the in-laws. Anyone who won't be flexible about holidays and has grown children is as asshole and deserves to spend Christmas alone and crying.

If you're the sort who insists that shit must be exactly the same at exactly the same time every year, may your gravy be lumpy and may you get coal in your stocking.