tell me about travel in the holidays....

[fairfarmhand]

I'm curious about other families that travel at the holidays.

 

In my dh's family and in mine, growing up, neither one of us ever stayed home at Christmas. Both families lived at a distance from extended family so our holidays were packed with driving and visiting.

 

Now my dh and I live a couple hours from family. We put our foot down about being home Christmas and Christmas eve, after a few christmasses with an infant on the road. But still Christmas at my house typically involves at least a week long trip visiting 2 separate households about 1.5 hours apart.

 

This year I am very excited that we decided to do Thanksgiving at home. The family decided to have "christmas" the week of the 18th and 2 road trips within 5 weeks we more than we could bear.

 

YEEHAW!!!

 

Anyone else have these kinds of dilemmas around the holidays? Sometimes, all the expectations that people have make me batty, and I can let it ruin my holiday season.

 

Plus, my poor dd and ds have birthdays Dec1 and Dec11 respectively. Their birthdays get totally overshadowed by all the travel that we usually end up doing.

Edited November 8, 2010 by fairfarmhand

[QueenCat]

We stopped traveling for Christmas when our second was born. My parents always came two days after Christmas. This is our first year traveling since my "baby", now 18, was born. But we're not leaving until the day after Christmas....

[Giraffe]

I decided early in our marriage that we would travel for Thanksgiving but not for Christmas. When we lived away from DH's family we traveled to them for T-giving. Now that we're near them we're traveling to my family for the holiday. But as a twist, my family is traveling to Georgia to see my parents' extended families (all in the same town), so we're headed THERE this year. Whew!

 

I don't like traveling for Christmas because it's just too hard to keep our location straight for Santa. ;) And it's hard to carry all those non-Santa gifts hither and yon.

[athena1277]

My family never did more than day trips for the holidays as everyone lived 2 hours or less from us. Dh, on the other hand, always traveled from S AL to TN for the holidays. That was all he knew. We started out traveling to see family for the holidays, but have finally said that we be home Christmas morning no matter what. It was getting too hard to handle "Santa" as dd got older and not everyone did Christmas morning like we do. On top of that, my birthday is the 23rd and we always seemed to spend the day traveling. Not the most exciting way to spend your birhtday. every. single. year. :glare: Plus, dd's birthday is the 24th, so it was hard to do any birthday stuff with her when we were away from home. I told family that we would be happy to see them before or after Christmas, but we will not be at the big get-together on Christmas Eve or Christmas day.

[HelenNotOfTroy]

We almost always stayed home for the holidays when I was a child. When I was very young, we lived near enough to one set of grandparents to day trip to them and I think we spent holidays at their house then. When we moved away from them, the other set of grandparents came to us at Christmas every year. One year when I was a teen we went to the first grandmother's home for Thanksgiving. That is the only real travel I recall during holidays.

[Mom in High Heels]

I do NOT travel at the holidays. When I was little, we used to travel a lot during the holidays and I hated it. It was so stressful and all the adults were tired and cranky and it wasn't much fun for me. I ALWAYS wanted to be in my own home for Christmas.

I made it a point that we would NOT travel at Christmas. If people want to see us at the holidays, they are more than welcome to come to us. Of course we live in Europe, so travel is crazy at best. My dad came to see us last year for Christmas and my mom and step-dad are coming this year. Even when we were in the States though, we didn't travel on the holidays. It's too much of PITA and I want to celebrate in my home.

[eternalknot]

I always travel for holidays; always have, and always hope to. I'd rather drive than host LOL.

 

Actually we fly - two states, a week spent in each. I'd still rather travel than host. Or to miss seeing everyone. I see no appeal to spending a "relaxed" or "quiet" Christmas with my spouse and kids; it would seem empty and boring to me. I come from a very large, close-knit family so I prefer the noise and chaos!

[Ellie]

It isn't realistic for both sides of the family to expect y'all to be with both sides of the family on holidays. It just isn't. Two hours is worth driving--I would love to live only two hours from any member of my family, but they're all either on the left coast or the right coast and I'm in the middle--but you just can't do it all the time.

 

I would love for my dds to visit at Christmas. However, travel at that time of the year is risky, weatherwise, as one dd lives in Seattle. She was able to come out the first year we were here, but her return flight was cancelled because it was coming from Colorado and had been cancelled because of snow.

 

We decided long ago that we would never make our dds either have to choose between two sets of in-laws/grandparents for holidays or travel insane distances to get here. Their birthdays are in May, when the weather is beautimous; we figure they can vist with the other grandparents for Thanksgiving or Christmas and visit us on birthdays. If they can ever make it for the winter holidays, we'll be thrilled. We just don't want them to tell stories like the ones I read on the Internet. :)

[Jennifer in MI]

I always travel for holidays; always have, and always hope to. I'd rather drive than host LOL.

 

Actually we fly - two states, a week spent in each. I'd still rather travel than host. Or to miss seeing everyone. I see no appeal to spending a "relaxed" or "quiet" Christmas with my spouse and kids; it would seem empty and boring to me. I come from a very large, close-knit family so I prefer the noise and chaos!

 

:iagree:

 

My mom has 5 siblings and I have 19 cousins. We ALWAYS got together with them growing up. It was AWESOME!!!

 

Then, I married a clergyman. We were home on Christmas and it was very hard, lonely, and (dare I say it?), BORING!!!! We've since moved closer to home and now everyone comes to me. I LOVE it again!!! It's loud, crazy and FUN! (Said by this introvert!) Any of my six siblings who can make it come with their families and my mom and dad always join us. This year it'll just be four of the siblings. Then, we pack up and travel to mom's and dad's for New Years where we're all joined by my dad's sisters and their kids and grandkids. Again, a FUN celebration! (And then, we pack up and leave for Disney with my sister and her family!!!)

 

But, if you don't like the travel and want a quiet day with just your family, then DO IT!!!!

[fairfarmhand]

It isn't realistic for both sides of the family to expect y'all to be with both sides of the family on holidays. It just isn't. Two hours is worth driving--I would love to live only two hours from any member of my family, but they're all either on the left coast or the right coast and I'm in the middle--but you just can't do it all the time.

 

I would love for my dds to visit at Christmas. However, travel at that time of the year is risky, weatherwise, as one dd lives in Seattle. She was able to come out the first year we were here, but her return flight was cancelled because it was coming from Colorado and had been cancelled because of snow.

 

We decided long ago that we would never make our dds either have to choose between two sets of in-laws/grandparents for holidays or travel insane distances to get here. Their birthdays are in May, when the weather is beautimous; we figure they can vist with the other grandparents for Thanksgiving or Christmas and visit us on birthdays. If they can ever make it for the winter holidays, we'll be thrilled. We just don't want them to tell stories like the ones I read on the Internet. :)

 

When my kids are grown and married, I am planning for my dh and I to steal away someplace warm and sandy for Christmas. Maybe we'll get together for New Years'. Maybe not.

[jplain]

All of my kids' grandparents used to live in the same area, so we'd travel at Christmas and stay home for Thanksgiving.

 

But now the grandparents are in 2 states. There's no way I'll ever agree to skip seeing my family at Xmas; I have lots of sibs that I rarely see, and gosh darn it, my birthday is in late December. So now we feel obligated to travel at Thanksgiving too, to be fair to all of the grandparents. *sigh* I don't like traveling in both Nov and Dec, but I can't see any other solution, unless we move to be close to some of the grandparents. And that's not likely.

[regentrude]

I wish my family was in driving distance, even a looong drive - I'd definitely want to spend the holidays with them. Alas, all of mine and DH's family live in Europe. We can't fly over for Christmas, so we go in the summer.

 

I find Christmas at home always a bit sad because I miss the big family and get terribly homesick every year. It just does not feel right.

[Alyce]

My parents only lived 90 miles from us so we would go up and spend Christmas Eve with them. Sometimes especially when little we would spend night. As they got to be older (toddler etc) we would drive back home and spend Christmas at our house. My Dh family lives locally but we do travel for them to. Thankfully they celebrate Thanksgiving in a bigger way than Christmas. For almost as long as we've been married his whole family rents a house on the beach and spends Thanksgiving there. For Christmas we get together on the day after Christmas so things worked out pretty well for us.