Do you have holidays that are ‘assigned’ to a particular family member or friend? That is, we’ll all be at Susan’s for Thanksgiving, at Mom’s for Chanukah and we’ll meet the Tanners in the park for our 4th of July picnic.
Some years ago I figured out that while I have lots of wonderful friends I needed a plan regarding holidays. I didn’t want my family to be up in the air every year for every holiday. Now the question from my kids is, “are we at Sarah’s house or ours this year for Passover?” They know we’ll be at the Rubins for the annual Chanukah party, at our house for Pi Day, we’ll have Rosh Hashanah at Dan & Natalie’s park party.
If there’s a family, or two, that you spend a lot of time with, consider formalizing the holiday obligations.
If your family of origin is not Jewish and your spouse’s is Jewish, one way to divide up the big winter holidays is Thanksgiving with the Jewish family and Christmas with the non-Jewish family. You’ll still have the Christmas conversations with your spouse and family members but you may avoid some inter-family strife.
This year I got my husband one of those patio fire pits for his birthday and it hit me that we now had a safe way to have a fire for Lag Ba Omer! So this year I will be initiating a new annual holiday for my family of choice – our house for the bonfire! Bring the makings for s’mores!