My husband and I spent exactly three Christmases without our son: the first as a brand-new couple, the second as a newly married couple, and the third while we were expecting our son. I'm pretty sure we spent that first Christmas Day ferrying ourselves around from house to house to see family, but I know for a fact that we spent the second, and all subsequent Christmas Days, entirely alone.
I don't know exactly how the conversation got started, but one day we both realized that we really just wanted Christmas Day to be a day for our family, period. And by family, I mean our little nuclear family that all lives in the same walls together 24/7. No in-laws, no parents, no siblings, none of it.
And it turns out that this has been the best decision we could have made. And while I thought we would be met with a lot of pushback from our extended family, they have largely accepted our choice and even understand it.
When we told everyone what we planned to do, they were naturally curious: Isn't the point of Christmas Day to be with those you love? And we do love our family, so why not spend it with … everyone? We don't have a specific reason for eschewing the idea of being surrounded by tons of people on the day of Christmas; it's just what feels good to us.
Choosing to put our family first on Christmas Day has also led to a lot of sweet traditions that I hold near and dear. While we do often travel to the homes of our parents and in-laws the days before and after Christmas, here's how our typical nuclear family Christmas celebration goes.
On Christmas Eve, we open a family present.
This is the kind of thing that will make some of you groan and roll your eyes, but we're pretty cheesy, and we love it. A few years ago we decided to make our Christmas Day even better by opening a family present together on Christmas Eve. The present is always exactly the same: a new book for each of us and matching holiday pajamas. We all put on our new pajamas and read our books in a pile on the couch, and the warm and fuzzies can't help but seep on in.
Then we begin our day with gifts.
We like to get the gift part of Christmas out of the way first thing. This is partly because we have a kid and that's what kids do, and partly because our hope is to emphasize the togetherness aspect of the holidays over the commercial. We limit ourselves to five gifts for our son and two for each other, and in recent years our son has been gifting us one present each.
For us, it is absolutely so much fun to see our son going through his gifts and delighting over each one. He's a weirdo, and a new book can be just as exciting as a new video game. One year he received Maps for Hanukkah and actually kissed it!
Then it's on to breakfast.
We also always have basically the same exact thing every Christmas morning: cinnamon rolls, sparkling juice, and champagne (not mimosas!). My husband inevitably includes fruit because he likes to keep us healthy, so we often have some blueberries on the side. Every year I say I'm going to make the cinnamon rolls from scratch, but so far they've always been from the container.
Movies quickly follow.
The funny thing about our family Christmas Day is that it follows such a pattern, and most of the rest of our life together does not. We are known for moving across the country on a whim, for deciding to canoe through the Everglades for birthdays, and so on, but y'all better believe that we watch Love Actually first thing after breakfast every single Christmas morning.
This is always, inevitably followed by a screening of my all-time holiday favorite: Doctor Zhivago. Don't bother arguing with me that Doctor Zhivago is, in fact, not a holiday movie. It is. The end.
The thing about both of these movies is that there are RULES. They can only be watched on Christmas Day, and they must be watched in this order. I don't know why, but it's serious.
After that, it's time to cuddle and do whatever we want.
The best part of spending the day together is that we get to stay in our pajamas as long as we want, and we can just enjoy one another. If you're our son, you also get to enjoy your new gifts and put together your Lego sets and do whatever else you want to do. We make a big lunch that also works as dinner, take naps, read our books, take the dogs for a walk … it's just a really relaxed, happy day.
There will always be room for internal and external family delight and family drama around the holidays. Spending the actual day of Christmas together has become a way for our tight-knit nuclear family to take a break from the good and the bad and just be, together, which is our favorite way to be.
