5 Tips for Celebrating the Holidays As a Blended Family

Celebrating the Holidays As a New Family!

Paper Culture offers you an eco-friendly way to share your most memorable moments. No matter if you celebrate the holidays with old or new traditions; there are many ways to make sure everyone feels loved and supported equally during this holiday season. If you're splitting your holiday celebration between multiple households, here are 5 tips to make it a little easier.

5 Tips for Celebrating the Holidays With a Blended Family

Holidays can be challenging for blended families. The term blended family refers to two people who have children from previous relationships coming together to form a new, blended family. The process of blending families is sensitive, especially at the beginning. The first holidays after blending families can be challenging. A celebration turned awkward by broken traditions can quickly turn into an uncomfortable one, especially when time is split between multiple locations. Newlyweds, engaged couples, and parents of any family can benefit from incorporating the following tips into the arrangement of the holiday festivities schedule. It will include everything from talking first as a couple to working out compromises, to all the rest. Communicate with each other, make plans, and above all, stick with the traditions you created together! Hopefully, this article can assist our new couples in navigating some tricky holiday situations (instead of separating them!).

Communicate

Many conflicts can be avoided by open and honest communication. If you're newly married, engaged, or dating, this may seem daunting. But it's important to give and receive feedback from your partner on everything, not just where to spend the holidays. Discuss with your partner what holiday traditions you enjoy, personally. Explain how previous celebrations were spent. With a mutual understanding of one another's perspective, compromises are usually met.If one or both parents also split custody of children, you must consider what custody arrangements are set concerning the holidays. Most divorced parents have agreements of where the children will spend major holidays, like Christmas. Discuss these arrangements with your new partner.Couples can often squash arguments over where to spend the holiday season with open dialogue and respect for another person's viewpoint. So talk about expectations, feelings, and what you hope to accomplish.

Compromise

Now that you know how your partner is feeling and you've expressed your thoughts, it's time to come to a compromise.With knowledge of older traditions, you can now make moves towards creating new ones. Work within the children's schedules, and decide on a plan that does its best to make everyone involved happy.For example, if the kids usually go to Florida to their father's for Christmas, consider alternating by spending one year at your new home as a newly blended family. Or, instead of family members traveling at all, opt to invite all extended family to your home for the holidays.Whatever you decide, it may not make everyone content. But whatever the situation calls for, keep it as mutually beneficial as possible.

Plan Ahead

Waiting until the last minute is usually never a good idea. If possible, plan as far ahead as you can for the holidays.This means not only coming up with a plan for how you, your partner, and your kids will spend the holidays. But letting other parents and family members know of your goals long in advance.This will ensure that schedule arrangements can be made, custody arrangements can be met (or compromised), and any issues that may arise can be dealt with before it's time for Christmas.

Start New Traditions

The fantastic thing about blended families is the incorporation of old and new holiday traditions. It's perfectly normal to want to continue older traditions, but don't be afraid to start your own.If you don't have children, newlywed couples can use their own experiences to establish new traditions they want for their own family (or themselves). Blended families can integrate traditions from years past to create new ones.Don't be afraid to branch out and start creating your own customs during the holiday season. This is your family, and the focus should be on how best to celebrate the holidays in a way that works for everyone.

Split Time, Not Family

The biggest problem engaged couples, newlyweds, and blended families face is spending their holiday time wisely. Discourse over in-law and relative visits can lead to some couples and families not spending Christmas together at all (not good!).It can be hard to meet not only work schedules and custody arrangements. But splitting time evenly among extended family (like grandparents and adult siblings), making sure no one feels left out.

Christmas is about family, and the last thing you want to do is exclude anyone. When preparing for the holiday season and how you will celebrate, try to remember where the real focus should remain; on your loved ones.This is where communication and compromise are the best tools at any family's disposal. Talking to your partner and any children will open the opportunity to make the best decisions suited for the family. When possible, try to split holiday time amongst extended family (cousins, adult siblings, in-laws, grandparents) as evenly as you can. This may mean switching off on who's parents to visit one year to the next. For others, this can mean alternating weekends between two sets of grandparents. Or even deciding to not travel (and inviting the family to come to your house this year!). If you want to avoid hurting anyone's feelings, keep time spent with relatives fair and evenly spread, if you can.

Share Your Most Memorable Moments Every Holiday Season

You want to share all the memories you make with every member of your family; no matter what the circumstance. Paper Culture offers sustainable holiday cards and Christmas gifts that you can use to share your most precious moments over the holidays with friends and family, even if you are not able to see them in person. You may be splitting your holiday celebrations between two households (or more!) Or, you may be creating a new tradition of staying home. We hope these tips will make the holidays pleasant for everyone!