How Many Christmases Can You Handle?

In the movie Four Christmases, Vince Vaughan and Reese Witherspoon play a newlywed couple that is forced to split Christmas four ways by visiting each of their divorced parents on said holiday. Antics and an unwatchable movie ensue.

The concept promises a hilarious movie based on a very true insight. We’ve all been there. You get married. You celebrate the holidays and are forced to split Christmas between your respective families.

Christmas morning with your parents. Christmas afternoon with her parents. Boxing Day with Uncles. New Years with Aunts. One year you flip a coin. The other year you alternate.

Depending on your glass-half-full/empty outlook it’s either half or double the trappings of the season. Splitting the holiday is manageable to a degree, when you’re just a newlywed couple with nothing but time. Add a baby into the picture and it’s another story altogether. It’s a sequel, Four Christmases 2: Baby Stress.

Driving between grandparents becomes more difficult when there’s a baby and a carload of baby gear and a diaperload of baby “gear”. The holiday stress is multiplied. Traffic is worse. Having a two-in-one holiday becomes unmanageable.

This year our Christmas isn’t happening at either grandparents’ house. This year Christmas isn’t an away game. We’re not splitting the holiday. We’re having it at our house. No offence to our parents. We spent most of our young lives celebrating Christmas at their house.

If you think about it, your parents eventually faced the same dilemma and likely had the same solution. There’s no way, you’re still splitting your holidays among your parents’ parents and their parents’ parents. In some kind of reverse pyramid scheme where you’re celebrating Christmas in eight minute intervals between various extensions of your family tree.

This year, there’s no packing up the pack and play. No loading the car with baby and presents and clothes and crib and fruitcake and family. No holiday traffic. No Reese Witherspoon or Vince Vaughan.

Now we’re having the holiday at our house, with our tree and our presents. It’s our first holiday as a family in our house. It could be the first holiday that our daughter remembers. She won’t have to remember being stuck in a car or at an airport for hours or watching her father being forced to eat two Christmas dinners on Christmas day.

All she’ll remember is the holiday at her house with her family – without stress. Well, without travel-related stress.

There will still be cooking dinner, wrapping presents, and other various holiday stresses. It wouldn’t be the holidays without that stress.