I grew up in a family where Christmas was all about tradition and hospitality. My husband’s family takes a different approach. How do I get over my resentment and have a nice day?

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Dear Hera

The Christmas I had growing up was always quite lovely, full of ritual, and, I’ll admit, made possible by growing up in a family with middle-class money and middle-class entertaining social mores. My husband’s family is very different, with little tradition and, sometimes, little consideration for guests. I often end up feeling like a terrible snob when I spend Christmas with them, then wracked with guilt about my boring middle-class sensibilities. I need to make peace with this swirl for the sake of my sanity over Christmas, so it doesn’t breed weird secondhand resentment with my husband.

Thanks, 

Grinch-in-law

Dear Grinch-in-law,

Thank you for this relatable and festive question I’m sure many people are currently grappling with some iteration of. You frame your problem as having to do with class. While I’m sure that’s relevant to your problem, I think your dilemma is a lot more ubiquitous. For richer or poorer, you’re simply asking a question we all must eventually grapple with: how do I survive someone else’s family Christmas?

Other people’s Christmases are weird. No offence to other people. Even if you’re lucky enough to marry into a family with compatible expectations and traditions, it never feels quite right somehow. 

This is completely understandable. Everyone has an extremely specific idea of what a “real” Christmas looks like, and 18 years’ worth of repetition to really hammer the message home. If you grew up thinking Christmas meant a pancake breakfast and an afternoon of Poirot, it’s a shock to show up at someone else’s house for the first time and realise that, to them, Christmas means a six-hour game of Risk, or getting hammered and riding dirt bikes. 

The question of how to deal with other people’s families during the holidays gets exponentially harder once you have kids. But until you get acrimoniously divorced, Christmas is a recurring problem. If you want to enjoy your holidays it’s best to find a way to deal with it without going insane. 

The first step is to take a long-term approach and refuse to visit every year. One year at your partner’s family’s house should be offset by one year at your family’s house, and then a year off, for good measure. If, like me, you have a complicated network of geographically dispersed family members who you have to travel to see, it’s nice to get a little rotation going. This Christmas may already be spoken for, but next year I suggest booking a holiday with your partner and not telling anyone else about your plans until it’s too late to book extra tickets. 

If you live within driving distance of your in-laws, you can always partition off the day. Surrender your morning to them, and spend Christmas evening blissfully alone. 

But if your partner’s family live out of town and you’re expecting to be stranded there for a few nights, here are a few ideas to take the edge off: 

1. Bring the mountain to Mohammed. If your in-laws aren’t tradition-heavy, pick one of your own family traditions and foist it on them. Preferably something that requires minimal fuss and disruption. Offer it to everyone else as a gift, like bringing a game you love, or picking up spare milk, flour and eggs and making an elaborate pancake breakfast.

2. Take lots of small breaks. Go for a long walk with your partner in the afternoon, to get out of the house. Nothing says Christmas like an emergency walk to the nearest gas station for a pack of cigarettes and a strawberry Nippy’s.

3. Plan a second Christmas. Yes, you heard me. Sometimes there is simply nothing you can do to improve someone else’s family Christmas. You just have to grin and bear it. Instead, pick another day in late December. Call it what you like. Belated Christmas. Christmas II. Christmas Redux: Santa’s Revenge. This will allow you to treat the first (imposter) Christmas on the 25th as a ham-filled decoy. Shun the Gregorian calendar and plan an elaborate and ritual-heavy day with your partner, filled with the correct food, the correct booze, and the right activities, whether that’s a swim in the river or all three Lord of The Rings movies (director’s cut) back to back. Keep a few presents in reserve. Leave the Christmas tree and the stockings up.

This idea might sound insane. But as someone who has a birthday on New Year’s Eve and a hatred of New Year’s Eve parties, I find this to be a good workaround, because it allows you to get exactly what you want – a lovely day full of meaningful traditions – without feeling like you’re having to sacrifice something important to you. Hopefully, this will take some of the edge off your resentment, freeing you up to enjoy your fake obligation Christmas with your in-laws, all the time knowing there’s a second, greater Christmas waiting right around the corner.

Good luck, and merry Christmas(es).