Yesterday I shared how Sue celebrated her first Christmas after divorce with a surprise trip to Disneyland for her children. Today I’d like to talk a little about parenting time over the holidays.
Sue’s parenting agreement calls for the children to be with one parent on Christmas Eve day and evening and then to go to the other parent’s home Christmas Eve night so they would wake up at the house where they would be spending Christmas Day. At first that meant separate Christmas celebrations but that changed later.
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When their dad came back into the picture, which was when my older daughter was a freshman in high school, then we started celebrating Christmas together. I guess the hurt wasn’t there so it was easier to be together and it was much easier for the kids. So if I have the children for Christmas Day, he comes over so we are all together and for two hours, you can do that.
Then we have four or five families – all of us moved here from some place else, none of us have family here and we always have Christmas Eve or Christmas Day dinner together. There was another friend who was divorced and frequently our days/years were on the same schedule. So that was our tradition and we would celebrate Easter, Christmas and Thanksgiving together.
The Divorce Coach Says
My agreement is similar to Sue’s and calls for the children to spend Christmas Eve through to 9 a.m. on Christmas Day with one parent and then Christmas Day through to 9 a.m. on December 26 or Boxing Day, as we Brits call it, with the other parent. And we do alternate years. Since we live in the same town that seems to have work well so far. We also don’t have family close by and that means we don’t have to deal with complications from trying to share the children with our respective families.
The children don’t seem to mind. In fact sometimes I think they rather enjoy it because they get to open gifts on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.
I can see where it would get complicated especially if you live further apart. And although we do have Christian backgrounds neither my ex nor I are churchgoers so that also means we’re not trying to accommodate religious ceremonies either. Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas for me without roast turkey and all the trimmings but you can’t cook a 10-12 pound bird for yourself and two kids. Last year I solved that problem – my local store sold me a turkey quarter – worked great!
Now what’s prompted all these thoughts about the holidays? Well, I just got an email from my brother – he lives in South Africa. He wanted to know what I thought about going to England for Christmas 2010. It’s my dad’s 80th birthday next year but neither of us can get to England with our families to celebrate his birthday in September. A family reunion over Christmas sounds wonderful but it would call for some pretty major flexibility in our parenting plan. So should I mention it to him and get his reaction or should I just wait a while? What do you think?