Creating a New Christmas Culture
“Each of us represents the family we’ve come from. And each of our families embodies a culture, that unique set of symbols, values, and rituals. When we become partners and new parents together, we merge not only our families but those cultures as well, and so we create a new culture together.” Gottman & Gottman, And Baby Makes Three: The Six-Step Plan for Preserving Marital Intimacy and Rekindling Romance After Baby Arrives
New parents have a lot on their plates. They’re adjusting to changes in sleep, sense of self, family dynamic, and living arrangement. They’re making so many decisions: what and how to feed their infant, how and where their baby will sleep, and who will be primary caretaker of their little one…and those are just a few! In other words, being a parent, and especially a new parent, is a lot.
Gottman’s final phrase “create a new culture together” is therefore a major ask!
‘Create a new culture?!’ you may be asking yourself. ‘I can barely create a daily routine!’
With Christmas only a few days away, family culture is present in our lives in full force. It’s present in loved ones’ expectations and preferences and in our own expectations and preferences, which – it will not surprise you – are often intertwined. Did your family always open presents late in the evening on Christmas Eve? Did your partner’s family always travel to a certain destination for a few days during the holidays? Does one person prefer Christmas turkey and the other Christmas ham?
When it was just the two of you, it may have been possible to keep fulfilling both family’s requirements! You were less encumbered in those days, and definitely more well-rested.
When your plate is already full as a new parent, it may be easy to stay in a pattern where each of you seek to keep your individual family cultures intact. It’s the path of least resistance!
We do what has always been done because it requires the least amount of effort. And with so much on our minds, who can blame us? No one.
For many new parents, new grandparents and loved ones are eager to incorporate the new baby into what has always been done: open gifts late in the evening on Christmas Eve, despite the implications for your nightly routine, travel during the holiday even though travel with an infant is a nightmare (especially in our pandemic culture), eat both turkey and ham. Expectations have been set that you will keep doing those things. You will keep your family’s culture intact. And so, we circle back to the concept of creating a new culture together. Let’s break it down:
“New Culture:” Forming a new culture together requires intention and determination, both of which are difficult to find during your first year as a parent.
Constructing a holiday that diverges from what has been done before is a huge ask when you’re just trying to make it to the next hour with your little one.
To streamline the process, here are questions to guide you:
What do you hope your child remembers as they grow about the holiday?
Time with you? The magic of Santa? Time with your family? The generosity of giving? The tastes and flavors of homemade food? The leisure of a vacation?
What do you need to feel you had a quality holiday experience?
The answers can be identical to those above and/or also include ideas such as: time alone with your partner? Eight hours of uninterrupted sleep? Chinese takeout?
There are no wrong answers to these questions! Pick one or two answers to each and keep every decision centered around making these memories happen. I literally mean pick one or two, at maximum! One definite way to get exhausted and overwhelmed is to try and do it all, alone or combined with your partner’s efforts.
Which brings us to one of the best parts of partnered parenting, yet also one of the most complicated…
“Together:” For a culture to be created together, both partners need to sit down and have the difficult conversation about how to take the answers from the questions above (both parent’s answers!) to make a Christmas that works for the three of them: parent, parent, child.
It’s easy to experience hiccups in the process – it’s a busy time of life and year and patience and empathy can be in short supply. Each partnership has a unique communication process and I’m not of the belief that there’s one right way to share life together just as there’s not one right way to parent, so this isn’t a space where I’m going to tell you what to say. But I can offer some things to avoid saying:
Telling the other person what’s going to happen.
It’s December 23rd and no joint decision has been made, so it’s tempting to decide on your own and tell your partner to deal with it.
Insisting that your family must be appeased.
Sure, her father is a little set in his ways, but your father is super set in his ways!
Implying – or outright saying! – that your wants are most important.
After all, does your partner even care about Christmas as much as you do?
The nature of each of those statements ends conversations, it doesn’t encourage them! And the only way to guarantee that you create a new family culture together is to talk about it until you reach a compromise and agreement. The only way to have a Christmas that means something to both of you is to talk about until you get on the same page!
Being on the same page about the Christmas culture they want for themselves and their child is essential because of what you can (but may not!) expect to happen after you let your individual families know the new plan:
Pushback.
Know that most negative reactions to change stem from a place of love - your loved ones care about you and want to spend time with you and your baby and therefore resist any new culture that may not include them as much.
Pressure.
They really want you to keep their culture because it’s theirs and they like it! There may be suggestions and hints and demands that you, your partner, and little one conform to what has always been done.
Guilt.
Making someone else feel guilty is a super easy form of emotional manipulation that usually arises from a place of hurt. Knowing this does not necessarily make it any easier to process, though.
I’m not saying your families will react in all three ways, or in any of the three ways. But, as new parents have no doubt already discovered, it never hurts to be prepared. To divide two parents is to conquer them, which is why I will - again! - restate that both parents agreeing and forming a united front to keep the holiday you both want is crucial.
Lastly, it may be helpful to remember that, if this year isn’t quite what you want it to be, there’s always next year. Learn from your experiences, tweak the process where you want to tweak it, and take deep breaths. Parenting is hard and no one is perfect. You will do your best and that’s always more than enough!
