What do you and your partner argue about the most at Christmas?

17 comments

1. [removed]

2. I hate decorating, I don’t see the point. It’s just making a mess on purpose that you have to clean up later. He loves decorating.

   I hate the traditional family dinner thing. It’s not special, you can have the holiday food literally any time of year. I’m a hermit and I just want to stay in bed. But he loves getting together with friends for holiday dinner.

3. We don’t celebrate it. There’s nothing to argue about. So much better than my Christmas-obsessed ex.

4. Nothing. We give ourselves lots of space to be depressed, so we go into the season being gentle with ourselves and each other.

5. When I lived with my ex, we didn’t really argue about Christmas decorations, but we did disagree. I wanted to put up lots and lots, as I love Christmas. He did not. I like going to Christmas festivals and concerts, whereas he was not really into all that. He also disliked Christmas music, whereas I love most of it.

6. I don’t think we’ve ever argued about anything around Christmas or the holidays in general. There’s not really anything going on that would cause disagreements there for us.

7. What is there to even argue about at Christmas?

   We decide which family to hang out with (whoever we didn’t do Thanksgiving with), I buy the kids stuff cuz I’m good at gifting, he wraps it because he didn’t buy it, and we plan to eat something tasty… No arguing involved.

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9. How hard it is to balance time

10. Not my current partner, but my ex. I always used to bring up how I think it’s fucked up that we as a society lie about a made-up being that will bring you presents if you’re good and I would never teach my kids that if I had them. He didn’t agree.

11. Nothing. We’ve never argued about Christmas.

12. It’s never an argument, but I feel like we need maps and figurines and a whole-ass tabletop exercise to figure out who goes where and when (I have a son with my ex, and there’s my family and in-laws and work schedules to work around).

13. Our budget for each other’s gifts.

14. When the tree/lights should go up, when it’s acceptable to start listening to holiday music. It’s not really a real argument though. It’s mostly him taking the piss and laughing and putting up lights while I listen to xmas music and put up the tree. Both of those things happen well before Thanksgiving because that’s how holidays are done in my house.

15. We don’t argue per se -but often I’m left upset and stressed because my husband

    1. Leaves everything to the last minute if he’s left to organise Christmas stuff (eg gift buying, food prep etc). Which means it’s too late and things are a disaster for everyone. Eg kids upset because Santa brought wrong thing, MIL didn’t get a gift, etc So I just end up sorting it all.

    2. But – I refuse to buy my own present and he usually ends up getting me something *he* wants (Garmin training watch, Star Trek Box set, PS5 controller…) or some last minute panic buy (perfume I don’t like, cheap make up wrong colour). This is despite me now giving him a written list of possibilities in Nov as I hoped it would help to bs explicit. It hasn’t to date but I remain hopeful!

16. We don’t really argue, but I get annoyed when I think “yay a whole week off work” and now we’re visiting his family on Boxing Day and he wants his parents to come over on a different day, and oh wouldn’t it be nice to meet so and so?

    No! I want to sit in my pants and eat chocolate and watch Lord of the Rings.

17. Not much anymore but it used to be about which family to spend holidays with and for how long.

    My answer is preferably no one and for the least amount of time possible. His answer is his family and for as many days he can do before he goes back to work.

    Now that he’s older, and we have two children, he sees how exhausting the travel is and how much we just don’t really match our families anymore as compared to a decade ago. We’ve been on our own so long we just don’t feel the same as they do anymore about most topics. So, while we don’t do my option, we’ve split holidays among families or we’ve told families that if they want us to be there, they may have to do things not actually on the true holiday. Mainly because of his work schedules. It is what it is.