Making Thanksgiving Holiday Plans without Hurting Familys Feelings
Thanksgiving is one of those festive holidays which are rooted in family traditions. These traditions may include good food, parades, football and spending quality time with family. Lots of good times are typically associated with Thanksgiving, but unfortunately some people do experience a down side that can be heart wrenching and difficult.
One of the stresses many people deal with is making Thanksgiving plans without hurting the feelings of family members. Often committed couples have to cope with this problem and in some cases it can be pretty conflicting, especially if one partner feels their family is left out of the loop on holidays.
Chances are both sides of the family pull the heartstrings and want to spend time, but ultimately when it comes down to it, often it is nearly impossible to please everyone on Thanksgiving. As a result, unfortunately there will be times when someone's feelings are hurt if their celebration isn't the one chosen to spend the day at.
There are a few ways you can try to avoid hurting feelings, here are a few tips:
- Invite Both Sides to your House
If you have the space, a potential solution is to host Thanksgiving Day at your home and invite both sides of the family. You can designate this to be a family traditional and is a great way to welcome everyone into your home to spend a nice time together.
Another benefit to this is both sides of the family get to know one another better and perhaps at some point, the family celebrations will no longer be an issue.
- Alternate Holidays
Talk to your significant other about making a pact between the two of you to agree to alternate Thanksgiving each year with family. This way there is no favoritism and family members won't get their feelings hurt because they'll know well ahead of time what your Thanksgiving intentions are and where you'll be spending your day.
Be sure and call the side of the family you aren't spending the day with and spend some time with them on the telephone to exchange Thanksgiving wishes.
- Stay Home Every Year
If family conflict and hurt feelings has really become an issue on both sides of the family, you and your partner can remove yourself from the situation and gracefully bow out of the Thanksgiving Day loop.
Perhaps you'd prefer to have a more intimate day and you can use this as your excuse to avoid hurting anyone's feelings. If you choose this route though, be careful of what you say because you may unintentionally end up hurting everyone's feelings.
- Go on Vacation at Thanksgiving
There are many great vacation destinations and deals around the Thanksgiving holiday. Perhaps this may be the time of year to plan your annual getaway. If family knows this is your annual vacation time, this is likely not to hurt anyone's feelings.
One of these solutions may work for you, or maybe none of them suit your situation. Whatever the case, what's most important is to keep the lines of communication open. Sometimes hurt feelings are due to misunderstandings and an open and honest conversation can resolve many of the problems that occur for people over the holidays when making plans.
- Visit Both Sides of the Family
If everyone lives in close proximity to one another, an option may be to eat dinner at one family's home and then have dessert at the other. You can alternate each year with dinner and dessert. This way you get to see everyone and both sides of the family will be happy to see you every year.
Once the dilemma is out in the open, people tend to be more understanding and willing to concede. Communication is the key to all family issues that arise. Once you can sit down and talk with your family members, the focus can go back to what's important, quality time with loved ones spent on Thanksgiving Day.
