These are great idea Karen. I just got engaged and this we have family living in different places of the state. The Holidays are just stressful thinking about which family to make happy. Thanks for the tips!

You would think that they would check the article for type-o's. They even placed the worst grammer in bold. "The fact that one partner's family lives locally and the other's family may be far away will only complicates the matter further"

stay single, everyone go your separate ways. No one likes my husband's family,....not even my husband! so we do our own thing. no kids so it works out.

Split the difference! Decide on a "neutral" site to host the holidays someplace roughly equidistant between everyone (or some other place everyone finds agreeable), and celebrate all together there! :)

All well and good...But if you are the "family" who isn't getting the visit this year, it just stinks.

I find this so interesting since my son's partner has decided that she is NOT going to compromise in any situation. They will go to her parent's. So for the second year (as long as they have been together) we are alone. We have no other children and she comes from a big family. Nor are we invited to her family celebrations. This is every holiday. She is almost 30. Please, girls, give your inlaws a break. We're really good people!

I've been dating someone for about 5 months. He is very devoted to his family. Every holiday we spend with his family. I live with my immediate family and decided that for Christmas I would like to spend some time with them. His reaction was fine, but I am going to spend it with my family. So, the 3 days leading up to Christmas will be with his family and Christmas will be apart. I think we have bigger issues than where to spend the holidays. I think one of us is not a team player.

Our problem is always my husbands sister! Her husbands family is placed first, and the rest of us are expected to change our entire Holiday routine for them. We have an enormous family on my side which makes it even more unfair. If we went with her plans this year, we would not see my 4 adult children, their spouses, my aging parents and siblings nor our 4 grandchildren. We were given the choice of later Christmas day, or..... hey, how about later Christmas day? LOL! So we chose none of the above in self defense. So who gets hurt? My mother and father in law, two of the sweetest people on earth. Every year Mom tries to get us all together at once and it just can't be done this year.

We've got three families to juggle since my parents are divorced. Every year one of my families have to give up both Thanksgiving and Christmas and it is really difficult. Any ideas?

I've been lucky, since all the families I have to visit are no further than a 2 hour drive, so we have Christmas Eve dinner with one (usually my side), then we leave my house Christmas morning for lunch at my partner's and spend the day/night there. It actually has worked out well for everyone, since we can all get together Christmas Eve and go other places Christmas day. Thanksgiving is more tricky, but we try to either have people come to us for that, or alternate between sides of the family every year. And, we try to alternate Easter and Thanksgiving for the other two holidays.