The Newlywed’s Christmas Survival Guide
The Newlywed's Christmas Survival Guide
By Bradley and Amanda
Brace yourself. Winter is coming.
And that means the holidays are right around the corner!
For the overzealous Christmas fans in the room, that made you jump for joy. For everyone else like me, it probably brought up very real emotions full of stress.
Some joy for the season, but stress. With a side of last minute shopping.
During our first year of marriage, Amanda and I found the holidays can be even more stressful when you are married! Two families now meant traveling between houses, coordinating plans, figuring out presents, and a ton more.
Who knew marriage could take so much work?
We knew that the holidays wouldn’t be exactly the same as they were when we were simply dating but I don’t think we were fully prepared for just everything that was going to change.
If you want to enjoy the fun part of the holidays – and not so much of the stressful side – then here is our survival guide for you!
We’ve put together our go to tips you need to know as you celebrate your Christmas as newlyweds.
What you should look for, talk through, and stop to enjoy so you get the most out of your Christmas together!
Talk Through Expectations For The Holiday and Compromise
It might be an understatement to say that Amanda and I had different expectations about our first Christmas together. She’s infinitely more festive than I am and had several ideas about what our first Christmas together should look like.
Thanks Pinterest….
I on the other hand just wanted to sleep in a bit, go see the parents, eat plenty of food, open some presents, and then go to sleep. That sounded like a great Christmas to me!
Incase it wasn’t obvious in the above sentences, I’m super low key when it comes to holiday celebrations while Amanda is the polar opposite.
She was expecting one thing and I had different ideas.
These different expectations, if not talked through, can be a powder keg of frustration ready to blow up.
Having different expectations means you’ll be pursuing different things during the day. She’ll want to wake up earlier, he won’t want to get up. He will want to go over to the parents earlier, she will want to have a lazy morning and take their time.
These may seem like small moments, but they will happen all day long. They can add up and make it impossible for either of you to fully enjoy the day.
You’ll feel like you’re constantly fighting each other. Who wants that on Christmas?
We tried to avoid this by letting each other know ahead of time what we expected from Christmas. This required honesty from both of us. We didn’t edit ourselves, we were open and told each other exactly what we were desiring for Christmas.
In our marriage, Amanda wanted to wake up early in order to do our own “Christmas” before we went over to my parents in the morning. I, on the other hand, was more than happy to sleep in a little bit and go straight to my parents.
We talked through these various expectations and compromised by waking up with time to do what Amanda wanted while sleeping in a little.
Talking through your expectations and reaching a solution is crucial for you both to get the Christmas you want.
Communicate About Finances
Ahhhh… Good ole’ money.
This is where the majority of frustration can come from me during the holiday season. When it comes to finances, I’m adamant about budgeting everything and limiting spending.
This means Christmas really stretches me.
If we’re not careful, we can do significant damage to our financial life during the feel-good holiday season. Having a financial plan going into the holiday season gets both spouses on the same page and sets you up to win financially after Christmas is over.
Amanda and I have a two rules when it comes to Christmas time finances that help us eliminate stress.
Rule 1 – Set A Hard Budget For Gifts
We decide ahead of time how much we can spend per person in our family. We set aside a certain amount and limit ourselves to only using that much.
If you don’t have much to spend, that’s fine. Be okay with that!
The last thing you should do is overspend just so you won’t feel bad about your financial situation. If you find that you don’t have as much to spend this year as you would like, make plans to save a certain amount for next year.
Once we have our budget we list everyone we are buying gifts for and divvy out to budget to each person.
Sometimes this means we only have $5-$10 for some gifts. We’ve learned to be fine with this and become creative to give the best gifts we can within our budget.
Rule 2 – Don’t Buy A Single Gift With Credit Cards
Our entire shopping season comes straight from cash, debit cards, or checks. This is easy for us to do with the first rule above. Once we have a budget, it’s easy to operate within it.
We refuse to use credit cards on Christmas gifts because we want to set ourselves up to win during the new year. Swiping a credit card is easy and it makes it very simple to over spend.
Using something like the Dave Ramsey envelope system makes it easy to stay within your budget and operate solely from cash.
Money is always a hot topic, especially around the holidays. Brad and I decided last year we needed a game plan for how much to spend and what to get each of our family members.
This component was key to keeping the joy in the season for us. We’re very intentional with our finances and this allowed us to continue doing that and have a great Christmas!
We talked about and decided together what we were able to spend on not only our family and friends, but also each other. We were able to set the right expectations and get each other great gifts!
Don’t go into the Christmas season without an agreed-upon financial game plan.
Create Your Own Holiday Traditions
Who doesn’t love traditions?!
I think you all know by now I thrive on consistency and routine. That goes for the Holidays too. I love all the traditions our families do but I was looking to start some traditions for our own tiny family.
It was important to us to start some traditions of our own.
This allowed us to protect things that are important our relationship. These new traditions were like a symbolic representation of our new marriage. It was totally and completely us.
One of the values we wanted to protect was saving important memories. We decided to do this by collecting Christmas ornaments to remember them.
Each year it’s our goal to find an ornament that best describes our year. Last year was easy, we had plenty of “newly wed” and “first Christmas” ornaments. Boy did they hit me in the feels when I was decorating this year.
This year, we’ve been through so much.
We enjoyed our first year or marriage, and survived another hurricane (thanks Irma). We’ve also been to many different places like Aruba, Curacao, Bahamas and even the ever so lovely NYC!
Our ornament tradition allows us to remember these memories each year as we put up the tree. We’re excited to continue this tradition and fill up the tree throughout our marriage!
Another tradition we’ve started (and my personal fave) is buying matching pajamas to wear on Christmas morning.
Last year I got to pick them out and Brad had no idea what to expect. We ended up with cute little polar bears wearing Christmas sweaters (how cute!!!).
We decided to switch off who picks out the pajamas for the year. It’s currently Brad’s year… I’m somehow nervous and excited to see what he chooses.
Traditions are fun and they’re also a way to celebrate what you value together. You get to look forward to them year after year and it’s a way to make the Christmas season uniquely yours.
Know Things Will Be Different And That It’s Okay
I remember the feeling of waking up on Christmas morning and not seeing my family. I’m going to be honest, it saddened me.
On our first Thanksgiving together, Amanda cried because we couldn’t travel to spend it with her family in Ft. Lauderdale.
You need to go into the holidays understanding things will be different. And that it’s okay. Things may feel off at first. You’ll probably miss your family and usual traditions.
I personally wasn’t prepared for just how shocking the difference would be. But I didn’t allow myself to dwell on the past in a way that kept me from enjoying the present.
It’s okay to miss your family traditions. They were good time. Be thankful for the memories but don’t let that stop you from creating even better ones with your spouse.
Focus on enjoying every moment with them and embrace the difference.
Look forward to things happening in a different way. Look for the positive and you’ll see it everywhere.
Instead of waking up to my family on Christmas day, I got to wake up next to my wonderful wife. We had a nice slow breakfast together, opened each other’s presents, and enjoyed the morning.
It was nothing like my Christmases growing up and everything was fine. Just because it wasn’t like the past didn’t mean it wasn’t as good.
Go into Christmas with your eyes wide open, embrace the difference, and choose to enjoy every second of it.
Protect Some Time For Yourselves
It’s so easy to get busy during the Christmas season. Between family and friends it can seem impossible to find the time to do anything.
It we aren’t careful, we can forget to leave room for each other. I was determined during our first Christmas that we wouldn’t let that happen.
It was a non-negotiable for me.
As Brad mentioned before, I wanted to spend our first Christmas morning together in our own house making waffles and taking it slow. We were very protective of maintaining this time.
We juggled plans with family and made some sacrifices to ensure that we had some time together.
One sacrifice we made is that we wouldn’t spend the night over at our parent’s house. We wanted to wake up on Christmas morning just the two of us… And Ronnie (our cat/child).
We understood that it meant some extra driving and missing out on a little family time, but we were willing to sacrifice a little for something important to us.
Waking up on our first Christmas morning and spending some quality time together made my whole day. We turned on the Christmas music, made breakfast, hung out, and exchanged our gifts to each other.
It was a very intimate time. We love our families and could not wait to spend time with them but we knew we needed to prioritize setting time aside for us.
Setting this time aside first thing in the morning allowed us to focus on our family 100% throughout the day. Amanda and I felt connected and we didn’t get frustrated feeling like we missed on our quality time.
Have A Set Plan For Family Time
Want to know the biggest joy of being married for Christmas? Having two families to celebrate with!
Want to know the stressful part of being married for Christmas? Having two families to celebrate with!
Our goal going into every Christmas is to maximize enjoying our multi-family Christmas day (Double the presents!) while minimizing the stress of it.
We do this by sitting down together and planning the day ahead of time. We take the time to talk with our family and see what works best for them as well.
Our usual plan is to spend the morning and lunch with one side of the family and then shoot off to the other family for the afternoon and evening. We communicate with our families a let them know when we will be leaving and arriving.
Having everything set ahead of time allows our families to plan their own holiday. This can really reduce their stress level and allow everyone to enjoy the holiday more.
Choose To Enjoy Every Moment
At the end of the day, we have to remember the spirit of the holiday is to simply enjoy. It’s a time to be thankful for those close to us.
Don’t get so caught up in everything that you forget to breathe and have fun. The people who enjoy the holidays are those who don’t let small things get to them. They choose to be happy rather than stressed.
Who cares if the tree has that one strand of lights that isn’t working? Or that grandma still doesn’t approve of your nose ring.
Choose to be a person that enjoys the holiday. It is what you make of it.
Put the small worries away and commit to focus on the things that matter. Family, close friends, and enjoying the season.
Conclusion
The holidays are an amazing time of the year, but learning how to navigate it as newlyweds can be a challenge. If you’re not careful, you can get so stressed you miss out on the wonderful experiences waiting for you.
Focus on communicating effectively, creating new memories, letting go of the past, and of course each other! If you do this then you will have a good shot of not only surviving the holidays but thriving.
Our first Christmas together was magical and contained so many memories that we’ll look back on and cherish.
Have fun, be a little goofy, don’t take things too seriously and enjoy every moment with your new Christmas partner!