How do you introduce your holiday culture to a significant other's family?

[SneakyPapaya]

I may not miss my family after being disowned several years ago, but boy do I miss their holiday culture. Italians know how to party. Christmas eve we'd bake oodles of cookies, cut up cheese for charcuterie, veggies for bread bowls, tomato salsa for bread, and a full feast. And we'd help each other with the feast on Christmas eve and all Christmas day then play games late into the night with drinks.

My husband's culture is pretty non-existent. We now celebrate with boxed stuffing, turkey with no gravy, canned foods, no desserts except maybe a frozen pie, and his mom insists on doing all the work herself! And makes the children open their presents the day prior so they don't "interfere" and make the holidays too busy. And then expects everyone to go home after talking a little bit before 5pm, and spend Christmas night by themselves. It feels so cold and I feel homesick for my culture, but don't miss the people.

Does anyone have experience introducing culture to their significant others? I don't want to force my culture onto them, but I really want to step in and bake lots of homemade foods with a group of people and celebrate all day with presents, games, drinks, and fun.

[kaylaS91]

By communicating how you’d like to share the holidays between the two of you (ie one year do it how you grew up celebrating Christmas, the next year would be his ‘turn’)


You can’t really do much more as I don’t see anyone taking kindly to their own traditions being completely overridden.

[melanieeeB]

Communication