Unfortunately not every family is full of believers. For those of us who are the first to accept Jesus in our family line, the gathering together with our non believing family can be –well- difficult at best.
Our holiday celebrations with extended family don’t consist of prayer, worship and focusing on the birth of Christ. Unfortunately that is the furthest thing from our family member’s minds when gathering for Christmas. For them, it’s just another reason to party hard.
Every year when the holidays roll around, we brace ourselves. We love our family dearly, but we have that unspoken conflict that goes with being a believer in a room full of unbelievers.
There is the language, the drinking, the smoking, the partying, and other things I care not to think about. It goes against everything we believe in. Several family members are antagonistic of our faith, and are not shy about sharing how they feel.
It’s enough to make us want to pack our bags for the month of December and go on an extended family vacation. Yet we can’t do that. Alienating our family is not the answer. After all, isn’t Christmas all about gathering with those you love!? But what do we do?
It has been a hard, difficult struggle trying to determine what is best. Each year we try a different approach and some things have worked and some things haven’t. In some areas, we have had to just put our foot down and say no to certain situations, even if it causes some conflict. Here are a few ways we have dealt with this dilemma:
1. See them on our terms
We have tried to forgo the big gatherings with everyone together and spend more time with one or two family members. This seems to erase the “party” mood and it also allows time for some great fellowship with those we love.
2. Have agreed upon boundaries with each other
When getting together on our terms isn’t going to work, my husband and I talk about what we expect when we are there. We have developed some signals that we can silently share with each other that says “Time to go” or warns each other that something may be happening that isn’t good.
3. Don’t Try To Make It What It May Never Be
We have spent years trying to evangelize our family (I know, we were new Christians and a little zealous in the beginning!) and that did not work. In fact, it made things much, much worse. Trying to share Christ with them in the middle of a Christmas party or even standing up for our beliefs on an issue, we have learned, it not the best way to handle things. We keep our faith and beliefs to ourselves until a better opportunity arises.
4. Approach Them In Love
In the past, I have spoken gently to a couple of members of our family and shared that we don’t enjoy coming around when there is a big drinking party and that we don’t want our children exposed to that scene. Amazingly, for a year or two, our wishes were respected, we attended, and everyone waited until we left to get into their party. This can be a real touchy thing to do, but at the time it worked. Since then though, our family really doesn’t care what we think about it so we have had to take some different approaches.
5. Make It Short And Sweet
When we do feel there is no other option but to attend or offend, we go but make it a pretty short visit. For the past couple of years, this has worked out very nicely for us.
Last Christmas, my husband and I decided that we would no longer attend the “major” party. It had just gotten to the point where we felt it was time to really make a decision and our children are growing older and it isn’t as easy to shield them from things. We began telling our family sometime around February that we wouldn’t be going, to give them plenty of time to get used to the idea. This year that gathering has been cancelled so we didn’t have to really deal with the backlash of our decision. Whether or not we will next year remains to be seen.
We love our family, and it has been a hard road to walk wondering how much to compromise, what to do, what to say and how to handle things like the holidays. We try to take it year by year and handle it the best way we know how.
Do you have difficult or non believing family to see around the holidays? I would love to hear how you have handled Christmas with them. Have you come to a solution that works for your family?
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Thank you for these great reminders. I really like the new blog design. It’s beautiful!
This will be our first Christmas with *my* side of the family- the side that shares the faith in which we’ve chosen to raise our family. (Interestingly, my MIL shares the same faith, but she gets dragged along with my SIL’s to where-ever they’re going…) Anyway, I’m looking forward to it! My situation is a little different… I’m Catholic and I grow weary of one of my SIL’s forever trying to “save” me at each and every family gathering. I respect her faith and where she’s coming from but I find it frustrating that she doesn’t get that being Catholic means that, yes, I am ALSO Christian. This is something I think too many people don’t get…
JessieLeigh´s last blog: My First Christmas As "Mommy"
Holidays are way more difficult married than I pictured they would be. DH has a brother with a mental health disorder, so much so that I can’t be around him (for safety) and the rest of the family would be offended if DH wasn’t there because of the brother. So this Christmas we are going to basically be apart. DH and I will spend a few days at his family’s before Christmas, and I’m going to leave his family’s house early Christmas morning and go spend it with my family 2 hrs away while they socialize with the brother. Not the way I’d prefer, but to preserve peace, I guess that’s the way it’s going to have to be. Sigh. It’s going to probably get more complicated once we have kids. I imagine this is not a done deal and we will be revisiting this in the future, but this is the way it is this year.
Joelle´s last blog: Praline Pumpkin Pie
Our family is made up of two different denominations with conflicting beliefs about mostly everything (including alcohol) and a third group who is completely anti-God.
Christmas is often difficult for us as well. We just try to keep visits short.
Jenn @ Beautiful Calling´s last blog: The First Day of Frost
This is an excellent post. We have a similar situation on one side of our family. One thing that worked well for us sometimes was to have the gathering at our home. That way we get to set the terms. We also don’t have a huge family on that side so having it at our house isn’t difficult. We don’t provide alcohol and our family seems to respect that (it helps that one family member is a recovering alcoholic and therefore, he also abstains.) We also insist on putting Jesus’s name on the birthday cake (along with 2 other family members who have Christmas birthdays!)
unfinishedmom´s last blog: $100 Gift Card Giveaway @ MoneySavingMom
Last year my husband and I decided that the children weren’t getting the full meaning of Christmas and were only concerned about presents and Santa. We decided to cut way back on the gifts and made the holiday more holy in our traditions. MANY family members were upset with us because our kids didn’t have the same amount of gifts “they will feel left out” or “they will think that you don’t care about them” was the typical response. We held tightly onto our beliefs and now several of our family members even join us when we make a celebration out of putting out the manger scene and when we celebrate Advent every weekend. One even thank us for reminding them that the season is to open our hearts for Christ to enter…not for Santa to come down the chimney.
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