My First Holiday with a Huge Family

I come from a fairly small family. Each of my parents has one sister and each family has an only child. So basically I have a total of four uncles and aunts and two first cousins and only one aunt’s family is here in the Bay Area. The holidays usually involves a dinner or two with my aunt’s family and a few other family friends. Now that I am married I suddenly gained at least two dozen or so fairly immediate family members here in the Bay Area. It is kind of interesting and fun to me, but I hear from many people with huge families that the holiday season is the most stressful time of the year. I suppose it makes sense because the more people there are in a family there is more likely to be disagreements. Also, having a big family may be a financial burden if you are supposed to throw a feast and bring everyone gifts.

This is the first holiday season I will officially be part of my hubby’s family. Last Thanksgiving we went to one of his family gatherings and there were 200 to 300 people and it was hosted in a banquet hall. They have a full blown luau with a suckling pig and trays upon trays of meat. It was a lot of fun and in the end I asked my hubby’s cousins if they knew who hosted the party, and they all shrugged their shoulders and said they didn’t know most of the people there. We weren’t engaged then, but when I told my mom about it her reaction was, “OH MY GOD, do you have to invite all three hundred people to your wedding?” I wasn’t even thinking about that back then, but during our wedding planning my hubby did stress that he did not want it to become a family reunion and got a little upset over his parents’ addition of family members he didn’t know onto the guest list. I was pretty calm about it, but I witnessed first hand how having a huge family can stress out someone.

As to buying gifts, the hubby and his mom both have a gift account in which they deposit a little bit of money every month. The money is used for all kinds of gifts including graduations and birthdays. In a big family like his it’s almost like there are events every other week and we don’t have time to attend every single party. Even after doling out for birthdays, there is always a nice chunk of change left at the end of the year for Christmas. The first year the hubby started working he bought gifts for everyone and then decided that it was way too expensive, so the family now has a secret Santa type gift exchange where everyone just buys and gets one gift. I am not sure if they’re still doing that, because last year they all decided to donate money to a charity instead. Regardless, my hubby still buys individual gifts for his cousins and sister sometimes.

So for our family the financial burden of the holidays isn’t extremely large because the money has already been budgeted and in the bank. The stress comes from deciding what to give to each person. This year is special because it’s my father in law’s 50th birthday and everyone wants to do something special for him. My in-laws are people who really do not need anything and in fact they’re trying to get rid of stuff in their house by moving them to our place. It’s generally difficult to buy something for people who need nothing. It’s also quite disappointing when you walk around the mall for two hours and find nothing that fits the person you have in mind. So as my hubby says, “Christmas is when I am forced to shop like a woman because I have to walk around the mall and think about what to buy. Usually when I shop I know what I want and just buy it in two minutes.” Basically, shopping can be tiring and frustrating during the holiday season regardless of your ability to pay for your purchases.

So far, I haven’t seen the contentious side of my new family yet. All the aunts and uncles seem to get along fairly well. Then again, maybe I just don’t know them that well because my hubby and I still sit at the kids table with the cousins. We are the oldest of the cousins and we’re the only married couple, but in Asian families you usually gather by generations. It makes sense because we definitely have more common language with the cousins.

This Thanksgiving and Christmas should be fun, and I hope my hubby doesn’t stress out too much.

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