Prompt: Winter Holidays and Family

From Pagan Blog Prompts:
This time of year, there are many different celebrations going on, most often ones that bring family close together. While it can be nice to see everyone again, it can also be stressful, when your family doesn't feel the same way about things as you do.

So, how do you deal with them? Do you simply avoid all talk of religion, even though the holidays can be very religious? Or perhaps it's just easier to avoid family all together....

If your family actually believes as you do, then perhaps these holiday gatherings aren't tough at all. Please, share with us how your Pagan winter family gathering go...

We generally try to avoid discussing religion no matter what the occasion for a family gathering - we have several older relatives who we've been told never to tell anything about anything.

What to do with the family is complicated here not so much by religion but by our kids, since most of our family gatherings are on the secular end of the holidays. We haven't been out of town to see my side of the family for a holiday since 2007, because we felt travel with Acorn was too difficult (and too likely to expose him to germs). We had been meaning to travel this year, but Leaf's stay in the PICU pretty much brought that to a halt. Whether we will travel with her now that she has a trach remains to be seen, and is dependent on her stability.

You'd think that after 11 years of marriage (and 15 years together) we'd be comfortable with each other's family's traditions ,but we're still working through that as well. What gifts people choose, what foods they have, how they plan for a holiday dinner - all of these things are things we're still trying to get the hang of.

And then we have to add in sorting out our own traditions...and it just makes it a complicated mess.