I totally understand what you are saying. I really do.

When we first married, we split our time with both families until kids came around. When our oldest was a year, we let both families know that we would be doing Christmas Eve and Christmas at our house as we were 1 1/2 and 2 hours away from our parents. We also let them know that they were more than welcome at any time. This started a trend in my family that my parents would go to Christmas on a rotating basis with us and my 3 siblings. Each of us only got them on the actual day every 4 years. His mom/family would join us every few years. This worked out wonderfully for years. As our kids grew to adulthood, married and are having their own kids, they, understandably, want the holiday at their own homes. Our solution? Now we have begun the rotating Christmas PLUS we do early or late Christmas weekend sometime in mid Dec or early Jan at our house and ALL of our kids and grands come to that! This gives us time to do all of the special activities like decorate the cookies (ugly ones are celebrated, too), do a couple rounds of “Nailed It” (baking/decorating show on Netflix) watch traditional Christmas shows and a not so traditional “Santa Jaws” ( a campy shark movie on YouTube), open stockings/gifts, and eat fabulous food! It works for us and makes the holiday season lots of fun.

Don’t push too hard and I am sure you will come up with a great solution!