When you were young did you have several "Christmases" to go to, over the course of a week?

We have two days, Eerste Kerstdag, en Tweede Kerstdag, and if you are a couple, you have the luck to go to at least these two days, visiting your parents, and your SO’s parents.
If you are really lucky, you, and your SO, have divorced parents (who remarried) so you get a Derde, and a Vierde Kerstdag.
~

My head is spinning and my Dutch DNA isn’t helping at all!

I didn’t have Christmas at all growing up.

We always had Christmas at our house, and then at my grandparent’s house every other year, but all of us would always go to our cousin’s house on the day after Christmas, for more food, and more gift exchanging.

Yes I did. No, I understood it was about spending time on a holiday with different social & family assortments. And especially after a divorce, it meant some people sometimes didn’t end up being together.

I just remember some part times fondly and feel a little like I miss those times when it worked out for people to get together, not necessarily at Christmas but regularly getting together. I feel a lack of connection with family and community that way, and wish there were more of us spending more time with each other more often.

What feels wrong to me is that our society and economic organization and ideas lead to us not seeing as much of each other as would seem good and healthy to me, and that there is a problematic focus on official holidays as excuses to do so.

My parents are divorced, which always meant one Christmas with my mother and one with my father. But my step-father’s parents are also divorced, which meant an additional Christmas on top of those two. My mother managed to minimize the weirdness by coming up with a regular schedule: I spent Christmas Eve with her and her family, Christmas Day morning with my step-father’s mother, the rest of Christmas Day with my father and his family, and the next day with my step-father’s father. Three days, four Christmas celebrations, but an annual pattern that made it all feel as close to natural as it probably could have felt.

We traditionally celebrated on Christmas Eve. My parents, my aunt and uncle, and me. The entire North American family. We had very good friends with other traditions so we went to one house on Christmas Day, another on Boxing Day and then there were New Years Eve and New Years Day events as well. I liked that they were spread out as I never liked events where the whole crowd was there. Small (up to 8 or so people) celebrations were always my favourite as a kid. A few gifts at a time was about all the stimulation I could handle. 4 or 5 Christmas Eve, 1 or 2 each of the following couple of days. If I got 20 or 30 gifts at a sitting, as I see with some kids now at large family get-togethers, I would have probably blown a gasket.

I guess I was pretty lonely growing up and didn’t even know it.