• Mandy: I don't want to lie to my child about Santa.
• Steve: family members change at Christmas when they have kids
• Melanie: family behaving badly at Christma
• Toni: birthday is Dec 25th
• Derek: Prefers to donate to worthy causes
• Sandra: The Nibble Approach
• Bill: Blended family troubles co-parenting 5 children
• Miranda: retired and happily not doing Christmas
• Josephine: no such thing as a harmless lie
• Ingrid: It doesn't matter what others think
• Naeela: Buddhist
• Christine & Allan: Too much Christmas
• Theo: The real reason we have Christmas
• Cathy & Darryl: Difficult financial times
• Louise & Peter: Cut out the Santa Season all together.
• Anne & Trevor: Going away at Christmas
• Gerald: Giving time instead of money
• Brad & Amanda: made decisions before they had babies
• June & Theo: Strong Christmas values
• Toby: Christmas means nothing.

 Amanda & Brad

            I work in a regional call centre on and Brad is an independent tradesman. We left the city - and all our family - behind for a change in lifestyle. We wanted to be close to the beach and also have the space to grow our own food and not feel crowded with neighbours all around.

            Christmas has now become painful as there is a very strong obligation from both families that we should drive down to the city - more than 3 hours each way - to spend Christmas with them.

            Without us knowing, my in-laws have already discussed with my parents how they would be happy to rotate hosting Christmas each year, especially when we start babies. They never consulted us about it, and they won't be the ones doing the traveling.

            We would much rather just catch up with our families at other times in the year when it is convenient for us to do so. At the same time we don't want our in-laws to decide that they will come up to stay, as they wouldn't just come for the day, they will stay for the week. Brad and I are happy to live in our little house, with very little in the way of creature comforts. But that wouldn't work for the oldies.

            The thing that really grabs me is that our parents think it is ok for us to drive 6 hours for one day visit, but they have often complained bitterly that when we moved up here if you are going to drive for 3 hours you may as well go for a holiday.

            The last thing we want is one or two sets of in-laws camping in our house for a week - on the middle of summer and our holiday break - just because it's December 25.

            To prevent the parental invasion this year we have told them we have made some very special friends nearby who have invited us to spend Christmas with them, and we have decided to do that this year.

            We will be going down to the city for New Years, when we will catch up with some of our old friends and the family for a get together bbq.

            We are planning to start a family soon and if the precedence was set to have us drive down there - or god forbid - them up here, it would be too hard to change once the kids have arrived.

            We had to set the new precedence ourselves now, before the kids, so that things are much more sensible and suit us when we really need to be here at home with our babies.