Holidays, family events and General Conference weekend

Ordinary weeks are manageable. It is the events that ambush people: the first Christmas, the nephew’s baptism, the sister’s temple wedding you are no longer allowed into, Conference weekend at your parents’ house, the family reunion where someone bears testimony over dessert. Here is how the people who handle these well do it.

Decide in advance, together, and say so

Before every family event, you and your spouse agree three things: what you will attend, what you will not, and what you will not discuss. Then you tell the host beforehand. “We’ll be there for dinner and all day Sunday, we’ll skip the temple session, and we’d rather my beliefs didn’t come up at the table.” Nobody is surprised, nobody is ambushed, and the host can plan. The script is there.

Christmas

Christmas after a faith crisis is a subject of its own, and Margi has spoken about it more than once. The short version: keep what you love and drop what you did only from duty. Carols are yours. The nativity is a beautiful story whether or not it happened. The ward Christmas party may be the nicest night of the ward year. What changes is that you get to choose, and that Christ can be a teacher you admire rather than a test you are failing.

The events you are excluded from

A temple wedding is the hard one. If you no longer hold a recommend, you will sit outside while your child or sibling marries. Say how you feel about that to the people who need to hear it, once, and then decide how to show up anyway: be at the doors when they come out, host the reception, give the toast. Many couples now choose a civil ceremony first so everyone can attend, and it is worth asking, gently, without making it a test of their love for you.

Baby blessings, baptisms and priesthood ordinations are the same shape. You can attend almost all of them without believing anything. Go if going is love. Stay home if staying is honesty. Either can be right.

Missions

A child’s mission farewell or homecoming, or a child who decides to serve, is where a parent’s transition meets their child’s sincerity. The parent who leaves has one job here, the same one the believing parent has: to support the child’s choice as the child’s. Write the letters. Send the packages. Save the arguments for never.

Conference weekend

If you are at your parents’ house, decide beforehand: sit in for one session as a courtesy, or take the grandchildren for a hike, and say which. Do not live-comment. Do not leave the room in a huff. The weekend is theirs; you are a guest with a different faith, which is a thing guests have managed for centuries.

Building your own calendar

The Church gave you a year with a shape. Build another one. Sunday brunch. A solstice walk. Pioneer Day as a picnic. A family “gratitude night” in November. Children need the rhythm more than the doctrine, and 43 Creating a Family Culture on creating a family culture is the podcast’s guide to doing it deliberately.