No matter what your faith or creed is, the Christmas period is usually seen pretty much anywhere as a family period and as a moment to get together with your beloved ones. As it happens with those family spread across countries, international couples are faced with a dilemma: where to spend the holidays? There's not a flawless method or some magic rule that works always, but there's problably a number a "approaches" that can help you get out of an embarassing situation without hurting anyone.
If your families reside in the countries of origin, then you've got to come up with a nice and easy solution accepted by everybody and, most importantly, something that works every year. The first no brainer would be to spend your holidays once with your partner's family and once with yours. All nice and cozy, no complications, since it happens where it happens. I mean, once you've set up the rule, the game's done, you don't interfere with the rules. Naturally, this approach works best when your family is not divorced (or at least they are on speaking terms), they live together etc...

Picture Courtesy of www.blondetraveler.com
But when the going gets tough, when your families interfere and try to "influence" the decision, then, as usual, romantic getaways come to our rescue. Spending Christmas in a nice resort or location just the two of you is wonderful. And the quality of the time that you will spend wih each other makes up for the distance from your families. Can you imagine how wonderful it is to lock yourselves in a nice mountain, a country resort, a spa or on a beach? I'm not suggesting this should be the rule, but sometimes it works, just to ring the changes.
But the more fufilling way to spend the Christmas holidays, would be to forget the 'where' and concentrate on the 'what'. Trying to help others, the less fortunate and the poor, spending even an hour a day doing charitable work is a concrete and emotional approach to this time of the year. Being international couples, it gives us the chance of doing charitable giving in also more than one country or across two cultures, the best way to spend a thorough Christmas!