Integrating New Family Members into Holiday Traditions

When I was growing up my mother was in charge of the holidays.  She came from a large Italian family and Christmas (and the food that came with it) was a huge tradition.  The days leading up to Christmas were filled with decorating gingerbread cookies, tree-trimming and singing Christmas carols. On Christmas Eve my mother would cook a traditional five-course Italian meal, starting with an anti-pasta and ending with homemade cannolis.  The feast would continue on into Christmas day.  She would bake from scratch Stollen (a German holiday bread) for breakfast and a whole turkey dinner.  All this and six kids to look after.  My mother grew up with strong traditions and she passed these down to me and my siblings.  When she passed away this was a part of her we were left with.

My father remarried and our first Christmas without our mom was our first Christmas with our stepmother.
My stepmother came with her own set of holiday traditions and we wanted nothing to do with them.  Our first Christmas with her was hard to say the least.  But the following year was much different. 

Her second Christmas with us my stepmother took the time to find out which of our family holiday traditions were most important to us.  There is no way she could have accomplished everything that my mother did in preparation for the holidays.  My mother was the rare kind of person that really could do it all.  I won't pretend it wasn't hard watching another woman in my mother's kitchen boiling pasta that wasn't made from scratch.  But we could see that she was trying and instead of telling her she wasn't doing something right we gave her room to do it her own way.  We also compromised by giving her room to bring her traditions into our family and by doing this we were finally accepting her. 

Eventually my father and stepmother had a child of their own.  It's interesting to see my half sister growing up with Christmas traditions that were passed down from my mother.  Also interesting is that my father, stepmother and half sister are creating traditions of their own.  As my siblings and I grow older and start families of our own we are bringing even more people and more traditions into the mix.

What are your family holiday traditions?  Have you had to incorporate a new family member's traditions into yours?  Share your thoughts, your story.