How do most co-parents split the holidays?
Holidays are where an otherwise steady schedule tends to wobble, because they carry more feeling than an ordinary Tuesday and because both parents often want the same days. The way through is to decide the method once, in writing, and then let the calendar do the remembering. The four approaches below aren’t mutually exclusive — plenty of families alternate the big holidays, split a couple that fall close to home, and fix each parent’s own day permanently. What matters is that every important date is covered by one clear rule.
The four common holiday schedules
| Approach | How it works | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Alternate by year | Each parent gets a given holiday in even years, the other in odd years, then they swap | Most families — predictable, and fair over a two-year cycle |
| Split the day | The children spend the morning with one parent and the afternoon or evening with the other | Parents who live close and don’t mind a handover mid-celebration |
| Fixed holidays | One parent always has a particular holiday; the other always has a different one | Families where each parent has holidays that matter more to them |
| Double up | Each parent celebrates the whole holiday with the children, on different dates | Younger children, and holidays that stretch across several days |
Alternating tends to win because it needs the least goodwill to stay fair: nobody misses the same holiday two years running, and neither parent has to ask. Splitting the day sounds generous but costs the children a handover in the middle of their day, so it’s best kept for when the two homes are genuinely close. Doubling up is often the kindest option for little ones, who are usually delighted to have two of a good thing rather than half of one.
How do you handle Christmas and the big days?
The largest holidays usually get their own rule because they span more than a single day. A common pattern for Christmas is to divide the break into two halves — Christmas Eve into Christmas morning with one parent, the rest of the day and the days after with the other — and then alternate which parent gets which half each year. For a holiday like Thanksgiving, or a long weekend, alternating the whole thing year by year is usually simpler than splitting it. Whatever you land on, write down the handover time to the hour: “Christmas Day” means one thing to a parent expecting the morning and another to a parent expecting the evening.
Religious and cultural observances deserve the same care — Eid, Diwali, Hanukkah, Easter, a saint’s day that matters to one side of the family. If a holiday is significant to one parent’s traditions, fixing it to that parent (rather than alternating it) is often the arrangement everyone can feel good about.
What about birthdays, school breaks and each parent’s own day?
Three special cases are worth naming explicitly in the plan. The child’s birthday: either alternate it, split the day, or simply let both parents mark it separately — children rarely object to two celebrations. Each parent’s own day — Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, and each parent’s birthday — is almost always fixed to that parent, whatever the regular schedule says; it’s the easiest fairness there is. And the long school breaks are their own project: summer especially usually needs blocks of a week or two each, chosen and locked in by a set date each spring so holidays and travel can be booked without a standoff.
If your regular pattern isn’t settled yet, sort that first — the holidays sit on top of it. Our guide to 50/50 custody schedules walks through the everyday patterns, and our parenting plan checklist shows where the holiday section fits into the whole agreement.
How far ahead should you plan the holidays?
Further than feels necessary. The single most reliable way to keep the holidays calm is to agree them long before the emotion of the date arrives — ideally at the start of the year for the whole year, and at least a month or two before any specific holiday. Early planning lets both parents book travel and time off, tells the children what to expect, and turns a potential negotiation into a glance at the calendar. Leaving it late does the opposite: it hands the more organised parent the upper hand and the other parent a grievance, which is precisely the dynamic you’re trying to avoid.
Putting the holiday schedule on a shared calendar
A holiday plan only works if both homes are reading the same version of it, months from now, without anyone having to re-explain. That’s the practical job GrownUps was built for. The custody calendar lets you lay holidays over your regular pattern, so an alternating Christmas or a two-week summer block is set once and simply appears in both homes each year, and the handovers it generates carry the exact time and place with a reminder beforehand — so nobody’s guessing whether “Christmas Day” meant morning or evening. It’s free, and it works for one parent before the other joins, so you can map out next year’s holidays today.
Common questions
What’s the fairest way to split holidays?
For most families, alternating each holiday year by year is the fairest and the easiest to keep that way — no parent misses the same holiday twice in a row, and neither has to ask. Fix each parent’s own special days to them permanently, and the rest usually falls into place.
Do holidays override the normal custody schedule?
Usually, yes — that’s the point of a holiday section. The regular pattern runs all year, and the named holidays sit on top of it and take priority for those dates. Write it that way explicitly so there’s no confusion when a holiday lands on what would have been the other parent’s day.
How do you handle holidays with a difficult co-parent?
Agree the whole year in writing, well ahead, so there’s nothing left to negotiate in the moment, and keep the arrangements somewhere neither of you can quietly change. The less that’s open to interpretation on the day, the less there is to argue about.
However you divide the year, the hard part isn’t the decision — it’s keeping both homes on the same page for months. GrownUps is a free co-parenting app that keeps the schedule, the handovers, the messages and the shared costs in one place both households can see. It’s in development now, and it will be free for everything that matters.
