Any wife and mother who’s navigated at least one holiday season knows it’s an exercise in high-level negotiation and military-style logistics. How to maximize time with both sides of the family and yet avoid having anyone kill each other? When to make everyone toe the line and when to go with the flow?

Here, some of the stickiest situations of managing the extended family during the holiday season, and how to handle them:

ALL THE RELATIVES ELECT YOUR PLACE AS HOLIDAY CENTRAL

When you bought that nice big house, you envisioned the entire gang congregating for old-fashioned family holidays. What you didn’t anticipate was eighteen people moving into your house for five days and making you feel like holiday road kill. How to cope?

First, insist that all overnight holiday guests come bearing their own sheets, towels, food, and a share and a half of booze—yes, even, the three-year-olds. Post a chore wheel, and insist that everyone, no matter how young or old, pull their weight. Don’t fall into the trap of feeling as if you have to single-handedly create a Rockwell-style holiday just because it happens at your house.

And when in doubt, have a martini. Or six.

AUNT LOLA GETS SMASHED AND MAKES LIKE A COUGAR

It used to be that every family had a letchlike Uncle Louie, but these days it’s just as likely to be Aunt Lola who gets sloppy around the cute college kid next door. (Hey, a girl can dream, can’t she?) How to handle a similarly out-of-control relative? You might consider watering your booze before a big drinker shows up: saves money and helps rein in bad behavior. Another tack may be to sex-segregate the festivities, sending the women out to play football, say, while the guys take over in the kitchen. And if all else fails, just be sure that Aunt Lola is granted access only to young men who are a) consenting adults, and b) not related to her by blood.

YOUR FAMILY AND THE IN-LAWS BOTH CLAIM THE MAIN EVENT

What do you do when both sides of the family want you at their place for Christmas dinner, the first night of Chanukah, or for our blended-family friends, both? If anything less than showing up for the main event leaves bruised feelings, no matter how hard you try to balance the scales, the only solution: Make a new hard-and-fast policy of celebrating major holidays at home, alone. You’ll stop by for drinks on Christmas Eve, you’ll show up for brunch on Boxing Day, but on Christmas itself, you’re not going anywhere with anyone.

The price for instituting this rule may be that you have to celebrate New Year’s Eve and Mother’s Day with your in-laws. Or that both sides of the family elect your house as Holiday Central, in which case, see above.

THEIR KIDS ARE TRASHING YOUR HOUSE

When they knocked your prize crystal ornament off the tree, you said it didn’t matter. When they “accidentally” unwrapped all your gifts, you laughed it off. But now that they’ve eaten all the expensive truffles your favorite client sent you as a special gift, you’re turning into Mrs. Scrooge. What to do?

You could hide all the good stuff. But more practically, surprise the offending children and their parents with a weekend at a great hotel in the city, starting immediately. Yes, the limo’s already waiting outside! Of course, the entire bill is on you! Offset the expense by returning all the gifts you really bought them. This is practical? At the clip at which they were decimating your house, you probably got off cheap.

IT’S BEEN SWELL….BUT THEY JUST WON’T LEAVE

Maybe you have fantastic relatives, great holidays, lots of laughs, everyone pitching in, so much fun you wish it would never end. And then, it doesn’t. The days pass, the meals keep coming, and your family simply won’t go home. How to move them out before Martin Luther King Day?

First, throw out all the leftovers and—this is very important—don’t buy any more food. Ditto, perhaps more importantly, on the alcohol. You’ll feel like the Grinch, but not a single hotdog, not a lone can of Bud must cross your doorstep. Next, flip off the circuit breakers that power your dishwasher, refrigerator, and stove, claiming you’ll just have to start eating all your meals in restaurants. Forget to bring your wallet along.

If this doesn’t do the trick, pretend to come down with the stomach flu. Warn them not to get too close: you’ll see them again at Easter.

HIS AND HERS GIFTS: MYTH VS. REALITY

You know what happens when you ask your spouse what he wants for the holidays: If he even tells you,
you get the sense that it’s just a cover for another item that he really wants. And come on,
be honest, the same goes for you. Here, a guide to what we say we want vs. our deepest desires.

REGIFTED ESPECIALLY FOR YOU

Okay, okay, I admit it, I have a Regifting Box. When I receive a gift that, shall we say, just isn’t right for me, I stash it in the box in hopes it will one day be right for someone else.

As a regifter—the term was first used on Seinfeld—I’m far from alone. Nearly a third of us admit to regifting, according to a survey by American Express, with women more likely to regift than men, those with higher household incomes nearly twice as likely to regift as those with lower incomes.

And while most of us dread getting caught in the act of regifting, some people have turned the whole concept on its head by celebrating it. My friend Debbie Galant, for instance, attends an annual Regifting Party on the day after Christmas hosted by her friend Julia Roberts of Glen Ridge. You can watch a video of the proceedings at the news site Debbie co-owns, baristanet.com. Basically, the way it works is that everybody brings a nicely wrapped item prime for regifting, people pick numbers out of a hat, and then the person who’s designated #1 gets the first choice from the regifting pile. Then, whoever has drawn #2 gets the second choice—or they can grab #1’s regifted item. And so it goes, until everything’s opened.

“I am famous for having taken a necklace that my business partner Liz regifted, from a three-year-old, whose dad had picked it a few turns before,” says Debbie. “It was fair and square. By the rules. But everybody teased me for making a toddler cry.”

COMPLETE GUIDE TO HOLIDAY GIFTS

Everyone knows the hardest thing about buying holiday gifts isn’t shopping or even doling out the money, but deciding what you’re going to get everyone in the first place. What you want to give them may be very different from what you ought to give them, which is different again from what you end up giving them. Here, a look at all the permutations of holiday gifting...

Pamela Redmond Satran is the coauthor of eight baby-naming books,
including The Baby Name Bible (St. Martin’s Press, 2007).