Do what we did. Have a kid and say "he needs to be home for Christmas."
Actually for the first few years of our marriage we'd travel between the two sets of parents. They're only three hours apart. So we'd Christmas Eve at one place and after opening presents on Christmas morning would drive to the other place for Christmas dinner. We did that even after Jr. was born.
We actually stopped that the year I had my cancer surgery right before Christmas and we wondered "why did we ever do it any other way?"
And BTW, the actually Christmas Day count is 24, not 23.
...the days start getting longer after today...
That's my thinking. We'll do our good-children thing now and then when we've got kids... tough. We'll probably try to do it now and then but Christmas at home meant so much to me as a kid.
I am pretty sure next year we at least won't try visiting both sets the same week. Next Wed. we fly from Pittsburgh back to C.R., and then a couple hours later, to Texas. It's going to be a long day.