The holidays are a crazy time. I can’t be the only one who has the excitement fizzle out as you feel pressure to find the right gift for everyone (thank god my four siblings and sister-in-law have implemented a drawing, so I’m only buying gifts for one of them) and the impending stress of heading home for the holidays. Not to mention living out of town and the price you pay just to get there.
Don’t get me wrong, I love my family and I love to give gifts and spend time together, but images of Norman Rockwell get stuck in my head and I am inevitably let down by the real-life drama that is relationships and life.
So this year, heading back to face my family alone after a break-up, I have decided to eschew the pressure and the expectations. I am not going to get into heated debates about whether my dad is going to live up to spending time with us on the morning of Christmas, or how out of place I may be feeling at an early Christmas morning that was never part of my ritual growing up. Instead, I am going to enjoy the time I have with family and know that my attempts to find the perfect gift(s) for people will be appreciated even if they are exchanged or returned for a different color. I am going to take time to talk with the extended family that I love and rarely see at my Aunt’s Christmas Eve, Eve party. I am going to call up friends from high school and go out one night and enjoy how far I have come from who I was in high school and the fact that I still consider people from that era friends. Spending time with my niece is high on the priority list and I think I’ll ask about taking her through the Holiday lights show at a local park (babies love bright, shiny, moving lights!). I’ll remember how lucky/cool it is that I celebrate both Hanukah and Christmas with different sides of the family and how meaningful those two traditions are to me. I’m definitely lighting my very own (and first) Menorah this year in my own apartment and am thinking of hanging a fir wreath on the door just so I can smell wintertime.
This will be my moderate and merry Christmas. Moderate in that I am not looking too deep at the undercurrents of family drama – simply so I can enjoy a season and a time that is meant to be enjoyed.
I urge you all to do the same, for your sanity, for your own sense of joy.
Norman Rockwell, making family look good since 1916.