I will be honest; I get a sick feeling in my stomach the first time I see Thanksgiving, Chanukah, and Christmas on my calendar. I am not happy or proud about it, but I acknowledge it. It all started when I was six and forced to sing “I Have a Little Dreidel” as the lone Jew at the Christmas pageant, continued at eight, after writing a short story about Thanksgiving from the turkey’s perspective beginning a vegetarian phase, and changed forever when my parents divorced when I was twelve. From that year on, holidays lost most of their meaning for me, and became more about unintentional progressive dinners, strategic planning, and personally becoming a sounding board for all things passive-aggressive.
Twenty-four years later, I have my own family, an adoptive and biological family, stepfamilies, and in-laws, so since I still have not figured out how to successfully clone myself, it really should come as no shock to anyone that I wish that I could hide in a cave from about a week before Thanksgiving until the day after New Year’s.
Trust me, I do not like being the Grinch. I do not want to get caught up solely in obligations and expectations and lose the meaning of holidays, and I do not want to become resentful about having to play unwanted games of emotional Twister year after year. I would much rather emulate those of you with the glow in your eye when you talk about sharing the holidays with your family, and the smile that parts your lips when I see you already envisioning yourself by the warm fire, sipping hot toddies and having the perfect Norman Rockwell holiday. (Even if that exists only in my own mind.)
So after receiving a strange revelation in the form of a status report on Facebook from someone I love dearly, “Sometimes it is very difficult to respect a person’s strengths and overlook their weaknesses, especially if that person is yourself,” I have decided to take a different approach this year.
For those of you like me, who identify and chuckle when watching My Big Fat Greek Wedding and Madea’s Family Reunion, and hope that there will be less drama than Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner when you sit around the holiday table, let us think ahead and ask ourselves, what can we do to be sure that some sanity reigns supreme this time of year?
