Fighting Through the Holidays

If your family is normal, and you enjoy going home, you can stop reading here.

If, like me, you get anxiety at the thought of boarding a plane on December 21 and not returning again for a week, cozy up with a hot toddy and read on.

In my family, things always start out nice. There is the inaugural email my mom sends out, with the “theme” of the year’s holiday season, which always strives to set a tone of philanthropy and love. There are follow-up emails requesting our favorite dishes, soliciting ideas for the itinerary, and simply noting just how beautiful the house looks decorated and how lucky we are to have everyone at home this year.

The subtext is always completely different.

It starts with little jabs, like “Oh, I am so disappointed” when I announce the length of my stay, clearly said with no recognition of PTO or cost of flying during peak time. It quickly leads in to the awkward conversation about how difficult it is to plan for (separate) sleeping arrangements for my boyfriend and me. He is coming to my parents house for the first time, and my mom—a Southern Catholic—is clearly still angry we are not married, but living together. She makes it more pronounced by inconveniencing my little sister, who has been relegated to the couch so that the family toddler can have a bedroom to herself, a ridiculous move given she is only two. She could easily fit in to a room with her parents (my older sister) who right now are assigned their own. We’re two weeks away, and already we’re battling where we’re all going to sleep, despite the fact we are not a big family and our house has plenty of bedrooms.

These are not real problems. These are holiday tactics, Christmas bombs that come out every single year wearing a different guise.

Now that I am a bit older and wiser, I choose not to engage, but fight back with something positive, off topic, crowd-pleasing. This year, I tried to smooth it all over by suggesting we have a lighthearted Christmas cocktail party, something I know my mom loves. What do I get from the other side? “What a great idea, honey. I would love to have one that is girls-only.”