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Strange Christmas Traditions W/O or: Christmas--let the brawling beginDec 13 '05 (Updated Dec 16 '05) Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line Stress is a nasty thing. No season brings out so much stress in so many people as Christmas. Bring on the high blood pressure meds & let the season begin!
From puckmugger's request for Christmas Traditions--odd or otherwise, I bring you a snapshot of the Christmases of my life--what even my close family doesn't know occurs. Every year since grass was green--or my parents got married, whichever happened first--my entire immediate family has gathered at my parents' place for Christmas. Initially, this started out as a nice, cozy gathering of my four grandparents, a handful of cousins, and 3 of my sets of aunts and uncles. And these people all got along well--or could at least fake it for a few hours. Then people started growing older...and having kids and getting married and getting divorced and remarried and then those kids started having kids and some of the out-of-town relatives moved back home and... Now, it's a nice cozy gathering of about 40, if everyone shows up at the same time with their entire step-family in tow. This leads to a lot of stress with cooking for that many people and cleaning and buying gifts, etc. My family are also very picky eaters (and very mixed European ethnic origins) so there are usually enough scary smells to make anyone nauseous and enough bits of candy and chocolate lying around to put even the most devout sugar addict into a diabetic coma. I grew up thinking everyone else's house smelled of sauerkraut for a good week before and after Christmas and that if you didn't eat enough pickled herring to get physically ill on Christmas Day, it obviously wasn't a good celebration. Nevermind the egg nog, the fudge, the pecan pie, the....etc You should spend your week before New Year's chugging shots of Pepto Bismol, right--that's the sign of a good party, in the style of my family. I also grew up thinking that being awakened at 5 am Christmas morning because your mother had broken down into shrieking sobs of stress in the livingroom was normal. Who needs to hear Santa's sleighbells or a good, hearty "Hohoho!" when you can watch a nervous breakdown before your very eyes? Neither of my parents slept for about 3 days before Christmas, between cooking and cleaning and shopping for last minute gifts, etc. There are several years in memory where I didn't have fingerprints on Christmas Day because I'd been taping so many wrapped packages in the preceding days. There isn't a single year in memory where there wasn't a huge row between my parents or myself and one of my parents or all three of us somewhere between 8 pm Christmas Eve and 8 am Christmas Day, that left at least my mother or I in tears--sometimes, both of us cried and sometimes it was several rows, not just one. It isn't an official Christmas tradition, mind you, airing the dirty laundry from the past year at the top of our lungs. We don't set out with the goal of having a really good screaming match in the wee hours of the morning. Our intent is not to celebrate Peace on Earth by balancing that out with major livingroom warfare. It just happens every single year, like snowfall--the timing is iffy, but you know it's gonna happen each winter anyway. Perhaps, this year, I should suggest mud wrestling on the font lawn or a good, physical croquet match in the snow. It's a little less civilized than a "discussion", yes, but it might be fun to spice it up a little--have a bit of variety. We can always go back to the bellowing next year.  |
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