In the United States in 2018 many of us have grown up with ideas about holidays that we don't even question. Yes, you do make plans for certain days that require reservations or drive time or rental cars or pick-ups from the airport or innumerable grocery store visits. Certain food is eaten, or at least put on the table, with a certain amount of fancy china or a big table at a Chinese restaurant (it's amazing how many families I know who do the Chinese food thing). You will see certain people and put up with them a certain amount. A certain budget is set and a certain percentage of it is abided by. A certain range of calories will be consumed (and a certain amount of alcohol) and a predictable amount of sleep will be lost. Receipts will be saved. Items will be regifted. Festivities will be looked forward to in some definable amount and at some point, a regular activity and feeding schedule will again be longed for. There are some things that are inevitable around the holidays. People will make too much food and somehow will still run out of things. There will be discussions of who will be the Christmas Elf or where is that one Hanukkah gift; I'm sure I put it on this shelf after I wrapped it..? The things that drive us crazy in the moment they are occurring are somehow the things about which we reminisce most fondly in July when we are telling someone about our usual holidays. How you have to have two kinds of cranberry sauce. How having a vegetarian now throws Mom, who's cooked the same turkey for 60 years, into a spin. How Santa is no longer a thing (this I find repugnant and hard to understand). How we do/don't go to church/temple/feast/soup kitchen. How we do/don't watch the parade/football/dog show. And we remember, anticipate, and describe our usual holiday experiences with a certain amount of laughter, exasperation, or derision. In fact, while you are reading this I wonder if you are picturing in your mind some of these things from your own life. And no matter how you feel about them, I ask you to imagine for a moment that you've lost them. That somehow these holiday traditions and images no longer exist. That you lived a life with none of the usuals. That you had nothing in particular to expect in terms of the holiday season because you had never had a consistent holiday experience.
Okay, now hold that thought. Put it aside for a moment.
Among all the ideas and pictures we each hold internally about the holidays is another one with which almost everyone is familiar: stress. It might be a tight budget or far-flung family. It might be a packed calendar. It might be a change in circumstances like a divorce or death. It might be the holidays-only proximity of those difficult family members who can't seem to conform their behavior to the standards of peacekeeping the rest of the family accepts. It might be loneliness. In the end we all have felt some measure of stress about and around the holidays and we can probably readily identify the source of it. More than any one of these, mediators most often see holiday-related issues that have to do with families and how they get along in terms of expectations, planning, and participating in holiday activities. The holidays seem to exacerbate whatever family issues exist the rest of the year. Often we are in the presence of people from whom we are usually at a comfortable distance, and we have to negotiate not only our relationships with them but our relationships in the context of dearly-held (or secretly dreaded) traditions and norms.
As a mediator, I recognize the particular flavor of family conflict that simmers like a stew during the holidays. It has its own tang of disappointment, a tangible texture of projection, and a pungent odor of blame. We want the holidays to be happy, relaxed, and full of warmth. Not many of us don't have a Norman Rockwell- or Rankin Bass-like fantasy of what a holiday celebration should be, and most of us have at least some skepticism that it will ever come true. People give up their fantasies reluctantly, no matter how many times they've been proven unlikely. There is a certain number of us who, at New Years every year, wonder why we succumbed to the dream again. We swear we will never wish that holiday wish ever again. But by Halloween we are making plans all over again, with either optimistic enthusiasm or jaded dread, which we might cynically call realism.
Why do we do this to ourselves? What is this fantasy of joyful family gatherings based on? Are we all just Hallmark marketing victims? Have we really just swallowed a sour soup of materialism, Christmas specials, and pseudo-religious tag lines that has brainwashed us into thinking that the holidays are somehow different than the rest of the year for families? That the people who hurt our feelings or eat all the pie or have no idea how to buy gifts from January through October will magically become considerate, generous, or astute from Thanksgiving to New Years? What is this amalgam of insanity? Why can't the people we want the most to be tolerable just behave how we think they should? Why can't they meet our expectations? Come on, it's the holidays!
Remember that thought you were holding from earlier? OK, back to that. Imagine, for instance, an upcoming Thanksgiving about which you have either no expectations or wide-open ones.
It's hard to do, right? That would mean a turkey day with no definably expected menu, no definite attenders, no specific location for the meal. It's a little devastating, isn't it? A formless Thanksgiving. No ideas about it at all. A blank slate. It's pretty impossible for me. The instant I add one detail, several more flood in. Just a picture of a pumpkin pie means the person who usually bakes it. Which means the partner of the person. Which means strong perfume. Which means my aunt's allergies. Which means my aunt's misery, which means my uncle's complaints. Which means my cousin's exasperation. Which means my sister's annoyance and impatience. Which means my frustration. Which means burned rolls, which means derision all around.
You see how this goes. We know our families and their antics and habits as well as we know our own names. And unless we have reached the absolute end of our hopes and expectations and decided to take ourselves on a solo trip to a tropical resort instead of trying to Give Thanks for nothing, we really do want to have Thanksgiving (or Christmas or Hanukkah or Kwanzaa) with the people we love (whether or not we like them). Therefore, we can't help wanting peace and harmony (unless you thrive on conflict and love to cause it, in which case you are probably not a great candidate for mediation anyway).
The truth is, you can't force so-and-so's girlfriend not to wear perfume to dinner. You can't anticipate every medical event that may or may not occur at dinner. You can't ask your uncle to keep his complaints to himself if you really do want his naturally-complaining self to be present. You can't dictate your cousin's reactions to his parents' traits. You can't tell your sister to lighten up and not judge everyone. I mean, you could do these things, but good luck with that. You CAN, however, decide not to be frustrated. You can decide your love for your family matters more, especially on one night, than pie or rolls or your own perception of everything running smoothly. You can decide that no holiday runs like a computer program, but you can enjoy it anyway. You can decide to laugh rather than get annoyed. You can decide that you are the only person over whom you have control.
Many of us don't give much thought to what we can do to make family gatherings happier events. We give an awful lot of thought to what others can do. And when you get a whole house full of people who each thinks everyone else bears the responsibility for the happiness of the group, you have a whole house of miserable individuals. What if you had a whole house full of people who bore their own responsibility for their own feelings? Holiday or not, Tuesday or Friday, this always works out better. The best way for everyone to get along is to each be a person who gets along. Your family does not exist to make you happy. That is up to you. An entire family (we can excuse toddlers) of individuals who each monitor their own behaviors and attitudes and don't expect anyone else to do it for them will always do better at the holidays, which are stressful and non-ordinary enough without considering other people's proclivities. If we each consider our own, it may not be perfect (we are not robots), but it will be better.
Family mediation can be fun, casual, and joyful. Issues can be aired with a minimum of vulnerability and angst. A few pre-holiday season sessions can remind family members what it is they like about each other and why our families are the people we most love. Shared memories unite us if we let them. The minute we can't imagine a holiday that works with a minimum of glitches is the minute we need to stop and think about what our part in the glitches is.
So build that picture of Thanksgiving anew in your mind. Imagine the pumpkin pie baker's girlfriend and her perfume. Imagine your reaction. Imagine your reaction to your aunt's allergies. And imagine asking your uncle what you can do to help him not worry so much about her. And imagine your peaceful, calm reaction to whatever he says. Imagine commenting to your sister how much your uncle loves your aunt. Imagine your reaction to her reply. That's all you can do. Your reaction. That's it.
And, you can bring your baker, his girlfriend, your aunt, uncle, and cousin, and your sister to mediation and have a holiday hash. Yep, get it said before the holidays. And make sure you say it's because you love them. Because you really do.
The holidays have just a good a chance of exceeding your expectations as they do of meeting or failing them. But a little preparation never hurts. And if you can't round everyone up ahead of time, come in for a strategy caucus. In the end, all you can do is you.
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