18 Ways To Enjoy The Holidays
Estelle Toby Goldstein, MD
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2009 Estelle Toby Goldstein
Designed by Wade B. Ward
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Dedicated to the loving family who shared so many happy holidays with me, and who will live in my heart forever: My parents, Ben and Lillian Goldstein, and my beloved brother Harry.
18 Ways To Enjoy The Holidays
1. First, know that your holiday table, no matter how festive, will not look like a Norman Rockwell illustration. Nobody's table looks like a Norman Rockwell illustration. His didn't; he was married three times and had his own share of family ups and downs.
2. Be equally realistic about your decorations and your gift-giving and your family and work type seasonal get togethers. No mass multi-person event is ever going to be what it's cracked up to be. You have lived long enough on this earth to have figured that one out.
This being said, marvelous and wonderful surprises are going to come, so start getting ready for them and believing in miracles. Individual ones, moments of joy and glory.
3. Now focus on the people who love the holidays best and have the most fun. Children. This happens because their expectations are simple and their joys are simple. The way to get yourself to this place is to remember the "very best" holiday you had when you were a child. Chances are the gift was not overly expensive. The element of surprise or expectation is what makes it special. Construct that for other people, and you will have a wonderful time watching them go "ga-ga."
4. Children are beloved by most people who do not have any. If you are having a family reunion that includes both parents and folks who are childless, assign the children to childless folks and suggest that they play together. This will not only give all of the parents a vacation, but also make all of the childless folks deliriously happy when they return the children to their natural parents.
5. When you are planning a meal, break all notions of family supremacy. It should not take place in the same place every year, especially if people have to come from very far. The same person should not be saddled with all meal preparations just because she is a "talented" cook. People can and should be prepared to submit dishes.
Of course, personal preparation is an option, but avoid over-praising it or over-valuing it. We have never, ever, had more options for food preparation than we have today. Whether it is a restaurant that delivers, a supermarket that prepares, or somebody who ships freeze-dried over the internet, just remember: enjoy the food, instead of venerating the slavery that went into preparing it.
6. Cards are unbelievably expensive. I am a strong believer in making one's own cards. Now the important thing is not to get the idea that the creations so resulting must take their immediate places in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Actually, some of them probably could. How long has it been since you saw something in an art museum and said "my child could do better than that?" Simply provide a space which is covered with newspaper and could be made messy, lots of scissors and glue and magazine or collage material, a few markers. Include a computer, to print off that special image or special message. Include some old Christmas cards you have in a drawer which you could not bear to throw out, for their immortality may be assured in this matter. Plain paper can be folded over to make envelopes. Or you can do postcards. No limits, just the maximum and minimum sizes the post office accepts. No superior or inferior age limits. No criticism. If you don't think one card is representative, send two. For ANY Holiday. Stop thinking of reasons you cannot do this and just do it.
7. Gifts are unbelievably expensive. I am a strong believer in making one's own gifts. If you absolutely refuse to do crafts, which are a very calming and mentally healthy thing to do, then buy somebody else's. If you hate crafts even if they are somebody else's, try that old time solution of drawing and decorating "coupons." Do your laundry for a week, or give a hug to the person who gives you a coupon for same. This does require imagination, which most people have more of than they think they do. Any adult who is really stuck should ask a child.
8. If you actually do have to buy someone a gift, a horrendous state of affairs which I have managed to avoid for years, do so over the internet. Be careful; you can, with a little forethought, avoid all of the wild and crazy solicitations to buy and actually buy only what you really want to get. You can save all kinds of parking fees and impulse buys with a little planning and a laptop.
9. Water down all your allegedly alcoholic drinks. Don't worry; you are not required to do it with water, especially if you do not want to appear cheap. Consider club soda, fruit juices, even a few flavored syrups. People who have too much alcohol will sleep it off if you are lucky or get strangely disinhibited and punch someone else if you are unlucky. If you have to serve alcohol at all, and I am amazed how many people do, try insisting on the flavors and holding back on the actual alcohol as much as you humanly can.
10. Use video whenever possible. In general, people who have long abandoned traditional sex roles seem to find them again around holiday time. Men (and a few women) will cluster around a game where several people throw around some kind of a spherical shaped entity allegedly made of animal skin. This is a tribal ritual; we should make no attempt to stop people from doing this. We can provide foods, as healthy as they will accept, and alcohol, as dilute as they will accept (see above).
I believe in providing video counter-programming. There must be a video player, somewhere else in the house, with an appropriate DVD.
Although I would probably opt for a light operetta, I suspect the majority would go for some "finess-y" cooking instruction video, or even something in dance.
The important thing is to destroy the myth that the women do the work while the men make snacks disappear while peering at a screen.
11. One of the most fun outings in the world, for children, is the watching of holiday lights. Now it sometimes takes a paradigm shift for an adult to remember what it was like being a child and how much fun this is supposed to be. Of course, it is necessary to have a designated driver and to accept the fact that the driver might miss seeing some lights. Every neighborhood has somebody who knocks themselves out to put on a display. It does not have to be much. The simple idea of the black night sky being pierced by rays of light brings on all kinds of thoughts of the power of spirit. Just enjoy the light.
12. If you absolutely have to do your own outdoor light display, there is nothing simpler nor more beautiful than the southwest tradition which we have shamelessly stolen from our Mexican neighbors.
They call it "luminarias." You take a bunch of plain old paper bags and fill them with sand. You place them at regular intervals in front of your house. The easiest way to do this is to take a chain of regular light bulbs and poke one through the bottom of each bag. Some people like to use candles but then I think you need some kind of fireproof plastic bags. Come on now, let's keep this simple.
13. If you have to do an indoor light display, I suggest plug-in electric pseudo candles. I have so much paper clutter that the idea of using real candles has not even occurred to me for years. You can put all the foliage you want around them and not worry about replicating the great Chicago fire.
14. OK, you have a tradition to deal with. That means that every year, everyone will remember how wonderful past years have been, and start to muse about what has been lost, and probably get drunk. Aside from watering down drinks, it may be pretty much impossible to stop most people from getting drunk. But you can do a lot to set up positive associations with Christmases past by appealing to the senses. Make people remember the good stuff without even knowing what hit them. The sense of smell is vastly underused in this regard. I laughed when I first saw it, but after thinking things out, I believe this to be brilliant. You can buy and spray "Christmas tree" scent.
Of course you have a nice safe fake tree. But spray it with something that has memories of Christmas past, everyone will be jolly.
15. We are still dealing with tradition. Let's go old-fashioned in our choice of music as entertainment. No, don't pull out the old Christmas album and play it loud enough so that nobody can talk. Make a new album for the vacation. Maybe even make it audio instead of video. Make it with karaoke, if you must, but make it starring your own kids. Have you not been buying dance and music lessons for lots of people for lots of years? Or maybe there are adults who think they can sing and dance. Remove the performance anxiety, for anybody can have a number of takes which is at least theoretically unlimited, and choose only their best. Go for it. "In the Family" Kudos, without stress. (Just between you and me, it does not have to be perfect.) Just do it.
16. On Thanksgiving, people talk a lot about giving thanks, but rarely find a way that is not overly religious and will not alienate a bunch of folks to express the nature of gratitude to the universe.
There is one truly amazing video that is meaningful to children and moving to adults. This is the Frank Sinatra video rendition of "The House I Live In," which can be freely downloaded from the internet by anyone knowledgeable in such things. I would have preferred a showing of that video to even my own dear family's explanations of why I needed always to be thankful. This psychiatrist-lady still fights tears when she sees it, because it is moving and true.
17. Use every available opportunity to generate group laughter. This is hard to do, since most people laugh at very different things.
Here, the recommended video is a relatively modern and very commercial one. Mr. Bean (Rowan Atkinson) uses few words and it is impossible to suppress laughter at his purely physical humor, especially when he is preparing his holiday dinner for his girlfriend and gets a rather large turkey stuck upside-down on his head.
18. The best hostess knows how to direct a conversation.
Conversations about a poor economy and impending doom have absolutely no place at a family gathering. You may talk about miserable millionaires who got assassinated; or better yet, about poor people who became millionaires. It is no accident that stories like Horatio Alger, about a poor kid who becomes rich, have been staples for a couple hundred years. If all else fails, try a dramatic reenactment of Dickens' "A Christmas Carol," This is one of the most acclaimed tales of all time because people need to get the lesson straight, over and over and over again.
CONCLUSION:
The object of celebrating a holiday is to have fun and bond with family and friends. Too many family gatherings and friendships have been disrupted by the stresses of preparing and presenting holiday gatherings.
Make each holiday gathering a loving and blessed event. Treasure the time you get together with family and friends.
And most of all -- have a good time!