Saving Your Sanity in The Holiday Season

’Tis the Holiday Season…

Too bad too many people don’t realize how long it is or what to do about it. Here are a few helpful suggestions, just in time for the 12 Days of Christmas and beyond, dear readers. No, it’s not over yet. You can still salvage a little happiness before the 2024/25 season ends. There’s still time.

OH, YOU DIDN’T REALIZE THIS PERIOD OF HIGH JINKS WAS OVER 6 WEEKS LONG? SURPRISE! NO WONDER YOU’RE SO TIRED! This celebratory time actually starts a few days before Thanksgiving, then moves into Advent Anticipation. Then it’s Christmas with the 12 Days of Christmas that stretch to New Year’s Eve & Day…Then it ends on January 6th — The Feast of the Epiphany or “Twelfth Day,”or Three Kings Day, or Greek Orthodox Christmas. (And let’s not forget Kwanza and Hanukkah).

So this “holiday season” encompasses 2 seasons(the end of Autumn, the beginning of Winter) just within 3 months.

No wonder so many people feel overwhelmed by the magnitude of this change: there’s transformation AND regeneration in a relatively short period of time.

Wow.

So it’s okay to feel blah or stressed or weirded out. Go ahead and cry. Whatever you feel should simply be embraced with the understanding that whatever you feel is perfectly normal. You’re merely responding to nature at its god-like best and man-made scenarios at their worst.

IT’S ALSO TIME TO DEAL WITH YOUR WEIRD UNCLE — AND OTHER PEOPLE YOU JUST DON’T LIKE. Holidays mean family get-togethers that are usually upended(A.K.A. ruined by misunderstandings or heavy drinking) by that one weird family member you don’t want around but tolerate “because he’s family.”

You don’t want to invite him over, but you always do. And you and everyone else in the family knows what will happen too, but they just tolerate it “because he’s family.”

Almost immediately, he’ll ask his niece or nephew to “pull this finger.” Then the real fun begins. He’ll complain about any and every gift he receives, then he’ll launch into the saga of “when we were kids, we only got dirt and were happy to get that because if we didn’t like it, they’d take it away and we’d end up with nothing.” Meanwhile, he’ll also hate whatever delicious entree it took you hours and expertise to prepare.

As if to add insult to injury, he’ll start telling everyone “Happy Easter,” then inform all the little kids there that one day this baby Jesus would grow up and get crucified. Of course, somebody would always burst into tears after that. Then everyone else there would have to hear the endless sobbing of “Why? Why did they have to kill him, Mama?”

And yet, year after year, you keep inviting this guy when you really don’t want him around — not then, not ever.

Did anyone ever stop to think that maybe this guy doesn’t want to be there?

Maybe he doesn’t like you or the rest of the family, either. Maybe he’d rather hang out with his other goofy friends and drink. Or maybe he’d rather be by himself and drink. Dealing with his social inappropriateness, though, whether or not it involves alcoholism, should have been addressed months, or years, earlier. For various reasons, that never happened.

So now you’ve doomed yourself to yet another unhappy holiday season by forcing yourself to be nice to someone who shows no real kindness or respect towards you and your loved ones and your traditions. On some level, though, he knows he’s throwing a wrench in your plans — and yet, he refuses to end his inconsideration.

But as long as you keep tolerating his deliberate unkindness, this nightmare will continue. So why not drop your benevolent martyr role in this family script and talk to weird uncle about his behavior and ask him to stop? No, I’m not advocating any ghosting of him. I’m talking about an honest sit-down intervention here. If he insists he never realized he’d been hurting your feelings, educate him — without any hesitation.

When you come right down to it, that’s the real reason soooo may people dread “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year.” They don’t want to celebrate it with people they don’t like. Their naughty list includes co-workers, neighbors, and especially members of their own — usually dysfunctional — family. But they keep putting up with this mistreatment because they have this mistaken notion that they have to happily tolerate this seasonal emotional abuse. How sad.

The solution is simple: stop being an emotional punching bag and/or doormat for these nasty people. It doesn’t matter if you’re related to them or not, only that they’re being nasty to you.

Start spending your valuable time with people you want to be with, and stop spending no time(or as little as possible) with people you dislike because they won’t stop mistreating you.

Start turning your self-awareness into better self-care and you’ll feel the difference…even if there’s only 13 more days left to celebrate.