I’ve learned to let go of holiday expectations the last few years and I swear it has made a world of difference in my mental health. I come from a BIG family. My mother is one of 11 and I have over 100 cousins. We had very traditional holidays growing up: Everyone gets dressed, we trudge miles to grandma’s house in the snow; the women cook, the men sit, the teenage girls watch the little kids, the teenage boys disappear. We have turkey, stuffing (no, not dress’n, I’m a Yankee at heart), potatoes, green bean casserole, banana pudding, pumpkin pie…
Well, you get the idea. Growing up, my holiday experiences were about as Hallmark traditional as you can get (all the dysfunction included). And I honestly look back on most of those days fondly.
So I didn’t set out to do things differently (apart from the women doing all the work), but it turned out that way. We moved here to the Scenic City about over five years ago, away from our extended family, so we started having small holidays as just the four of us, which was honestly nice. Cutting out a three-hour drive and enjoying time at home was way more relaxing. Then we had to enforce boundaries with some family members, and those boundaries led to us missing bigger holidays like Easter, Christmas and Thanksgiving. But I didn’t want to spend those days cooking and cleaning and doing things I honestly didn’t want to do. I wanted to relax, enjoy good food, and spend time actually engaging with my family (and possibly napping).
But those things aren’t allowed in traditional holidays. Or are they?
I decided to let go of giving my kids my holiday experiences and gave them their own. One year, we went out to a fancy restaurant for Christmas dinner instead of cooking at home. When trying to have a traditional meal, we often end up with enough food for a week since it’s just two adults and two kids eating. We’ve taken city walks downtown and gotten ice cream on Christmas, and we’ve ordered food on Thanksgiving (the pandemic was a great excuse to do this for the first time). This past year, we went camping on Easter and the kids LOVED it. They did a scavenger hunt that got them a basket at the RV park, and they woke up to some pretty amazing Easter Bunny gifts on the picnic table. And last year for Thanksgiving, we were on our way to India!
At first, I was uncomfortable with the smallness of it all. How could it be a holiday without 45 people yelling through a too hot house and a grandma leading the pack? How could we not eat ham on Christmas or cabbage on New Year’s Eve? But those rules were made up. Holiday magic is not always in the expectations we have from our childhood; it’s in the magic we put into our kids’ childhoods.
