For some families, the Thanksgiving holiday, with the extended family, is the holiday of the heebie-jeebies. They worry about debating the state of the country’s political discourse over dinner, the endless questions of “why aren’t you married,” asked by meddling relatives, folks who show up empty-handed but leave with as many leftovers as their plastic containers can hold, and that overfull (or maybe just fed-up) feeling as they lumber over to the couch to get their second wind before the endless parade of pies appear.
You guys are amateurs. Thanksgiving is easy.
Nothing says crazy like my family at Christmas.
Now, first, let me acknowledge that my birth family is a great mishmash of siblings, cousins, husbands, wives, children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, nieces, nephews, etc. And I don’t believe any one of them owns a watch.
So I’m really looking forward to going to see them this year.
I went home two years in a row, then stayed here and celebrated with my in-laws last year. But my mother is 96, and I’ve finally acknowledged that there are more chances behind me than ahead to spend Christmas with her. It’s time to go home for a few days.
Once I made the decision, I first called my younger sister, who takes care of my mother, to let her know. And because I like to make sure to spread the crazy around, I then called my other sister, to let her know that I was going home, just in case she wanted to come too.
If that doesn’t sound like a Hallmark moment, or a taste of that old Edward Asner movie, “The Gathering,” well, you just have no heart.
Except, wait.
Once I let it be known I was coming home, the start of chaos season began.
No one in my family knows how to organize anything, but it doesn’t stop them all from trying to micromanage. And remember, this is also the family that time (or clocks) forgot.
So when the first wave started, I just thought, game on.
My cousin, whom I love dearly, was the first to open the crazytown follies. She called, telling me that she would be willing to cook the turkey for Christmas dinner, as long as everybody else was responsible for the side dishes. Sounds nice, right?
Well, hold on.
You know that silly telephone game, where you tell one person one thing, and they repeat it to the next person, who tells the next, and eventually, when it gets back to the originator, it’s something entirely different? We play that game, but in a different way. The originator tells one person one thing, then promptly calls someone else (sometimes more than one other person) and tells the second someone a completely different plan. If you do that enough times (and we do), no one knows what’s going on, nothing gets done in time, people show up either three hours early or six hours late, and dinner is around 11 p.m.
And my husband blames me. (It’s actually his own fault, he met my family before we married and he married me anyway. I have no idea why every time it happens — which is all the time — he acts brand new.)
The people in my family range from age 96 to 3, so trying to coordinate when people can meet and eat is difficult enough in families where the majority isn’t certifiable.
But I find it fun. Because if nothing else, my family is fun. We’re loud and we laugh a lot — at each other mostly — and especially at the neverending battle to get food on the table at a decent hour.
One sister always has several work projects going on while coordinating the meal plan, another always wants to plan the outing to a movie theater (bad idea, she’s one of those people who likes to talk throughout the film as if you just plunked down $12 to listen to her commentary), a daughter who takes her dad up on his promise to let her shop the Miracle Mile while he plays ATM, a husband so desperate to get away from his incredibly loud, unorganized, late-eating in-laws that he’s ready to chew his arm off to escape (or it might just be hunger), and my mother. She can’t see the chaos, but she can hear it, and I think it delights her to have a houseful of people — although it exhausts her.
We don’t fight over politics, not really. We’re all liberal, or left-leaning people. But we do hold multiple conversations with multiple people at the same time, including picking up conversations from weeks, months, or years ago, and continuing them as if time hasn’t elapsed (we don’t do time, remember?).
And we play games. Sometimes there are board games (one called Rapid Recall is a favorite, because my mother can play it, even though she can’t see), and sometimes all you need is a deck of cards and enough cutlery for a cut-throat game of SPOONS. Last time I played, I got gouged by one sister’s well-manicured nail as we fought for the last spoon. I’m requiring she wear gloves this year.
There won’t be a church service for us this time around, but there is always a prayer of thanks for the bounty of love, laughter, chaos (and the eye-rolling husband — bring a book already!).
I haven’t bought one present yet; I’m seeing gift cards from Target in everyone’s future. This Christmas isn’t really about the presents anyway. It will be all about the crazy.
And I can’t wait to embrace it.
Have a great holiday season. God bless us everyone.
