There's nothing quite like spending the holidays with family....though if your family are anything like mine, you may not always mean that in a good way!
Don't get me wrong, opening your presents christmas morning all together, cooking the christmas dinner all together, sitting around the table eating dinner all together, in theory it sounds great, but in practice there's, well maybe a bit too much togetherness!
The trick to surviving the holidays with your family is to remember these three simple cheats...
Temper your expectations
People don't change! So your little sister's acting like a brat, she probably did the same thing last year, and doubtless she'll do the same thing next year! Uncle Joe will have a few too many sherries and pass out, and you grandma is going to insist on making her secret-recipe sprouts that noone likes; Why are you surprised? You need to go into the holidays aromoured with realsitc expectations and construct your battle plan around those! In fact, tempering your expectations, though maybe a little glass-half-empty is a sure-fire way to make sure you're not constantly disappointed all year round. You're not Santa, this is not Elf, things are going to go wrong, and that's okay!
Play a little game of hide and seek.
Noone says you have to spend every waking festive minute with your family! Try to carve out some time where you can escape from the house, or even into another room to regain your sanity. If you can do this under the guise of being helpful even better! Think last minute trips to the grocery store, offer to pick up great aunt mabel from the airport, babysit while everyone else goes to midnight mass...you'll earn brownie points and a precious few minutes alone.
Set an anti christmas countdown
So this may be a little too Grinch-like for some people, but for those of us with truly nightmare families, you have to take all the coping mechanisms you can get! You know how you get those apps for christmas countdowns? I have an anti-christmas countdown too. I promise myself a treat for surviving the holidays with my family with no drama (well, minimal drama) and I set a countdown on my phone for that treat. This then acts an incentive to keep my lip buttoned when my sister makes a little comment about my winter weight, and ignore my mother in law's tales of just how lovely christmas used to be with his ex(!). Maybe its a day shopping with your friends, or a night out with your other half, just keep that goal in sight and remember that its just a few days with satan's-answer-to-the-brady-bunch until you've earned your treat and normality can be restored!
And if it all goes wrong and you end up strangling someone with the last of the tinsel, don't worry about it, Christmas (and Thanksgiving, Hannukah etc) comes but once a year...maybe next year avoid the inlaws and take a trip?!
Happy Holidays!
