maandag 22 december 2014

Why The Holiday Season Is The Perfect Time For Dicks.. And How to Do Something About That..

You may know a friend or co-worker who like the Grinch, fanatically hates Christmas. Who would pick eight-hour long buisness meetings over Christmas with their family any time. Maybe you are one of those people yourself. While you do like to spend time with people, you do not like to spend time with the ones you are going to spend Christmas.
Perhaps you dread the remarks of your overly critical mother. Hate sharing a table with your father-in law, who is king at subtly offending people. Fear what will happen if Uncle Willy can’t handle his booze again. Get silently mad at Grandma, who always excuses his terrible behavior.
 If any of this applies to you: Some of your family members are being dicks. 


 
The holiday season is a wonderful time for dicks. They can be total jerks and get away with it. Even crazier: the people they are being dicks to, actually go through a lot of effort in order to be treated like shit. They sacrifice on or two days of their scarce free time, often undertake an hour-long drive, all to put up with insults, drunk rants or inappropriate questioning, for an entire afternoon. Or even longer. Wow. Why do adult people do this?
It’s this pesky myth that gets adult people who normally do a perfect job at standing up for themselves to take more crap than a Mardi Gras portable toilet unit.
Which one? The myth that Christmas is all about family, that you should be with your family, and that there is something very wrong if you are not with family during Christmas.
Most of the year, you spend your leisure time with people you actually want to be with. But during Christmas, it’s something else entirely. The myth gives people some sort of claim to your time, whether you like them or not. It’s Christmas, and I am related to you, so you better show up, because that is how it’s supposed to be.
But it’s not. Yes, family is important. But being someone’s family does not give you the right to make a person feel terrible. Not during the rest of the year and not during Christmas. So, if your family makes you feel like shit during the holidays, avoid them. Make up your own plan. Spend Christmas with your friends. Or with a bucket of Ben and Jerry’s and all the episodes of Breaking Bad. Whatever you like. But don’t let other people screw up your holidays, just because they happen to be your family.
If only it were that easy, some of you will say. Mom has been asking for our holiday plans since August, stressing over and over again how important it is that we all show up. It’s the biggest thing of the year for them. Not showing up is'nt considered an option..
Well, all the more reason to say no! If Christmas dinner with your family feels like an emotional minefield, your family obviously does not offer you a warm and nurturing home. On top of that, you are coerced into spending your holidays with people you do not want to be around with (or at least, not for that long). 

And you actually reward them for that! You honor their request, so that they will be able to keep up appearances. Pretend to their neigbours and friends that they have a big, happy family. While you know the 'happy' part is a lie (Otherwise, you would not be recognizing yourself in this article).
Christmas is about being with loved ones. Spend time with the people you really care about, not with the ones you are expected to care about. Maybe that means that in the future, some people are looking forward to a lonely Christmas. But that’s not a bad thing. It’s actually an incentive. An incentive for them to try not being dicks.
Merry Christmas everybody!
(None of this applies to my family, and in-laws. Christmas with them is wonderful! Just wrote it out of sheer astonishment why so many people let themselves being dicked around during the holidays.. )


Source photo: pippalou 

Geen opmerkingen:

Een reactie posten