The Holidays

Originally written in January 08:
I had the strange experience of watching the much anticipated Patriots-Giants football game in mixed company. That is, both Pats and Giants fans were present. All were drinking, and all had money on the game. Christmas with my family of origin would not be Christmas without football, and everything that goes along with it. This is one of the rituals that has marked my family life from as early as I can remember. I was probably about six when I first picked a number out of a hat and learned that if the combined score at the end of the next quarter ended in my number, I would miraculously win money. My sisters would have been even younger when they started this “ritual.”

Fast forward about thirty years and here we all were again. There were Pats’ fans who bet on the Pats and rooted for the Pats. Giants’ fans who bet on the Giants and rooted for the same. Giants’ fans who bet on the Pats, and who—I can only imagine—felt very torn up inside. And then a lone Giants’ fan who bet on the Giants yet was still rooting for them to lose. With over three minutes left in the game and the Giants (down three points) driving the ball, now in Pats’ territory and securing a first down, my brother was yelling at Eli to “take a knee” and then cracking-up at himself after he said it, as were many others in the room. You have to know a little bit about football to realize he didn’t trust his quarterback enough to hold onto the ball, and enough about betting to know that my brother was worried that Eli and the Giants might lose the bet for him if they allowed the Pats to score another 12 points (not an unreasonable fear with this team) and cover the spread. My point, though, is that the ritual of football-at-Christmas-with-my-family brought back some very familiar feelings as well as fond memories.

As I watched the joy on my brother’s face I realized that there is something about rituals within families that act as a sort of container. Because rituals are marked by a set of prescribed actions, behaviors, and attitudes, they seem to allow us or even call to us to slip back into those default roles that we first took on back in childhood. We don’t have to think about what to do, we just do it, as if in a trance-like state going through the motions the way we always have. The ritual/container functions to keep out the rest of the world & all we have learned about ourselves and our families as we grew up, and to keep in everything we’ve learned from our families way back when. If your experience with your family of origin had positive and negative aspects, as the majority of folks do, then both those positive and negative aspects are likely to resurface when with family, most especially in the midst of family rituals. For my brother, with the various aspects of the football ritual in place, he was free to move into default mode, in this case slipping into the persona of fun-loving brother winning a bet that his wife would have never allowed him to make outside of this ritual!

I think this is one of the reasons that the holidays can be so bittersweet for people.
This year, I heard it from friends, co-workers, co-workers of friends, neighbors, you name it. “I’ll be glad when the holidays are over” was the repeated phrase. Yet the phrase didn’t indicate anything terrible; in fact, often it was preceded by “this or that was great, but…”, or “I’m enjoying the holidays but….” In other words, the holidays were bittersweet. Relationships with family can be quite stressful, and sometimes even bitter. We anticipate being called back into that role that we may be on the brink of breaking out of, and the anticipation causes a certain level of suffering. Or we find that we do take on that role, and then we suffer because that role is no longer good for us. But holidays for some are also sweet. And it’s that sweetness that keeps us coming back for more, despite the stressors.