STORY BYBreak out the eggnog. Make that a double. Quicker than you can say, "Jack Frost," your in-laws, out-laws or other visiting relatives will be at your door, bearing gifts (that you gave them last year), pinching cheeks, raising eyebrows over your childrearing techniques, and testing your goodwill.
Unfortunately, real life rarely matches our Norman Rockwellian imaginings of family togetherness. It doesn’t match the Cosby Show life-lessons-with-a-laugh-track. In fact, we’d even take the Homer Simpson's family disasters over our own. In real life, close quarters and different personalities can combine to create the holiday from hell.
Somehow we figure our family gathering success-o-meter will fall somewhere between what we think we remembered it to be as a child and what it ought to be as an adult. In other words, revisionist history or roasting-chestnut fantasies edge out reality. Neither set of expectations hits their marks.
“During this season we idealize our experience—we imagine just how wonderful things should be," says Dr. Ann Saunders, a psychiatrist and visiting associate professor with The University of Texas Medical School at Houston. "It should be beautiful, loving, with everyone getting along. But real life isn't always that fantastic. If your expectations are far too high, it can create a stressful situation."
This year (before you move without leaving a forwarding address) take a deep breath. The holidays don't last forever. You can survive them. We'll tell you how.
Our gift to you. Happy Holidays!
The complex relationship triangle among your in-laws, your spouse and yourself heightens holiday stress, Saunders says. While you meet your in-laws as an adult, and you met your husband as an adult, your spouse's parents raised him from a child, and may still relate to him that way. And in the presence of his parents, he may revert to a child-like role.
"Your spouse is caught in the middle because he or she is trying to find a balance between you and his or her parents," Saunders says.
Being on the other end of the triangle is no picnic, either. You may find it hard to live up to your in-laws' high expectations and criticism. Or, you may shudder when you see your spouse's bad habits and quirks magnified in his or her parents.
"Sometimes you see the things that your in-laws do that grate on your nerves and you think, 'That is why my husband is the way he is. It is their fault.' You worry that your spouse is going to end up like them," Saunders says.
Before you get the guest room ready, sit down with your partner and plan what you can do to alleviate some of the stress of the visit. Often these hot buttons can be as abstract as discussing political issues or religious differences (brought out in full during the holidays) or as close to home as dueling meatloaf recipes and debated potty-training techniques for “our grandchildren.” Talking through these in advance can head off problems.
Find out ahead of time how much sight-seeing or down-time your guests really wish to have. And, query your partner as to how much help you truly can expect from both your partner and his/her family. You may not get the answer you want, but, you’ll be prepared.
If relatives are visiting for more than a few days, add free time to the schedule. We naturally feel we need to keep our guests occupied and entertained on top of preparing meals and holiday gatherings. Often, our guests just need a nap—or their episode of Antique Road Show. (And, so do we.)
Decide in advance how you’re going to handle Uncle Frank’s yearly retelling of how he came this close to inventing the Internet. Have an action plan for the inevitable bragster sister whose children went to gene-splicing camp last summer. In other words, pick your battles and roll your eyes in private. You as the host/hostess always sit in the power seat, since you own it—and the seat on which your guests are perched. They are on your turf, not their own. Be gracious.
And if you think an extra toddy or two will put you in the holiday spirit, or at least will smooth rocky relationships with visiting families, think twice. “Alcohol never gets rid of the tension," Saunders says. "What happens is you lose some of your inhibitions and it can turn on you."
Family secrets. Long-held grudges. Dramatic scenes at the dinner table. Sound like an episode of Desperate Housewives? If you can stay above the fray, your own dysfunctional family can equal the entertainment value of any soap opera.
Kathy*, a 30-year-old working mother, hated spending the holidays with her backbiting in-laws, who loved to criticize her and everyone else. Then, one holiday dinner she sat back and took in the conversation, and found she enjoyed the show.
"As I watched them bicker, I had to laugh to myself," she said. "I just thought how lucky I was that I wasn't like them."
Sometimes you just have to remind yourself that if the same scenario were on TV, it would be hilarious. “Bob” recalls two decades of the same, tired argument breaking out each holiday between his uncles over how they sliced the turkey. One year, it finally turned ugly, almost slicing the entire family in half. “Then, my wife and I caught a movie that contained a storyline about two brothers who quit speaking to each other over the exact same issue. We sent each uncle a copy of the movie and told them not to come for the holidays until they had watched it.”
Saunders advises, "If there are things that your relatives do over and over that irritate you, try to remember your humor. Instead of saying, 'Oh no, he's telling that story again,' step back and try to remember what's funny about the situation."
In fact, if you live long enough these anecdotes may become cherished threads of the family story.
While you may love spending time with your out-of-town family, spending several days with them in your home is another story. Your den is now their bedroom and your brand new laptop now has something sticky all over it...
"It is stressful having people in your home who aren't usually there," Saunders says. "They have different habits that may annoy or irritate you." And vice-versa.
During the rest of the year, 34-year-old Ashley's two-bedroom, one bath home is just the right size for her and her husband and 8-month-old baby. But cozy turns into claustrophobic when her in-laws spend the holidays with them.
"I have always been the kind of person who needs her space, so constantly having someone underfoot drives me crazy," Ashley says. "When it gets too much, I hand my baby off to my husband or his parents and go for a walk, a drive — anything to get me out of the house."
Saunders says many couples assume that they have to spend every minute of the holiday together. However, doing activities separately can give everyone in the family a break. Your parents may enjoy taking your children to a movie without you. Or, your husband and his parents may enjoy the museum saunter or drag-car racing that you have no desire to attend. That's not a problem.
If family togetherness gets too much, do a quick errand or walk around the block. You'll return home refreshed and tolerant.
In some families, holidays and in-laws simply don't mix. It takes some courage, but celebrating the holidays with just those who already live in your home may be the best option.
Katie, 35, cringes at the thought of another holiday with her in-laws, spending hour after hour in front of Twilight Zone marathons on the Sci-Fi channel. She misses her family's Christmases, spent visiting with loved ones, playing Pictionary. This year the couple made a compromise.
"Since we don't yet have children, which would warrant visits with grandparents during the holidays, this year we decided to spend time together as a couple," Katie says. "We're going to Florida, where we don't know anyone except Mickey Mouse."
Then again, there’s the new trend toward destination family gatherings: picking a neutral ground where everyone is an equal guest and no one is solely responsible for showing the family a good time. Fifty-year-old Louis has tried this with her huge extended family in numerous locales from Mexico to the Texas Hill Country. The upside, she says, is that everyone is more inclined to pitch in. “The downside is that the person responsible for planning that year’s holiday will endure years of sarcastic bashings if one thing goes wrong—which of course, always does.”
When all else fails, dig a little deeper to find that holiday spirit. Remember that your aging parents were once young parents just trying to stir gravy, wrap presents, give you a sweet holiday memory and please their own visiting parents.
And remind yourself that you have your in-laws to thank for giving you the best gift of all: the love of your life. “They did raise your spouse to be terrific," Saunders says. "There's something to be said for that."
*names have been changes in the interest of privacy
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Dr. Ann Saunders is an associate professor of psychiatry at the UT Medical School.
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Eating healthy
reverses metabolic syndrome
Dr. Tasnime Akbaraly of University College London and her colleagues were interested if healthy eating could actually turn-the-tide and reverse metabolic syndrome, which is having 3 or more of the following risk factors: excess abdominal fat; high triglycerides, hypertension, low levels of HDL the “good” cholesterol, or type 2 diabetes. Having metabolic syndrome doubles a persons’ risk of heart disease and greatly increases the odds of developing type 2 diabetes.
The researchers studied 339 British civil servants with metabolic syndrome, and how closely the adhered to the Alternative Healthy Eating Index (AHEI) to see if it could help reverse metabolic syndrome. The AHEI is a set of published nutritional guidelines by the Harvard School of Public Health in 2002 that emphasizes whole grains, fruits, vegetables and decreased red meat consumption.
Five years into the study, nearly 50% no longer had metabolic syndrome. People who followed the AHEI guidelines the closest were nearly twice as likely to have reversed their metabolic syndrome. The results of the study were published in Diabetes Care, online July 29, 2010.
Dr. Alice Lichtenstein, an expert on diet and heart health from Tufts University in Boston who was not involved in the study said, "It's not about focusing on individual components of the diet, it's really the whole package, and that becomes important because it means that if one of the components of a healthy diet is to eat more fruits and vegetables, just buying a pill saying that there's a concentrated extract of fruits and vegetables is probably not what's going to help you."
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