AH, THE HOLIDAY season. That time of the year when every family feels under pressure to behave like the Waltons when their natural inclination is to be more like The Osbournes.
With all the festive spirit in the world, it’s practically a Christmas tradition that certain arguments will inevitably emerge. Disputes like…
There’s always someone (perhaps it might even be you) who will expect to see the gift they’ve bought in operation mere minutes after it’s exited its wrapping paper.
Failure to wear said dressing gown/ use the foot pumice/ erect the bird feeder? Well, that means you clearly don’t like it doesn’t it. Cue sad faces and guilt-trip mumbles.
You return to the family home, where the piano (or any musical instrument), the one that you took lessons on in your youth, still resides.
Sometime in the lull betwixt Christmas and New Year, your mam will decide that the way to stay festive is for you to tinkle the ivories. Despite the fact that you haven’t touched a piano in years, always wilted at playing in public anyway and only ever learned the pieces you needed to attain grades one through six – and NEVER any singalongs – your mam will still launch into a grim-faced rant about “what a waste of money all those lessons were.”
Pictionary, Monopoly, Cluedo – it doesn’t matter what game it is, someone’s always going to end up miffed about losing and launch allegations of foul play. No-one knows how to suck the fun out of a board game like a family at Christmas.
Polls regularly reveal that one of the most common Christmas fights is about the ownership of the telly remote. Unless Santa has brought you Sky multiroom, brace yourself for a battle.
Some unfortunate fool (usually your dad) will decide to have another turkey sandwich and spend Christmas night liberally picking over the bird’s carcass when your mother was planning a month’s worth of menus – including a curry for the 27th – for the left overs.
At some point you’ll hit a Christmas cross-roads where several people will be content to lounge in front of the telly, eating tier two of the Christmas biscuits while swaddled in their Christmas onesies, BUT other folk (your mam) will have got it into her head that it’s imperative to leave the house and “do something as a family”.
The Christmas dishes that were only half-washed on Christmas night WILL be discovered and returned for a more thorough (supervised) clean.
You’ve envisioned a day of laziness/walk in the park with the kids/cleaning spree but, without your knowledge, your husband has told someone On His Side that you’ll drive for an hour to spend a half a day of tedium with a relative you can never think of much to say to, and who never listens to you when you say it.
There’ll always be some form of grump when where one person has spent months dreaming up a thoughtful, indulgent (expensive) gift for one party and in return they’ve been bought a household appliance.
Could equally be known as the ‘Do you always sleep in this late/drink this much/wear your hair like that/spend that long in the shower?’ fight. Basically it’s the fight that you have with you mam and dad when you’re back home and feel they are treating you like a child. Usually results in a big teenager sulk.
Maybe it’ll be a grievance from earlier that week, maybe it’ll be something that happened in 2006. But rest assured, with all family in one location and more time on your hands, this will be the time to revisit it.
It’s dubbed ‘hypercompresence’ – when families suddenly find themselves in each other’s company 24/7 having not spent that kind of time together in months. Such constant exposure will often leave you irked by things you’re normally too busy to notice. Has your partner always had such grating habits? Have your kids always been this whiney? Has your dad’s nostril hair always been so long?
Rest assured, they’re probably wondering the same things about you (hopefully not the nostril hair one).
Everyone is supposed to be on their holidays… and yet some people seem to be more on holiday than others, lying on the sofa while someone else continues to hoover and collect dishes around them. Christmas is for everyone – do your bit and load the dishwasher once in a while.
It’s an accident waiting to happen. The Good Glasses only come out at the one time of year where there are too many people in the house (many of whom are woefully unaware of the glassware hierarchy), and alcohol consumption levels have increased.
Self-explanatory.
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