Holiday Dinner With The FAMILY

adelineblock
Dec 17, 2019
6 min read

It is that time of year……........

Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and Great Mother of the Winterland’s Solstice. Call it whatever you like, but it is still the one time of year that many of us are expected to attend or even mistakenly plan, to host the Holiday Family Dinner.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year as sung in our favorite Christmas songs.

It is our time to be thankful and celebrate for all the bounty in our joyful lives.

It is our time to feast with our family and besties, and share our abundance of cheer and love.

It is the time of “The Holiday Family Dinner” as is endlessly brought to us by the many Lifetime, Hallmark and Netflix Holiday Productions that start streaming in early November.

Some of us consider this event a most generous gesture and truly look forward to nestling up with our kin, sharing stories and carols by the fire and drinking eggnog. Yet some of us feel just a little bit different. Some of us think upon this day as a duty bound “must attend”. An event so cataclysmic that should you not show up, someone will be all kinds of upset for eternity, or your death, whichever comes first.

Your attendance is most certainly mandatory, unless a legitimate exception applies.

Two feet of snow and a non-operational heater, freezing rain and driving with bad tires, migraines or heavy traffic, like on LA’s highly photographed 405 freeway, are not sufficient excuses to keep you carefree and warm at home.

However, there are a few reasonable and widely agreed upon exceptions.

Exceptions to the “Must Attend” general rule.

You are not required to attend if you have decided, with great enthusiasm, that you are an orphan. Btw, an orphan who was delivered into the world by the great flying stork wearing only a diaper, like the New Year’s baby.

You can also be exempt, if you are a singleton living in a far-far away land and planes do not fly there. Trains and buses are an arguable grey area. If you are partnered, this exemption is revoked as one of you can certainly find a way for you both to travel.

You are a no-go, if you work in a profession that protects and saves others such as an EMT, police officer, corrections officer, MD, or fire fighter and are working a doubleshift. Should you have a single shift, you will just need to work around it.

Definitely exempt if you have been banned from most family functions, due to some kind of behavioral issues, often alcohol or opinion related. For example, if you were caught yelling and running buck naked, drunkety drunk in a hotel parking lot during a recent family wedding, you need not attend. Perhaps you reluctantly reprimanded your niece’s boy friend for being an abusive inappropriate ass, after you were encouraged by her mother to do so. Your attendance is also not required.

The Holiday Family Dinner can be simply designed just for your intimate family or it can be leveled up into a great production. It can include cousins, parents, grandparents, great grand-parents, uncles and aunts both great and small, friends, singletons, and everyone’s plus one. Someone might need to pick up and drop off the super seniors but they are worth it. It can include peeps from work too, but I strongly, with my loud voice, advise against this.

It is an extremely high-risk event to mix family with almost anyone else.

You see, once you mix your work friends with your family, your pro-buddie will never ever see you in quite the same way. The respect and admiration they currently have for how you seamlessly handle people, professionally present yourself and negotiate business, will abruptly diminish when your drunk Dad gets outed for flirting with your son Brandon’s looking like a porn star GF. All bets are off on you and your work pal having lunch together anytime soon.

You also don’t want to try to explain why your teen niece dramatically ran gagging and hurling from the holiday table once she took two bites of your homemade Christmas Eve Salmon Bisque.

Admittedly it was rather fishy and smoky but the rest of us struggled through it.

Co-workers simply can’t handle this level of unique drama that comes with certain families.

You must be born into it to have that precise level of indifference.

At every Holiday Family Dinner there is always a hearty banquet of food options, some kind of drama, a broken something and one member who manages to vomit somewhere. It is just the way it is. It is anticipated and predictable.

Predicable, just like the events at “The Company Holiday Party” are anticipated.

Business Holiday parties are well documented in this regard. There is always someone or many someone’s that are super drunk and suddenly open up about their feelings. There are always people dancing that shouldn’t. There is always some staffer who hooks up with another staffer (single, partnered, no matter) thinking they are being so discreet, confident in the theory that what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. Which it might. However, they are not in Vegas, they are at “The Company Holiday Party” and everyone knows or soon will.

Like I said before, there is a banquet at the Fam Dinner, a generous co-lab of food items. Some people labor over their favorite specialties, that they make from scratch and bring on special platters. Others order up a pie or grab some Costco boxed surprise. Some just bring bottles of libations. I thank the party gods for them. A party beverage can soften all this abundance of family love.

A word of caution though……

Be careful about the number of glasses of sparkly consumed if you are in charge of cooking or watching over anything in the home oven. Time blurs. Marshmallows and turkeys can catch on fire, with the “OMG, I might need a fire extinguisher” sized flames.

The flames and extensive smoke will set off a home’s piercing loud smoke alarm, unless you have already torn it out of the ceiling like I have. The sound will jumpstart most of your loved ones and if they were not drinking, they will be shortly. It can give attendees near heart failure and can throw you into uncontrollable seizure like laughter. Either way, there is a strong likelihood you just singed off

at least part of one eyebrow. Isn't that what micro-blading is for?

Of course, dinner is now less than Martha Stewart or Lauren Conrad

perfect, so more gravy will be required than originally planned.

Besides the party beverage quota, here are a few more things that I have learned.

You may find them helpful.

My Holiday Family Dinner Rules

Someone will bring a food that is absolutely horrible. Do not tell them it looks wonderful but you are just too full to eat absolutely anything else. They will bring it again next year. How you get out of that is up to you.
DO NOT contribute to convo’s about unsafe subjects: religion, politics, your friends sex change, how absolutely special and accomplished your kids are (no one really cares), race issues, global warming, sports, LGBTQIA & women’s rights and absolutely not guns. You can probably talk about gardening, how ageless grandma looks, traffic, current computer games, cars, holiday TV specials, some recipes, types of whiskey, maybe even music. NOTE: When unsure, say nothing and simply smile. Not a wide eyed maniacal or extra toothy grin, like Jack Nicholson, or Steve Tyler, but a gentle subtle one. A smile like you had a valium or some really potent CBD. Your family and friends will never be sure if you agree, disagree, drank a bit much or perhaps have not drank enough.
Be sure to bring your own mood stabilizer whether it be a bottle or two of fine red wine, a flask of tequila, lexapro, or maybe a good grade of California Marijauna. Btw, in California, if you forget the herb, you can just call up and get it delivered via a service. Holiday rates probably apply. Bring this on the small chance that you might see yourself, in your own mind, about to verbally pummel into non-existence, know- it-all Uncle Bob. You will also be prepared to quickly destress should your little kid hurl up his whole dinner in your face because he got tummy tossed the past two hours by the adult boys in the group.
Do not talk about anyone, what they did or wore, until you are leaving in the car with the windows all rolled up, sun roof included and at least two miles away. Make sure you have not accidentally face-timed or auto dialed anyone before you say anything. Double check. Triple check.

Follow these guidelines and then you will have a better chance to rest in peace and survive all kinds of holiday madness, I mean gladness. You can close your eyes in deep forgetful slumber and be confident in knowing that you have championed another Holiday Family Dinner!

Know that you will live to tell or perhaps decide not tell, this years tales.