Befriending the Holidays

I grew up in a small, sleepy town north of Boston, a place where they roll up the streets at night. I hated the holidays with a vengeance, imagining that everyone else in the world was having a joyous, exuberant time. Feeling suffocated by my family of origin, abhorring the endless petty fights, I endured the inevitable yelling and tears, the heated dinner table arguments over politicians and violent wars.

Little did I know that that within a few years things would radically change. Marriages, divorces, death, births and major illness made me acutely aware that what I thought was my family, fixed and unalterable, was subject to change. It was before I began to study Buddhism, so I had no awareness that this too was in fact impermanent. And I had no idea that genders would modify, bodies would be transformed through surgery, and pronouns would change. 

There was so much else I couldn’t predict. Who would have imagined that a remarkable adult half-brother, a sperm donor’s gift, would emerge in our lives, a new and wonderful addition to the family. Or that due to marriage, our in-laws would no longer be solely Caucasian, but multiracial. 

As I look back at my “holiday phobic” teenage self, I wish I could kindly and calmly say, “Wait, just wait. Things will change in ways you can’t imagine.” 

In fact, no wordplay intended, W.A.I.T. is an acronym that we teach young therapists. It stands for “Why Am I Talking?” It is a short cut to restraint which I certainly didn’t possess as a fiery teen. It helps us enter a place of wisdom and balance. I certainly wish I had known about this practice before I compulsively put my foot in my mouth during holiday dinners, feeling the need to express my political and emotional positions.  

As meditation teachers tell us, learning to be with uncomfortable or difficult feelings creates a gap between impulse and action. We learn that we can watch a desire arise and have a choice on whether to act on it. In fact, most empathic failures occur when we speak or act first and think later. 

If you find yourself about to bite off Uncle Harry’s head, engaging in a drunken argument about politics or the state of the world, try instead to pause and then take a deep breath. Ask yourself, will this anger lead to anything productive or wholesome, or will you wish you had practiced restraint rather than lashing out in righteous rage? ‍

Managing Your Holiday Anger in a Different Way‍

Try something different. During a heated conversation, try being quiet. Let your body become still. Follow your breath, noting the inhalation and the exhalation. Or as one meditation teacher I know suggests, put your teeth on your tongue and bite down. See if you can pause instead of telling Uncle Harry what you think of him and his politics.

When I was growing up, we were taught the maxim that “sticks and stones can break our bones, but names will never hurt me.” It turns out, according to the Self-Compassion research, that while broken bones do heal, hurtful words can linger and the emotional pain from words can be more damaging than physical pain. And it may last much longer. The psychological impact of cruel or unkind words can leave lasting scars on the mind and heart. What I didn’t know when I was a child, and we let loose with our family emotional “free for all” is that words can cause deep-seated emotional harm, damage self-worth, and echo for years after they are spoken.

The ancient Zen master Sengcan, the third Chinese patriarch, teaches us that we can stop carrying our old, tired stories. You are not your story. What a relief. Can you try to put it down and do something different? Even if it is something small, some tiny shift. Maybe simply change the subject. Talk about something you read or listened to, some new music or an interesting podcast.  I’m taking this on as a challenge as well. So, instead of saying something snarky to my step-mother-in-law, (the family has changed dramatically but remains complex), I can work on practicing kindness, asking how she is doing now that her partner has died, taking an interest in her new life rather than stirring up ancient history. She may respond with kindness as well. 

The gift of mindfulness is knowing that not only can your family change, you can change as well.

And if the holidays are still an endurance contest in your family, remember this bit of wisdom from a friend whose family has mostly passed away. A holiday is just One Day. That is why we call it a holiDAY.

And good-luck and hang in there.

‍