how to end holiday anxiety

Today I am going to share with you a secret I have discovered in the past few days, that may serve you well on this and future holidays: How to get through the holiday season without worrying about anything at all. It is a very simple solution if you can manage it properly, although some of you might find it a tad drastic:

Get sick.

Not too sick, mind you, and not with anything very contagious, unless you want to avoid any holiday mingling whatsoever and would prefer to spend Christmas (or your holiday of choice) holed up in your bedroom or bathroom, engaging in some festive holiday barfing or whatnot. I highly recommend a minor but annoying cold or, if you're prone to this sort of thing, a sinus infection.

Once you have a head full of mucus, you are not going to give a rat's toenail about whether you got So-and-So the right present, how your Jewish husband is going to deal with your Catholic family's holiday, if you'll have time to buy new pants, or when you'll be able to wrap presents. Suddenly the old pants are good enough, as are all the presents, you'll wrap them when you get to your destination or just buy a bunch of gift bags (which are better for the environment anyway because they're reusable), and you'll recall that your husband is a grown-up who is perfectly capable of dealing with your relatives. Christmas cards not done? Tough patooties. You'll get lots of rest as you crawl into bed with a box of tissues and stop caring.

I must warn you that as soon as the infection truly sets in, and you realize you are going to be sick and feel miserable during the holidays, you may experience a meltdown. Go ahead, have a good cry and get it over with. I would, however, suggest that you wait until you get to a private, quiet location for your meltdown, instead of bursting into tears in the car on the way home from Whole Foods, where they didn't have any clementines (not even in a crate) and you don't like orange juice and hell, no matter how much Vitamin C you consume you're going to be sick, like it or not ... and if driving feels this awful right now, how are you going to be able to handle sharing the driving tasks on the trip to your family's house this weekend? No, it is much better to try to hold out until you get home.

Eventually you will get over the meltdown and suddenly, all your troubles will fade away as you focus on trying to feel better. You may still feel worried about a few things, like the aforementioned road-trip, but eventually even these anxieties will fade away as you confine yourself to a small set of achievable goals: ensuring you have enough tissues, pills, and water bottles to last the holiday season. Even then, most of that stuff is over-the-counter, so there's no need to fret. It's amazing how little you will worry about anything holiday-related once you turn into a big coughing-and-sneezing blob.

As I mentioned before, of course there are more extreme measures. One of the most vivid Christmas memories I have is from 1990, when I was still in college in Louisiana. I drove to my parents' house for Christmas and two days before my parents' traditional open-house Christmas Eve party, my youngest brother came down with chicken pox. My mom urged people without kids to come visit anyway, as it was not contagious to grown-ups who already had chicken pox, but everyone was scared of contracting shingles. The only family to attend the open house was our pediatrician's. We were drowning in ham and turkey and potato salad. My brother was at the stage of chicken pox where he didn't feel very sick at all, but was amazingly spotty.

Christmas Day was remarkably subdued, as we couldn't go to any of the relatives' big dinner gatherings, but settled down to eat leftovers. My boyfriend at the time showed up on Christmas afternoon and we had our own private dinner at TGI Friday's, since it was the only place we could find open. In the middle of year after year with the same people at the same Christmas Eve open house, and Christmas Day dinner at Relative A or Relative B, it was a memorable change. However, I think chicken pox is a rather extreme way to downsize your holiday plans, and I do not recommend this. Stick with a bad cold instead.

(The only drawback? You won't care about updating your website for Holidailies. Oops.)

Posted at December 22, 2006 11:51 AM