"Anyone want another glass of wine?" Judging by the shouts of approval and laughter,
the answer was yes.
I scanned the beaming faces. Crammed into my brother Mike's beautifully renovated old farmhouse in Dunrobin, outside of Ottawa, were 22 of my immediate, extended and honorary family members, gathered for Christmas dinner.
It was noisy. It was chaotic. And it was the best Christmas we'd ever had.
Most years, our family meal is a prepared-to-perfection affair, from the glittering crystal stemware to the creamy pumpkin pie. The linen tablecloth is ironed hours before a drop of gravy is spilled. Candles reflect in the windows. Bing Crosby croons in the background. It's blissful, beautiful…and, with our expanding family, increasingly impossible to replicate without posing a serious hazard to our collective mental health.
So last year, rather than aim for perfect, we went for fabulous and fun. A month before, my sister-in-law, Jean, sent out a mass e-mail outlining her plan. She and Mike would open their home and cook the turkey, we'd provide the rest. Everyone was assigned something: the three grandmas invited to the do made pies, Mum brought a yummy vegetable dish, sister Mary did the ham. Even Jean's spunky bachelor brother, Ian, rustled up his signature garlic and pancetta salad.
It was organized mayhem – the kids tore, shrieking, through the kitchen as Ian (an honorary 35-year-old kid) chased them with a foam sword – but it worked. It worked because it was a day set aside for creating a new tradition in a changing family. It worked because it was about the pleasure of sharing everything from Jean's fabulous tourtière to those wonderful, rambling, half-finished conversations that characterize our family.
As the day's architect and chief cook and bottle washer, it was the only way forward for Jean.
"I like nice china and tablecloths as much as anyone, but Martha Stewart has a lot to answer for. She makes people think they can have an elegant-casual family Christmas where the toilet won't overflow, the kids aren’t overtired and the gravy won't be lumpy. Life isn't like that," she says of her own calamity-casual approach. "The key is to be just organized enough so that when someone is late or the three-year-old has a tantrum, you can deal with it. In the end, it was perfect."
Why perfect? Because it wasn't trying to be. According to Prof. Gordon Flett, who holds a Canada Research Chair in personality and health at York University in Toronto, Christmas isn't just bad for the holiday blues – it's one of the worst times of the year for perfectionists.
"Christmas reflects huge cultural expectations that things have to be just right," Flett says. "We have a consumer-based society that says if you have the perfect look or the perfect achievement, the perfect life will follow. People expend so much effort achieving this ideal. By the time the holidays arrive, they're stressed."
Page 1 of 2
Comment reported
Thank you for reporting this comment as inappropriate.
Back to Comments »