Avoid WWIII with your Family this Christmas

The Christmas season is the perfect time to get together with your family and loved ones, but for some of us, it might be the perfect time to stay far far away. Your family might be a little bit dysfunctional or a lot, but how do you know when taking a year off from the regular family traditions may be the best thing for you? Today, we’re going to give you 3 times when you should and 3 times when you should not join your family for Christmas.

You SHOULD get together with your family when you can go in love. This may seem like an obvious one, but how much of what we do with our families is done out of obligation? Obligation is the breeding ground for resentment and resentment will lead to increased hostility maybe even a family cold war in the future. The tricky thing about this one is that it is completely dependent on you and your attitude. It doesn’t matter how much guilt and pressure other people might try to heap up on you, it is up to you to choose to accept that guilt or set it aside. You can go out of guilt and allow it to boil up inside of you, but you can also choose to let their attempts to guilt you into it roll right off and STILL choose to be there because you love them. You might feel like they don’t deserve your love, but honestly, we don’t always deserve their love either. When you can join in the celebration out of love and not guilt, you should go!

On the other hand, you SHOULD NOT go when you know that your presence is bound to make things worse. Do you have a certain grievance with a parent, sibling or extended relative that cannot be put aside? Do they have a particular beef with you that sends them into a fit of anger that is going to ruin the holiday for a lot of innocent bystanders? Collateral damage is definitely something to take into account before you head into a family holiday. If you can find the time to reach out beforehand and, if not squash the issue, at least mitigate it so that it doesn’t spoil the night, then that might allow for both of you to be there without issue. If both of you are not able to allow the issue to rest for at least the one night then, for everyone’s sake, it might be best for at least one of you to stay away this year.

You SHOULD get together when you know deep down that you’ll regret not going. Priorities are a challenge for everyone and there’s always a good reason for you to not do something. Maybe you’re stacked up at work but you hate being away for the holidays. Maybe your friends want to get together on the same night your grandma is coming into town. You can’t say yes to everything, so you have to learn to say yes to what is truly most important. It may be difficult, but deciding which direction to go in is something that you will have to face frequently in life. Sometimes you have to weigh the risks and rewards, the temporal and seasonal with the permanent and make your decisions based off of where your values lie long-term. If you know you’ll regret not going later on, then do what is necessary to be there now.

You SHOULD NOT go when you can’t afford to. A sad truth in life is that we can’t always do the things we want to do when we want to do them. If you’re out of state for college or your job has caused you to move across the country, getting back home for the holidays can be a huge burden. Travel is not cheap and it gets even worse around the holidays. Whether you’re driving or flying, it’s not always feasible to get back home for a short holiday weekend. Maybe you could save the money and make the trip later when pricing has gone back down or it’s easier to get a few more days off so that you can really enjoy the time you have together without feeling rushed. Maybe this experience might cause you to rethink some of your plans and if being close to family is a higher priority, then this could be the event that spurs you to make the changes necessary to be where you really want to be.

You SHOULD get together with your family, however, when you can. If you have the time, you have the means and you don’t have other obligations, you should take the opportunity to spend that time with the people you love and who love you. Especially for the late-teens and early twenties crowd, using your time off from school or work to hang out with your parents, grandparents, annoying cousins and weird uncles might not seem like it’s worth it, especially when you could be spending that time on a beach in Florida or on a ski trip with your college friends. At this stage in life, it is easy to feel like what has always been will also always be, but that simply isn’t the case. Even if you’re still at a stage where you’re living at home, you might want to enjoy your holidays by holing up in your room playing video games all day or finding a corner to sit and scroll through Tik Tok videos is more enjoyable than hearing the same stories, eating the same food and playing the same games would be. The truth is, we are people and people are made for relationship. Sure, it takes a little bit of effort, but these relationships with these people are what your heart needs, not beach trips and screen time. Time is an investment; make sure that what you're investing in is going to pay off later on.

Finally, you SHOULD NOT get together with your family and loved ones only when it is too late. Don’t wait to work on those broken relationships. Don’t keep pushing off apologizing or even forgiveness. Don’t wait to go until there is nothing else in the way because there will always be something else in the way. Eventually, it will be too late, the relationship will be broken beyond repair or the person will be gone. Don’t go when it’s too late.

That wraps up our list. Let us know what you thought in the comments below. Also, remember to let us know what topics you want us to cover next year! Next week we’ll be back talking about how to deal with your Grinches. We all know one or two, but you may be surprised at who’s really stealing your joy this Christmas.