The Holiday Role You Play

The Holiday Role You Play

Perhaps no other time of year is as highly anticipated, and secretly dreaded, as that festive family time known collectively as "the holidays." The clash of fake gaiety and togetherness around Thanksgiving time plus Christmas's unrealistic expectations of "perfection" can lead to a train wreck of emotions.

We cope the best we can. Both poles of our Jekyll-Hyde personalities can be released. Sometimes we slip behind familiar masks. We might play comforting, non-confrontational roles, or perhaps hide out in the kitchen behind a tower of dirty dishes. For example, I noticed how in recent years around family gatherings I had become "the entertainer." My job: make 'em laugh.

To see if this holiday ailment afflicted more than just myself, recently I polled my friends and select family members. I had them write descriptions of their annual performances, each titled "The Holiday Role I Play." (I'd also like to hear from you: what role do you play?). 

Reported anonymously, here are some of the responses (edited for length) that I received:

• I am considered the queen of Christmas.

• When I go home for the holidays I am "The Good Sport." No matter what game I am asked to play, song I am asked to sing, I never complain. There is time to get even later.

• I am "The Pretender" and enter into all they're doing and willingly going along. At some level, I know they know this.

• Characterize me as "The Bartender." Everyone's glass is full -- which permits me to fill my own glass in the doing.

• At mom's house I am "The Organizer." Everything must run on schedule, all the dishes at the proper temperature, the gifts opened in descending order of seniority. My husband is "The Clean-up Guy." When all the gals are sipping their Bailey's, he is quietly at the sink washing and drying.

• I think I am "The Son Who Needs To Be Spoiled." Whenever I come home for the holidays, my mom wants to spoil her "lost son" as much as possible.

• I play three roles. With the immediate family, I am "The Reminder of The Love Before." Mom sees my father in my face and usually loses her mind. The second role I play is "The Project" -- everyone is eager to see me 50 and relatively finished. Finally, I am "The Outsider." My family is a bunch of heartening, Midwestern hicks, barely anyone finishing college, lots of alcoholics, teenage drug addicts and runaways who try to commit suicide. To have become the quiet one who got out of Fort Wayne, Ind., without babies or a husband, is always unsettling.

• I can tell you right off my role would be "The Moderator." Such choice therapeutic phrases such as "what I hear you saying is ..." and "what I think she is trying to express is ..." are commonly uttered by me. I try to avoid using language like "shame spiral" and "co-dependent." (Note: variations on this theme were the most common roles cited -- "The Referee," "The Sounding Board," "The Therapist," "The Link Repairer," "The Peacemaker.")

• I play "The Honored Guest," graciously bestowing my presence and allowing myself to be treated as such.

• I know the pitfalls of family gatherings (a dirge-like, morose collection of individuals, shoveling down holiday food to the strains of Johnny Mathis and searching for an appropriate escape) and do my best to avoid/dilute them.

• My role: "I Am My Sister's Keeper." We share thousands of tiny glances throughout one holiday evening that speak volumes in the moment, and signify volumes to be spoken much later. Separately, we can hardly win any battles, but together, on Christmas, we are an unstoppable army of two.

• I am the one trying to shed a little factual light on my family's highly distorted, historically rewritten views. I used to be the family clown. I don't think the two are that different -- just components of the same role.

• In my house I take the role of "The Conversationalist." Frequently this involves many different conversations, held in a constant blur of moving from living room to kitchen and back again, trying to not alight on the couch and be sucked into the brain numbing drone of TV. The talk goes a little like this: Cooking, a little politics and sports with Dad; sports with younger brother; current events and education with step-mom. Don't alienate anyone, make sure you include all the guests, remember to include significant others. Above all else avoid the deadly seven-minute dead air. Silence isn't golden. Perhaps we will find out how far we have traveled from each other over the year.

• As a child I was "The Anointed Christmas Infant," responsible for displays of wonder. As a young adult my role shifted to being the one responsible for the continuation of our handed-down traditions of perfection -- "Mid-Winter Monarch" and "Kitchen Queen" -- she who secures the boundaries, mediates the squabbles and is provider of plenty. Now, in exile and older, I have become "The Contented Ghost of Christmas Past."

• My son is unable to type so I will attempt to respond for him. His role is to experience and share pure unadulterated joy during the holidays. He jumps with excitement when putting out a plate of cookies, eight carrots and a glass of milk for Santa. He brings meaning to the holidays. Ask him this question in another five years and I am sure you'll get an answer more like what you were expecting.

• I have no idea what my role is. I think maybe I'm the guy who makes screaming faces in the bathroom mirror and then comes out all smiley.

And you probably could add to these your own cast of characters you find yourself playing. Feel free to comment below and let us know what roles you slip into around the holidays.

Ethan Gilsdorf is the author of the new travel memoir Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms.

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