Holiday Stress

 Thinking back on family holidays brings one word to mind—STRESS!  There was the holiday traffic to contend with, meeting everybody’s expectations, and good old family friction.   Holidays for us usually centered on food and drink.  Two of the most memorable holiday events I can recall were when we had Christmas dinner at my mother’s parents’ house in southern California back in the 1950’s.   My grandmother had prepared her usual pot roast with all the side dishes.  My grandfather had a habit of partaking of a little drink in his garage before dinners.   He came into the house and sat at the head of the table and began cutting the pot roast.    The roast slipped off the platter onto the floor.  Like nothing had happened he stuck the carving fork into it and brought it back up on the table and continued cutting.   During all this he muttered out a word that I will not repeat here.   Being about 10 years of age I did not know what the word meant and asked my dad, who sitting next to me.  He said, “Never mind and be quiet”.  

The second event was later in life when we had Christmas at my first wife’s parent’s small farm near Lodi, California.  The kitchen was small and more than three people in there was a crowd.  The women were in a heated discussion on how to cook this and that.  My father-in-law looked at me and said, “Let’s go to the barn and leave them to it”.  In the barn he opened a bottle of Wild Turkey and all the stress went away instantly.