In Search of a Better Holiday Season

Whenever I make small talk around this time of year, the first question I remind myself to ask is whether the person I’m speaking to is what I’d call “a holiday person.” Because for all the marketing around joy and cheer that begins just after the Halloween candy is discounted by 50%, for many people, “happy holidays” aren’t necessarily happy.

For some, the holidays are all warmth and light, smells of pine and crackling fire and a roast in the oven, a time of year made all the warmer and more welcoming by the joy of being in the company of weird, wacky, but eminently lovable family members and friends.

For others, the holidays are dark: save for the wintry weather, there’s nothing icier or more seemingly-endless than painfully-long travels to a family dinner table and, once there, having to participate in contentious conversations among obscene relatives and next of kin, and attempting to stomach something — anything — on the smorgasbord of unappetizing food (whether it’s too bland, too dry, too salty or too much in some other way).

If you ask me whether I’m a “holiday person,” I’m split down the middle.

I have positive memories of the holidays. I cling to the nostalgia of Thanksgiving dinners at my grandmother’s old house, eating the torched marshmallows off the sweet potato casserole, and playing football with my cousins. Never was there a better Christmas Day than the one in which I saw ‘Dreamgirls’ and ate Chinese food, true to Jewish tradition, in Miami with my…