Remarriage can make adults euphoric. But their children don't
necessarily experience it that way; it's just another means of feeling
left out, certainly for the several years that it takes stepfamily
relationships to build. Then along come Thanksgiving and the rest of the
holidays, intensifying everyone's desire to belong, and the need cannot
possibly be adequately met.
If intact couples run up against a culture clash at Christmas,
stepfamilies face a prolonged siege. "A stepfamily has not a family tree
but a family forest," says psychologist Emily Visher, Ph.D., who with her
husband, psychiatrist John Visher, Ph.D., has pioneered the study of
stepfamilies and discovered the unique developmental course they follow.
For children in new stepfamilies, everyday life is a war of
cultures—Mom's, Mom's new husband's, children's, and Dad's new
girlfriend's. Every little thing, from the kinds of cookies in the house
to the way French toast is made to where the toilet paper is stored, is
different from in their previous family.
No matter whose house the holidays take place in, the sense of
dislocation and insecurity can be severe. Then double it, because one of
the functions of holiday rituals is to communicate belongingness—and new
stepfamilies have not yet developed their own rituals. Then, just when a
kid is scoping out the new cousins, it's time to pack the bags for the
changeover to Dad's new in-laws and a whole new set of not-quite
relatives to be met.
The first couple of years of stepfamily celebrations are
particularly hard, say the Vishers. "It gets better as the high emotions
calm down." They should know. They've mastered 30 years of stepfamily
life themselves. "Flexibility is the key. Everyone in the house should
get together and put forth their ideas on how to celebrate the holidays.
Everyone's input counts equally, including that of the kids. The adults
can then select the rituals which are feasible."
Stepfamilies may be the first to know it but actually, says Frank
Pittman, "everyone has to face the fact that there is no Santa Claus. No
one is going to come and give you what you're missing." And that is the
ultimate disillusionment of family holidays. You've reached the end of
the year and things still haven't been made right. You still don't have
the perfect family. (Psst—I'm going to let you in on a little secret: no
one does!)
Somewhere along the way, Pittman explains, "we got the idea that if
we chopped enough fish or stuffed enough turkeys or put up enough colored
lights or dragged a tree into our living room, then our problems would go
away and everything would be wonderful." How did we ever work our way
into this deception in the first place?
You could call this belief the stocking-stuffer version of the myth
of "quality time." We've bought into the belief that we can do a year's
worth of work on our entire set of relationships just in a few
days—holiday time. But believing we can repair all relationships and
repay all debts on these days is what ruins the rest of the year.
Christmas and the rest of the special days are sad, says Pittman, because
we face the reality of what we haven't done for ourselves, our lives and
our loved ones over the whole year.
Better, he says, if we treat the rest of the year as if it were
Christmas. And treat Christmas as if it were an ordeal. Cancel the big
show. Don't bother smearing pate on the beef. Simply feed and nurture
each other. Then no one will be disappointed.
Holiday Tales
Begin's Beauties
My girlfriend and I were dating two brothers one winter and were
invited to their family home in Thompson, Connecticut, for Christmas. My
friend and I are both Jewish. Apparently, most of Thompson is not—a
point not overlooked by our boyfriend's father. When he met us, he joked
that his sons had won the prize for bringing the most Jews ever into
Thompson—that he had never seen so many in Thompson. For the rest of the
weekend, he referred to us as "Begin's Beauties," after Menachem Begin,
Israeli Prime Minister at the time. Though the comments made us extremely
uncomfortable, my girlfriend and I tried to be as polite as possible. The
weekend didn't wreck my girlfriend's romance with the brother she'd been
dating. She ultimately married him. —B.L.
Next Time, Send Them to a Hotel
It was the first year my mother, a proud new homeowner in New York,
got to entertain the family for Christmas. Her sister, brother-in-law and
niece flew in from Utah to stay with her for a week. It was a fiasco from
the start. My aunt's husband, accustomed to the warmth (and low heating
bills) of the Southwest, kept upping the thermostat to 80 Fahrenheit. He
also broke one of the brand-new dining table's wooden sections while
trying to move furniture around. To top it all off, after my mother
"corrected" her 12-year-old niece who had tossed a rude comment to her
grandmother, he delivered a 20-minutes lecture insisting that my mother
had no right to criticize his child and that if she knew so much about
parenting, she should write a book and get her own talk show. —R.T.
How to Really Ruin Christmas
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