My parents split up when I was fairly young. I honestly can't remember very many memories from when we spent Christmas together as a family, and that's totally okay.

I like to consider myself a product of a successful divorce. My parents despise each other the more time that passes and I could only imagine the absolute hell we would've gone through had they "stuck it out for the kids" as some families do. I vaguely remember having a Christmas tree upstairs and downstairs, each with just as many presents under the tree. I remember getting my favorite Buzz Lightyear Woody from Toy Story toys. But that's about the extent of my memory.

Sure Christmas can be a difficult time that puts a lot of stress on just about everyone. But for me, coming from a broken family, having incredibly shitty Christmases with drama mainly caused by the overfill between both sides of my parents. Keeping both sides completely separated is always the best way to get through the holidays, but whenever one end dips into the other end it ends in a chaotic mess and ends up ruining the holidays altogether.

But here's why those ruined Christmases was never really that bad for me. Because I understand the standards of what I'm going to focus on when I have a family of my own. It's showed me that I'm more than capable of keeping my kids from having the ugly traditions that were accidentally had when I was a kid. Every year one tiny thing would happen and it snowballed into more and more problems that caused awkward tensions while opening presents, eating dinner, or attending church.

This isn't me blaming my parents for causing such awkward Christmases. Because it isn't that whatsoever. They did the best they could. I love them both and wouldn't change them for the world. However, I'll honestly say that it would've been nice if they could've sat back and just let bygones be bygones during the holidays and have some sort of pact to not let their own selfish whims over the holidays get in the way of having a pleasant Christmas.

It taught me the way that I should be doing things with my kids in my future. Christmas time taught me that when it comes to marriage, I need to find the one person I want to be there every year for the rest of my life. Not only for my sake but for my future hypothetical kids' sake.

I want them to be able to experience a big Christmas surrounded by extended family members. I want them to be able to see their cousins on Christmas and have a completely carefree time while they're away from school. I want them to be excited to come home from college to join their family. I want for one day, my parents to be able to join the table with my family, my sister's family, and me. I want for an adult Christmas where my family doesn't see the drama and bickering I did. I hate cliche versions of anything, but I want the damn cliche version of Christmas because I have no memories of it.

My family is the most important thing to me. It always will be. It's my number one priority and in order to really feel the embrace and warmth of the holidays, the way that God intended them to be, a family is the only way to do that. Not multiple abbreviated versions of Christmas throughout the end of December with parents fighting over who gets who, and when they're going to be where at what time. Christmas wasn't ever meant to be stressful. But it somehow became that way for us.

One last good thing that came out of all of the drama, my sister became one of my best friends because she understood how annoying it was to deal with the drama of being from the same busted up family. We bonded by laughing about the ridiculousness of things that went on. Especially when we got older. We built amazing memories and shared so many laughs about the past Christmas mishaps we went through while we reminisced whenever something new and asinine would arise during the holidays.

Christmas is meant for laughter and reminiscing on pure nostalgic aspects from the things that typically stress us out. A family shouldn't bicker or fight during the Christmas. A family shouldn't struggle to refrain from being at each other's throats for the most senseless things. That's what New Year's Eve is for when everyone's had too much to drink at the party.